East West Wisdoms

Dr Jacqui Dodds PhD (W.Aust); BSW Hon. (Curtin); PACAWA; AASW (Accredited) Accredited Mental Health Worker (Medicare)

Buddhist Psychotherapist/Counsellor/Supervisor

I am Dr Jacqui Dodds and I am based near Noosa in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland of Queensland, Australia.  I offer clinical supervision and psychotherapy by phone or in person.

To contact me for an appointment email me @  jacqui@EastWestWisdoms.com.

Who am I?

I am a working psychotherapist and supervisor with a strong spiritual interest, based primarily on Buddhist philosophy, but interested and well experienced in working with spiritual issues, conflicts and exploration of many religions. I firmly believe that there are many paths to the same place of eventual spiritual enlightenment and depth understanding. I have found that my own exploration of Christian Roman Catholic doctrines (in my youth) and Buddhist philosophy and practice have combined to facilitate me working fruitfully with a wide range of beliefs and spiritual expression.

My passion is to form a bridge linking the wisdoms of Western psychology with the wisdoms of Buddhist psychology.

My aspiration is to live and work in an open, inquiring manner that goes beyond the confines of any particular religion or dogma.

My wish is to use every moment, every experience and every contact with another person, to help uncover what promotes suffering and what promotes wellbeing. What is it to be human? What promotes healing and a sense of fulfillment and purpose in life?

My desire is for freedom from suffering.

I am guided by the view that we are all thoroughly conditioned beings, largely motivated by forgotten, repressed or ignored previous learning. Much of this learning and consequent motivating assumptions are hidden in the unconscious but result in habituated emotional, psychological and physical reactions to what is happening right now. My interest is in bringing awareness to what we are doing, thinking and feeling and to show how repetitive patterns of cause and effect can be recognised with mindfulness, and through relationship, and then understood and changed to bring more rewarding results.

Background

I have been a Buddhist meditation practitioner in the Tibetan Kargyu lineage since 1982 and, in more recent years, have periodically taught meditation and basic Buddhist principles to interested members of the public. I also teach several units in a Diploma of Buddhist Psychotherapy, offered by Sophia College in several Australian centres.

I am an eclectic practitioner and I supervise professional counsellors, psychotherapists, welfare workers, trainers and coordinators of community organisations.

My professional training includes studies in Buddhist psychotherapy; psychodynamic psychotherapy; Jungian analysis, dream work and sand play; Acceptance and Commitment Therapy; family systemic therapy;  relationship therapy; narrative therapy; dialectical  behavioural therapy; cognitive behavioural therapy; and somatic psychotherapy.

In 1992 I completed my Bachelor of Social Work Honours (first class) degree at Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia. Encouraged by the holistic emphasis of my qualifying degree, in my honours research I sought to explore how using meditation to work with the mind might influence the physical, psychological and spiritual health of people suffering from a cancer diagnosis. In late 2009 I launched a revised and expanded version of this research as an eBook. This eBook ‘Threatened by Cancer?  Meditation DOES help!’ is available for purchase under ‘Things to Buy’ listed on the menu at the top of the home page.

The success of this research led me to my doctoral research at the University of Western Australia in which I took a broader look at how the meanings people made of cancer were influenced by professional mainstream biomedical, alternative natural healing, and holistic healing assumptions about illness and healing. Apart from analysing the contrasting assumptions around causes of illness, treatment and healing processes, I collaboratively researched  how these assumptions influenced research participants with a cancer diagnosis and led them to choices of startlingly different healing treatments and strategies. Copies of this research “Cancer as Bad Luck or Warning Symbol? Constructed Meanings of Illness and Health” are available for purchase under ‘Things to Buy’ listed in the menu at the top of the home page.

For my first eight years, my research interests were combined with working as a counsellor and group facilitator for a wide range of people touched directly, or indirectly, by cancer. In 1994 I set up in private practice and have now run my private practice in three different urban and rural locations. For the last two years, many of my clients and supervisees have overcome the tyranny of distance (caused by moving from West to Eastern Australia) by predominantly working with me via telephone consultations.

Following the immersion in the world of cancer near the start of my therapeutic career, my focus changed to working as a counsellor with people suffering from mental illness and more generalised problems of living. I combined counselling and supervisory roles in a State-run rural community mental health team with a private psychotherapy practice. During this ten year period I continued my prime research question of “what promotes suffering and what promotes wellbeing”? I also noticed the similarities between what was helpful for people presenting with a life-threatening physical illness and what was helpful for those suffering from such mental blights as depression, mania, anxiety, trauma, obsessions, relationship conflict and breakdown, loss of direction, anger, stress and eating disorders.