Couples & Relationship Counselling in Melbourne’s Inner North & North East
A dedicated practice for anyone navigating the complexities of intimate life.
Based in Thornbury, supporting couples and individuals across Melbourne’s inner north and north east, with online counselling available across Australia.
A Dedicated Practice for Relationships
Relationship Practice is a specialist practice dedicated to couples and relationship therapy. Based in Thornbury, with online counselling available across Australia.
People come here at all kinds of points: in the middle of a crisis, in the quiet accumulation of distance, at a crossroads, or simply with a sense that something important has been lost and they'd like to find their way back to it. The concerns that bring people vary, from communication difficulties, conflict and disconnection, to betrayal, intimacy concerns, attachment patterns, parenting and family pressures, grief, loss and the transitions that ask more of a relationship than either person expected. What they share is a willingness to look honestly at something that matters. → On relationship as practice
Stephanie Schiftan
Specialist Couple & Relationship Therapist
MCouns (Couples) · GradDipEd · BFA (Hons) · Specialist Course in Integrative Couples Therapy (RAV) · ACA Member
I came to counselling through a winding path - through classrooms and creative spaces - and both continue to shape the way I work. My background in Fine Arts gave me a deep attunement to how meaning is made and expressed. My years in education taught me to pay close attention to how people make sense of themselves and the world. That curiosity and attentiveness sits at the heart of everything I bring to the therapy room.
I hold a Master of Counselling (Couples Stream) and trained as a couples therapist at Relationships Australia Victoria, completing both the Specialist Course in Integrative Couples Therapy and my supervised clinical hours there. I am a member of the Australian Counselling Association.
I work with couples and individuals at all relationship stages, with a genuine belief in people's capacity for growth and a deep respect for the courage it takes to show up honestly in relationship. LGBTQI+ clients and diverse relationship structures warmly welcomed.
Relationship Counselling
Every relationship hits rough patches. Whether you're navigating conflict, disconnection, or a breakdown in trust, what matters is not that it happened but what becomes possible from here. Relationship counselling offers a space to slow down, understand the deeper patterns and emotions driving the distance between you, and find greater clarity about yourselves and your relationship, so you can move forward from a more grounded place. → Relationship Counselling
Prepare / Enrich
Whether you're starting out together or deepening a relationship you've already built, a strong foundation makes all the difference. As an accredited Prepare/Enrich facilitator, I use this research-based program to help couples build genuine self and mutual understanding, identify their strengths, and develop the tools for a relationship that can evolve with them through every season of life. → Prepare Enrich
Individual Counselling
Sometimes the most important relationship to tend is the one you have with yourself. Individual counselling offers space to understand the patterns you've carried, to build a more honest and compassionate relationship with yourself and others, and to find greater freedom in how you live and love. → Individual Counselling
Relationship is not something you have. It’s something you do.
It's practised in the small, ordinary moments of everyday life, in how you greet each other at the end of a long day, in how you move through disagreement, and in the distance that can quietly grow between two people without either of them quite knowing how it got there. It's practised in the bigger moments too: the transitions, the losses, the seasons of life that ask more of us than we expected.
Few things shape the quality of our lives more than the quality of our relationships. It's a practice worth returning to, deepening and renewing through every chapter of life and every version of yourself.