Dr Lesley Porter
PhD Counselling, Relational Narrative Therapist
My Approach to Therapy
I am an Adelaide based relationship therapist and supervisor with over 25 years experience. I describe my approach as Relational Narrative Therapy based on my early narrative family therapy training with Michael White and nearly twenty years of therapeutic inquiry engaging with Johnella Bird’s Relational Narrative Orientation. My therapy practices draw on the client’s resources (body, breath, mind, heart & spirit), their language, strengths, humour, quirks and culture to enter into a place of sense making, inquiry and discovery.
In this place dreams & hopes, concerns & fears, pain & distress, anxiety & depression and trauma are attended to as part of the therapeutic inquiry. As this occurs two things start to happen. The first relates to the generative and supportive benefits of forming a therapeutic relationship. Alongside this, significant moments occur in the therapeutic talk between us. I engage with these moments to bring forward new sense making, new meaning and new understandings within the present moments of therapy.
In the present moments of therapy we discover new possibilities and new resources for life and wellness…including thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, solutions, directions, shades of light and dark, meanings and heart felt, spirit felt ways of being. These resources are then available to support the therapeutic inquiry and movement towards the life changes you are hoping for.
Informed by her PhD research, she believes that unnamed moments are central to all that occurs in therapy and it is in these moments that clients and therapists change.
My Background
I became a women’s health counsellor in the mid-80’s and this led onto many years of therapeutic practice, including counselling and group work and a large community based suicide prevention and wellness program for Afghan asylum seekers.
I have worked extensively in therapeutic areas addressing mental health, domestic violence & sexual assault in SA and NSW. This work included programs for men who perpetrated abuse and violence and programs for young people who had sexually abused younger more vulnerable children. While living in Sydney I was a Couple & Child Therapist for Relationships Australia and this therapy role helped hone my skills in couple work and sex therapy.
From here I moved back to Adelaide and commenced a Masters in Counselling that became my PhD. My PhD research found that unnamed moments in therapy are central to all that occurs in therapy. And it is in these moments that clients and therapists change. I experience unnamed moments as being ‘poetic, sacred and spiritual moments in therapy’. My thesis focuses on therapists, their therapeutic relationships and the ways they make their therapy practice and their practice ethics through the making and doing of their therapy. Read more about Dr Lesley Porter’s thesis here.
At the time I completed my thesis, I managed a women’s health team involved in mindfulness based cognitive therapy for anxiety and depression.
In recent years I have become a member of Adelaide Trauma Centre, a community of practice therapy group. This opportunity has invited me to explore more fully, the integration and connectedness of body, heart, mind and spirit. In my own therapy practice I bring together my years of experience in therapeutic inquiry, the rich findings of my research and my love of relational narrative therapy. I am drawn to yoga based breath work and mindfulness based cognitive therapy for the treatment of anxiety and depression. I plan to learn more about MBCT & MBSR to further integrate body sensitive therapy and a connectedness with the mind, heart and spirit into my therapeutic work. In my own self-care I practice mindfulness based meditation restorative yoga and Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra.
Download Dr Lesley Porter CV.
My Qualifications
I have a PhD in Counselling from the University of New England, NSW. Other tertiary qualifications include: Graduate Certificate in Breast Cancer, Australian College of Nursing; Graduate Diploma Mental Health Nursing, Flinders University; Bachelor of Nursing, University of South Australia. My family therapy qualifications include a Two Year Family Therapy Certificate at Dulwich Centre, South Australia with Michael White in 1991 & a Family Therapy Internship in 1992 at the University of Calgary in Canada.
My Teachers, Supervisors & Collaborators
One of my therapy teachers Johnella Bird, shared with me the importance of naming our teachers and our ethics as therapists. I have outlined here those who have come before me and influenced the shape and practice of my therapy and supervision practices. My therapy teachers include Michael White (Narrative Therapy) and Johnella Bird (Relational Narrative Orientation). Vidyamala Burch Breathworks Mindfulness Meditation, Karen Hall Breathworks Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Supervisor have greatly influenced my mindfulness meditation practice and supported me in becoming a Breathworks Mindfulness Meditation Teacher.
My collaborators include: Adelaide Trauma Centre and the body sensitive trauma therapy community of practice in Adelaide. Past collaborative efforts have been anchored in social justice and therapeutic community based mental health responses. These collaborations have been nurtured along by shared hopes and dreams; therapeutic inquiry involving art and poetry and a love of making, learning and discovery.