Specialist Couples & Relationship Therapist based in Thornbury, Melbourne
Stephanie Schiftan
Qualifications:
Master Counselling (Couples) - Swinburne University
Specialist Course in Integrative Couples Therapy - Relationships Australia
Prepare / Enrich Facilitator Training
Bachelor Fine Arts (Honors) - Monash University
Graduate Diploma Education - La Trobe University
Professional Memberships:
Australian Counselling Association
About:
I came to counselling through a winding path, one that took me through classrooms and creative spaces before it brought me here.
For years I worked in education and studied Fine Arts. Both continue to shape the way I work. My arts training gave me a deep attunement to subjective experience, to the way meaning is made, held and expressed. My years in education taught me to pay close attention to how people develop, how they make sense of themselves, and how their inner worlds shape the way they move through relationships. That attentiveness sits at the heart of everything I bring to the therapy room.
I am deeply interested in relationships, not as fixed constructs but as living, breathing patterns - shaped by what came before them, continually shifting, and always in a process of becoming. I am interested in patterns we form early, often before we have words for them, and the ways those patterns travel with us into our most intimate relationships, often without our awareness. And I'm particularly interested in what lives beneath the surface of those patterns: the questions of meaning, identity and self that shape how we love and how we struggle.
Relationship Practice is founded on a simple belief: that relating is something we do, not something we have. A practice that can be neglected, yes, but also one that can be returned to, tended and deepened at any stage of life.
My work is grounded in Emotion Focused Therapy and the Gottman Method, alongside neurobiologically informed approaches. I also draw on psychodynamic and existential frameworks, and have a genuine interest in helping people connect with the inner parts of themselves that have been hidden or silenced, and in liberating them from the stories and patterns that no longer serve them.
I hold a Master of Counselling (Couples Stream) and have completed the Specialist Course in Integrative Couples Therapy through Relationships Australia Victoria. I am a member of the Australian Counselling Association and a registered Prepare/Enrich facilitator.
I work with couples at all relationship stages and with individuals navigating their relational patterns and sense of self. I have a deep respect for the many ways people love and live, and warmly welcome LGBTQI+ clients and people in all relationship structures.
Whoever you are and whatever brings you here, you will be met with openness and care.