About

Hello

I'm Nicola, a Registered Counsellor. 

I offer supportive and preventative psychotherapy that promotes wellbeing for people from age 13 upwards. I'm here to walk alongside you on your journey back home to yourself. 

I accompany people as they deal with anxiety, depression, grief, loss, life transitions, identity crises, suicide, burnout and trauma. 

I believe people are the experts in their own lives, and my role is to help them connect with what they need within themselves to heal, however that feels best for them.

I use practices that are ceremonial, embodied, nature-based and creative. 

HPCSA Registration Number: PRC 0043133 

My Story


Throughout our human evolution we have been in relationship and dialogue with the natural world. This connection has largely been lost in modern society, and we owe much of our anxiety, depression, loneliness and loss of purpose to this disconnection. There is a great longing in each of us to know the secrets and mysteries of our individual lives, to discover our unique offerings to the world, and to experience our belonging with all of creation. Reconnecting with the natural world is not just about re-establishing our connection with nature, it is remembering that we are nature, taking our place once again in the grand web of life with all our gifts, and bringing the lost, forgotten and exiled parts of ourselves back so we can be whole and fully human again.


In 2018 I had a "breakdown/breakthrough". I felt that I was stuck in my life, and I yearned for something more. I quit my life, and spent 4 months solo hiking the Pacific Crest Trail through the wilderness of the Pacific US. Without the normal distractions and "real world" constraints I started to understand what I was, confronted by the magnificent totality of nature and my own soul. I saw in fullness my own brightness along with my trauma and darkness, and I experienced profound healing. I became more honest, authentic, more intuitive, capable, courageous and compassionately  in-touch with imperfection. I also experienced a deep belonging to the earth, and a profound grief at a lifetime without this connection.


Out there I touched what the poets call The Wild God, and returning I was changed irrevocably. Through research and reflection I realised that this process had happened because of and through a connection with nature, and I knew I wanted to help people remember their wild selves and their connection to their wild natures. Through the experience, I came to understand the power of rites of passage, and how an external wilderness journey can become an internal wilderness journey. Because of this journey, I specialise in the emerging field of Ecopsychology, which believes that human health depends on the health of our relationship with nature, our first home. I enjoy exploring practices that restore our connection to the wild and our wild selves. 


I use a collection of things in my medicine bundle on the path of healing. 


As an English Literature specialist (MA Trauma Literature, UCT, 2012), I understand the power of story in the human life. Our memories are stories about our past, our dreams are stories about our futures, and our personalities are stories about ourselves. We are meaning-making creatures, and learning to tell our stories stories means learning to shape our reality. 


I have experience as an educator in both high school and university. I took my bag of tricks into high school education in 2014, where I loved helping young people wake up to what they had inside of themselves through literature, poetry, drama and social activism. 


In 2022 I enrolled at SACAP where I completed my Honours (B.Psych. Equivalent), spending just over a year doing practical community service with The Counselling Hub, where I still volunteer, bringing psychosocial support to a diverse South African population. My Honours research was focused on how men's interpersonal relationships with other men shape their wellbeing. I am passionate about helping men to understand the societal pressures acting on them, and to connect to their disenfranchised, suppressed and hidden parts. I love working with men as they show up in all of who they are, and find freedom, authentic connection and fulfilment. 


I have volunteered with Women for Afrika (WFA) since 2016, and currently sit in the leadership circle. WFA is a community of women supporting women on their journeys of healing, connection, self-discovery and empowerment. They create powerful weekend immersions, as well as ongoing community support through women's circles. I have been staffing weekends and training women's support circles since 2017. I love working with women as they connect to their deep inner knowing. 


I am also a writer and an artist. Not having the language to express all I experienced on trail, I created a body of inky black art called La Loba, in honour of the Wild, and since finding that language, am about to finish writing my book about the psychological experience of the PCT. Creative expression is an important part of any healing bundle. 


My style of counselling is client centred. This means that I believe a person is the expert in their own experience, and that my role is to help them connect with what they need within themselves to heal, in whatever way feels best for them. We co-create a space of deep, judgement-free listening. 

I bring practical tools and skills, and draw primarily on the therapeutic approaches of Ecotherapy (working with the human-nature connection) and Depth Practices (working with dreams, active imagination, body awareness and movement, myth and story, ritual, archetypes and symbols, and deep soul listening). I weave ritual and ceremony into all my work where I can and where it feels right for my clients. 

I also draw from approaches such as Gestalt Therapy, Schema Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and Strength Based Therapy. 

It is a great honour to be trusted with some of the most vulnerable moments of a person's life. With each session I learn more about what it means to be human and alive.