COUNSELLING FOR MENOPAUSE IN MELVILLE
A Safe Space to Come Home to Yourself
This Is Not Just a Physical Journey
Everyone talks about the hot flushes. The disrupted sleep. The hormonal shifts that turn your body into unfamiliar territory.
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What nobody talks about enough is everything else.
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The moment you realise your children no longer need you the way they once did. The weight of watching your parents age. The relationships that feel different now, or the one you are quietly questioning. The sense that the life you built around your roles, mother, daughter, partner, carer, no longer fits the way it used to.
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And underneath all of it, a question that can feel almost too big to say out loud.
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Who am I, if I am not those things?
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If you have found yourself asking that question, you are not alone. And you are in the right place.
What counselling offers that medical treatment alone cannot
Hormone therapy and medical support have an important role to play, and I will always encourage you to work with your doctor or specialist alongside our sessions. But medication and medical treatment cannot do everything.
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They cannot help you grieve the roles that are changing. They cannot help you rediscover who you are underneath the expectations you have carried for decades. They cannot help you learn that your needs matter, that your voice matters, and that this season, as confronting as it can be, holds the possibility of something genuinely new.
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Studies suggest that addressing the emotional dimensions of menopause can also improve physical symptoms to a degree. The mind and body are not separate systems. When one shifts, the other responds.
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This is where counselling comes in.
What this season can really feel like
Menopause is not a single event. It is a whole season of life arriving at once.
Physiologically, your body is changing in ways that can feel disorienting and exhausting. But for many women, it is the emotional and relational landscape that is the hardest to navigate. The shifting sense of identity. The grief that comes with change, even change that is natural and expected. The creeping feeling of invisibility. The sense of no longer being needed, or relevant, or seen.
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For some women, this season brings something heavier still. Research tells us that rates of depression and suicidal thoughts increase during perimenopause and menopause, driven by a combination of hormonal shifts, disrupted sleep, and the significant life changes that tend to arrive all at once. If you have been experiencing thoughts like these, please know that they are more common than anyone admits, they are not a sign of weakness, and you do not have to carry them alone.
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This is exactly the kind of thing I am here to sit with you through.
Identity beyond your roles
For many women, menopause is the first time in decades that life slows down enough to ask who they actually are, separate from what they do for others. That question can feel frightening or even selfish. In this space, it is neither. It is necessary, and it is where some of the most meaningful work happens.
The grief of change
Change, even welcome change, carries loss. The loss of a particular version of yourself, of a season of life, of how things used to feel. Grief does not need a death to be real. I will not rush you through it, and I will not minimise it. But I will help you move through it rather than around it.
Loneliness and invisibility
Many women describe menopause as a profoundly lonely experience. Depending on your cultural background or family context, you may feel like an anomaly, or like something to be managed rather than understood. This space is one where your experience is taken seriously, without judgement and without agenda.
Boundaries and permission
This season of life often brings, for the first time, a quiet but insistent sense that the way things have been is no longer sustainable. Learning that it is not only acceptable but necessary to have needs, limits, and a voice is some of the most liberating work we can do together.
How you see ageing shapes how you feel
The story you carry about what it means to grow older has a profound effect on how you experience this season. We look at those stories, where they came from, whether they are true, and what might be possible if you wrote a different one.
This approach may be right for you if
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You are navigating perimenopause or menopause and finding the emotional weight of it harder than you expected
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You are already receiving medical or hormonal treatment and want complementary emotional support alongside it
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You are experiencing depression, anxiety, or thoughts that feel heavier or darker than usual, and want a safe space to bring them
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You feel like your sense of self has quietly disappeared and you are not sure who you are outside of your roles
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You feel invisible, irrelevant, or like this season of life has no place for you
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You are carrying grief about the changes happening around you and within you
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You are ready to stop putting yourself last and want support in learning what that actually looks like
What to expect from sessions
Sessions are 50 minutes, held in a calm, welcoming space in Melville or online via telehealth across Australia.
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I am available Monday to Thursday and some Saturdays.
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We go at your pace. Some women come for a focused period of support around a specific transition. Others find value in longer term work as this season continues to unfold. There is no right way to do this, only the way that works for you.
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Investment: $160 per session
What I want you to know before you reach out
I will not tell you that menopause is a gift, or that this is your time to bloom, or any of the other things that sound beautiful but can feel hollow when you are exhausted, grieving, and not sure who you are anymore.
What I will tell you is that what you are feeling makes sense.
That the complexity of this season, the loss, the loneliness, the questions that keep you awake, deserves more than a prescription and a pamphlet. I will sit with you in the hard parts.
I will take your experience seriously. And I will walk alongside you, with honesty and genuine care, as you find your own way through this and back to yourself. Not the self you were before. Someone more fully and unapologetically you.
About Erica
I am an integrative counsellor with a Master of Counselling and PACFA registration. I also bring two decades of experience as a Remedial Massage Therapist and Pilates instructor, which means I have sat with a great many women navigating this exact season of life, long before I became a counsellor.
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I have watched the way menopause arrives differently for different women. I have seen how mindset shapes the experience. I have witnessed firsthand the difference between a woman who has been given space to process what is happening, and one who has been handed a prescription and sent on her way.
That experience informs everything I bring to this work.
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My approach draws on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Compassion Focused Therapy, somatic awareness, narrative therapy, and inner child work, woven together into something that is as practical as it is deeply personal.
I will listen to you with genuine compassion. I will not tell you what to feel or how long to feel it. And I will walk alongside you as you find your own path through this season and back to yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Begin here
This is your time.
This season of life is asking something of you. Not to disappear quietly. Not to manage and cope and carry on. But to stop, look inward, and remember who you are when nobody needs anything from you.
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That is not a small thing. And you should not have to do it alone.
I invite you to begin with a free 15-minute phone consultation. An honest, unhurried conversation where we can connect, explore what you are carrying, and sense together whether this space feels right for you.
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No obligation. No pressure. Just a first step toward yourself.