About Doreen
Doreen Patenall is a counsellor with 25 years of professional experience in Australia. She focuses on helping people who are feeling overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, grief or the impacts of trauma. She creates a calm space where clients can speak freely and start to make small changes that matter.
Doreen uses straightforward language in sessions and encourages honest, practical conversation. She works collaboratively to identify what matters to each person, then helps them build steps they can try between meetings.
Background and approach
Many people come for help with panic, social anxiety or persistent worry and find clear strategies useful. Relationship concerns and communication problems are a frequent focus in her work. She supports people navigating separation, control issues, forgiveness and rebuilding trust in themselves.
Doreen also helps those facing big life transitions and end-of-life matters, guiding conversations about meaning, purpose and practical coping moves. Her approach draws on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and attachment-informed ideas to tackle unhelpful patterns and strengthen emotional regulation. She also uses client-centred and dialectical methods when they fit the persons needs.
Sessions are paced to suit each individual, with emphasis on small, achievable goals. Doreen offers empathy alongside clear, practical tools. She aims to help people reduce distress, improve day-to-day functioning and reconnect with things that matter.
If you want a steady, experienced counsellor to listen and work with you, she provides a supportive professional space to begin.
Online approaches that suit anxious and stressed clients
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people notice difficult thoughts and feelings without getting locked into them, then choose actions that match their values. It is useful for ongoing worry, avoidance and finding motivation. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on changing unhelpful thought patterns and behaviours by using practical exercises and small experiments between sessions; it often helps with panic, social anxiety and persistent worry. Attachment-Based ideas look at how early relationship patterns influence current reactions and help people create new ways of relating and regulating emotions.Finding the right blend of approaches is part of the work. The therapist will talk with each person about goals and preferences, then adapt methods to suit the situation. That collaborative process means techniques are chosen for what will be most useful in everyday life rather than as a fixed package.
Online therapy offers flexibility to fit sessions around work, family and travel. Video calls let people use visual cues and movement-based exercises, phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is low, and live chat or text-based messaging suit shorter check-ins or times when writing feels easier. These options make it simpler to maintain regular contact and try techniques between appointments, while accommodating different communication styles and schedules.
Questions people ask
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What credentials and location are listed?
Which languages are supported and can international clients be seen?
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Existential Therapy
- Jungian Therapy
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Somatic Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Systemic Therapy
- Experience
- 25 years
- Licensed
- Languages
- English
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