Nigel Joseph, Trauma Therapist & Couples Counsellor in Narre Warren

My path to becoming a trauma therapist and couples counsellor didn't start in a consulting room. After migrating to Australia in the early 1990s, I spent around ten years working as an electronics technician, a stable career, but never quite the right fit. I have always been drawn to people, to understanding what shapes us, what wounds us, and what helps us heal. That pull eventually became impossible to ignore.

My early years were spent working across Community Health services in Melbourne, supporting people struggling with addiction and mental illness. What I noticed, almost without exception, was that most of them had been touched by early childhood trauma in some way. Some had experienced significant traumas, sexual abuse, assault, or family violence. For others it was quieter, a childhood marked by emotional neglect, by criticism, by parents who were absent or overwhelming, or simply by never quite feeling seen or safe. And yet the impact on their adult lives was profound. I knew that if I was going to truly help people, I needed to understand trauma at a much deeper level.

Since then, I have trained extensively with leading trauma specialists, attended international trauma conferences, and continued to study the research that is transforming how we understand and treat trauma.

One of the things I noticed early in my work was how painful it could be for clients to talk about their experiences. Revisiting the past often left people feeling worse, not better. EMDR offered something different, a way to process and heal from traumatic memories without needing to retell the story.

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Throughout my career I worked with couples from time to time, and the more I did, the more I saw how the same principles applied. Each partner carries their own unresolved history into the relationship, experiences that make conflict harder to navigate and closeness harder to sustain. Since establishing my private practice, couples work has become an increasingly central part of what I do.

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Some of the areas I work with most often: