Trauma Therapist in Melbourne for LGBTQ+ Adults

Trauma doesn't always arrive as a single, identifiable event. For many LGBTQ+ people, it accumulates, in the small moments of rejection, the years of hiding, the relationships that didn't feel safe, the families that didn't understand. It shows up in how you relate to yourself, how you move through the world, and the patterns that keep repeating, no matter how much you understand them intellectually.

I'm Matthew Austin, a registered mental health social worker and trauma therapist based in Thornbury, inner north Melbourne. I work with LGBTQ+ adults navigating trauma, complex trauma, shame, and the deeply held beliefs about themselves that formed in response to pain. My practice is grounded in Gestalt psychotherapy, with EMDR and IFS as specialist modalities I bring in when the work calls for it.

Medicare rebates are available with a GP Mental Health Care Plan.

How I work: Gestalt as the foundation

Most therapy approaches ask you to think differently about what happened. Gestalt therapy goes further, t works with the whole of you: your thoughts, your body, your emotions, and the way you show up in relationship right now, in this moment.

Gestalt psychotherapy is a relational, humanistic approach that I completed an Advanced Diploma in, and it forms the bedrock of how I work with every client. Rather than applying a technique to a problem, Gestalt invites you to slow down, become more aware of what's happening in you from moment to moment, and develop a different relationship with your own experience, including the parts of it that feel most difficult or most stuck.

For LGBTQ+ clients, this is particularly meaningful. Much of the pain people carry comes not from something inherently wrong with them, but from having adapted, often brilliantly, to environments that weren't safe. Gestalt helps you see those adaptations clearly and compassionately, understand what they were protecting you from, and begin to loosen their grip.