Katharine Heading, ACA

Katharine Heading is an Australian counsellor and a member of the Australian Counselling Association (ACA) who brings 17 years of clinical experience to her work. She has focused on areas such as gambling addictions, grief and loss, trauma, mental health, disability, anxiety, depression, palliative care and suicide prevention, drawing on a broad background in both community services and specialist projects.

Katharine's professional path is unusual and wide-ranging. In the early 1980s she began her working life as a tin and copper miner in the remote township of Balfour in Tasmania, an environment that sparked a lifelong curiosity and a commitment to ongoing learning. While raising young children she completed distance education studies that led to a deeper interest in psychology and clinical practice. During her training in Hobart she worked with Relationships Australia, Tasmania on problem gambling, with the Department of Psychiatry at the Royal Hobart Hospital on spider phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and the Fragile X Project, and as a group facilitator with Gambling and Betting Addiction Inc. In 2011 she relocated to western Victoria and served as a senior manager in community health, supporting programs spanning generalist counselling, youth services, homelessness, family violence, dual diagnosis and alcohol and other drugs.

Now working in private practice, Katharine emphasises individualized care that recognises people as the experts in their own lives. She uses positively affirming language and draws on a mix of therapeutic approaches, with particular emphasis on re-regulating nervous system dysregulation through hypnotherapy, relaxation and meditative strategies. She also offers equine-supported mental health work and nature-based approaches to counselling and psychotherapy, tailoring methods to fit each person's needs and goals.