Stephanie Schiftan

I am a specialist couples and relationship therapist, working with couples and individuals navigating the complexities of intimate life: conflict, disconnection, communication, trust, and the quieter question of whether a relationship can become what both people need it to be. This is a practice dedicated entirely to relationships, because I believe our closest bonds shape how we experience ourselves and the world, and that when we begin to understand and experience them with more clarity and openness, something important becomes possible: a new way of relating, and often a richer and more authentic way of living.

In the room, I bring a warm, thoughtful and attuned presence, creating a reflective and collaborative space where you can slow down and make sense of what is happening within you and between you. We explore not only the difficulties that have brought you to therapy, but the deeper emotional and relational processes shaping them.

At the heart of my work is an interest in how relationships shape us, and how they are carried within us in ways that influence patterns of connection and disconnection, often outside of conscious awareness. Working through a systemic lens, I pay particular attention to family systems, intergenerational experience and the broader sociocultural contexts that shape the roles we come to inhabit in our relationships across life. I understand recurring conflict not simply as something to resolve, but as something to be understood: an expression of attachment needs, protective strategies, family histories and the meanings people have come to hold about themselves and each other. Rather than focusing solely on changing behaviour, I help clients make sense of what unfolds beneath the surface, fostering new experiences of emotional safety and understanding that support more secure and connected relationships.

I work with couples and individuals at every stage of relationship. Some arrive in crisis, others with a quiet distance they cannot quite name, and others as individuals wanting to understand themselves more fully in relationship. LGBTQIA+ clients and people in diverse relationship structures are warmly welcomed. Whatever brings you here, my aim is to help you understand yourselves, one another, and the patterns that have shaped your experience, in the service of meaningful and enduring change.

I hold a Master of Counselling (Couples Stream) and trained as a couples therapist through Relationships Australia Victoria, completing the Specialist Course in Integrative Couples Therapy and my supervised clinical hours there. My work is attachment-informed and integrative, drawing primarily on Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), psychodynamic, neurobiologically informed and narrative approaches, while remaining responsive to each individual, couple and relational system.

Before training as a therapist, I studied Fine Arts and worked for many years in education. These experiences, alongside my own experience as a parent, continue to inform my clinical work: an understanding of development across the lifespan, a way of paying attention to emotion, ambiguity and subjective experience, and an enduring curiosity about how we make meaning of our lives, how relationships shape us, and our capacity for growth across every chapter of life.