Welcome to Integrative Therapies
A private counselling practice for cool people i.e. fellow sensitive, overthinking, emotional, complex, intense, and neurodivergent humans
About me
Registrations and Memberships (2026-2027)
Registered Full Member of the NZ Association of Counsellors (MNZAC)
Professional Member of Naturopaths & Medical Herbalists New Zealand (MNMHNZ)
Professional Member of NZ Association of Medical Herbalists (MNZAMH)
Qualifications
AdvDip Health Sciences (Naturopathy & Nutrition)
GradDipCounsPrac
MBChB (Non-practising)
Kia ora and welcome, my name is Vic (she/her/ia).
My passion is supporting people to become more fully themselves: self-directed by their own value systems, connected to what matters most, and able to live more freely, authentically, and meaningfully.
Life is too short not to live fully and freely as yourself.
I am an AuDHDer (Autistic and ADHDer) and 'gifted', a combination often referred to as twice- or multi-exceptionality (2e).
These neurodivergences shape both who I am and how I work. They allow me to move comfortably between depth and intensity, breadth and flexibility, while seeing patterns and connections across many different aspects of human life.
My neurodivergent mind is integrative by nature. I readily see connections within counselling, across different fields of knowledge, and between the many layers of human experience. This way of thinking allows me to draw together diverse perspectives and insights in ways that deepen and enrich the therapeutic process.
For me, this work is not just what I do; it is an expression of how I live and make sense of the world. It is deeply intertwined with my philosophy of being human.
I am well acquainted with the full spectrum of life: its suffering, pain, grief, loss, stress, and trauma, as well as its profound love, beauty, ecstasy, mystery, and wonder. I know what it means to face life courageously in its entirety, to live with meaning and intention, and to do the ongoing work of growth, healing, and, working through my own stuff. There is nothing I bring to my client work that I do not apply to myself. I strive to live the principles I invite others to explore.
My practice is therefore integrative and oriented toward transformation, development, and human flourishing. While reducing distress and alleviating symptoms are important parts of the process, my deeper interest lies in helping people become more fully themselves and live lives that feel meaningful, authentic, and aligned.
There is no work more rewarding than seeing people do this.
Note, I am also a qualified and registered Naturopath and Medical Herbalist. As such, I may occasionally draw on knowledge from these fields as part of psychoeducation where relevant. From my perspective, we are not separate minds and bodies but integrated beings, and our thoughts, emotions, brains, nervous systems, and physical health are deeply interconnected.
I will be offering these additional therapeutic services more formally in the near future.
About Integrative Therapies
Integrative means the combining and bringing together of different parts to form a whole. Disintegration is a state of ill health, where we feel lost, unwell, confused, devitalised, and stuck, and it is only through the process of integration that we heal and start to find wholeness.
Therapies (plural) is connected to the singular ‘therapy’.
Therapy derives from the Greek word θεραπεία or therapeia which means ‘to serve or attend to’, to provide care, cure or remedy.
This meaning was in the context of the Ancient Greek philosophy of humans being interconnected and integrated and thus ‘therapeia’ or therapies were by nature ‘whole’ or holistic, meaning that the treatment for physical or mental illness always involved attending broadly to what it meant to be human i.e. providing care to both body and mind, and attending to the wider context the person is in e.g. individual, communal, socio-cultural, and environmental. Health and wellbeing therefore was about harmony between body and mind as well as between individuals and the environments they were nested within.
Examples of therapies that were used included: nutrition, physical activity, massage, the discussion of philosophy, independence of mind, ritual, prayer, dream work, art including music and theatre, all in the context of nurturing relationships with others.
This all inspires and captures my philosophy, that attending to our mental wellbeing means attending to our relationship to and sense of self as an individual (beliefs, meaning, thoughts, feelings), it also involves attending to who we are in relation to others (our relationships), and our relationship to the socio-cultural and natural environments we are embedded in. It also means care for our embodied experience in the world, which requires attending to how we eat, move, sleep, breathe, love, create, work, play and rest.
Dan Siegel’s view on the fact that the human mind is inherently relational and embodied completely aligns with this and has been very influential for me, not only because it speaks to an integrated view that being human means understanding our relationships - with ourselves, with others, with nature, with the world, but also that we can also understand, grow, heal, through becoming more embodied- more integrated in our body-minds rather than disintegrated and disconnected as much of the world is.
And this, combined with a broad and far-reaching view on therapies being the many amazing things that help us attend to this disconnection, by reconnecting us, and integrating or bringing us back into alignment, all helps me to understand my minor but crucial in helping my clients heal and find more wholeness, I am but one chapter in their larger healing story, and the larger wondrous journey of becoming whole, that I wholeheartedly champion, is entirely theirs.