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Psychodynamic therapy for anxiety, worry and panic with a Melbourne-based registered psychologist. Sessions online, weekday mornings AEST.
Sometimes anxiety announces itself. A racing heart, a tight chest, the sudden certainty that something terrible is about to happen.
For others, anxiety might be less obvious. It could look like rehearsing a conversation four times before having it. Like being the person who thinks of everything, so nothing goes wrong, like a mind that won’t switch off at 11 pm, or a body that never quite relaxes, even on a good day.
Plenty of people live with anxiety for years without ever calling it that — they may just think of themselves as someone who worries, or someone who likes things done properly, or someone who finds it hard to relax.
Therapy is a space to understand both things: how anxiety is affecting your life right now, and what might be going on underneath it.
Anxiety takes many forms, and longstanding patterns of anxiety can become woven into how you understand yourself, sometimes making them difficult to distinguish from personality. You might recognise some of the following:
Anxiety is common and treatable, and it often becomes more manageable when it is understood rather than addressed only at the level of symptoms.
Many people who seek support for anxiety have already tried a range of strategies, such as breathing exercises, mindfulness, apps, exercise, or lifestyle changes. These approaches can be helpful, and for many people they are an important part of ongoing management. However, anxiety can continue to persist despite best efforts. In those situations, therapy can provide space to explore the patterns, experiences, and underlying factors that may be contributing to anxiety.
Alicia works with people experiencing anxiety in many forms, from persistent worry and overthinking to panic attacks and periods of feeling overwhelmed.
Anxiety can present in many different ways, and no two people experience it in exactly the same way. The descriptions below reflect some common patterns, but they are not intended to capture the full complexity of your individual experience. Alicia’s approach focuses on understanding the person behind the anxiety, including the experiences, relationships, and patterns that may have shaped how anxiety appears in your life.
These descriptions are intended to support reflection and understanding, rather than to provide a complete explanation of your experience.
Generalised anxiety often involves worry that does not settle on one particular concern. It can move between different areas of life — work, health, finances, relationships, or past conversations — with one concern often replaced by another. Many people describe a persistent sense that something could go wrong, along with difficulty switching off even during times when life feels relatively settled.
People seeking support for generalised anxiety disorder often describe the exhaustion of carrying this ongoing mental load. It is not always dramatic or obvious to others; instead, it can quietly consume attention, energy, and emotional capacity over time.
Social anxiety often involves intense self-consciousness around other people, with fears of criticism, rejection, or doing something embarrassing. You may find yourself replaying conversations afterwards, analysing what you said or did, or searching for signs that you made a mistake. For some people, this leads to avoiding social situations altogether; for others, it means pushing through while feeling highly anxious and emotionally drained afterwards.
What makes social anxiety particularly painful is that it is rarely about not wanting connection. Many people experiencing social anxiety deeply value relationships and belonging — the anxiety often feels so intense because these things matter so much.
OCD can involve intrusive thoughts, fears, or urges that feel distressing or difficult to control, along with behaviours or mental rituals used to manage the anxiety they create. These patterns can become time-consuming and exhausting, particularly when they begin to interfere with daily life, relationships, or a sense of freedom and choice. Therapy provides a space to understand these patterns, explore what they may represent, and develop a different relationship with the thoughts and fears that arise.
Panic attacks can arrive suddenly and intensely, with physical sensations such as a pounding heart, breathlessness, dizziness, trembling, or a sense of unreality. For many people, the experience is accompanied by a frightening fear that something is seriously wrong, that they may lose control, or that they are in danger.
Panic attacks can be deeply distressing, particularly when the experience feels unpredictable or difficult to understand. Many people who seek support from a panic attacks psychologist are not only trying to manage the attacks themselves, but also the fear of when the next one might occur. Over time, life can become increasingly organised around avoiding places, situations, or sensations associated with panic, and this avoidance can become as limiting as the panic itself.
Health anxiety often involves heightened attention to bodily sensations and a fear that they may indicate a serious illness. It can include frequent checking, repeated online searching, seeking reassurance from doctors or loved ones, or sometimes avoiding medical appointments because of fears about what might be found.
The cycle can be difficult to break because reassurance often provides relief, but the relief may not last. The search for certainty can become the focus, even though it is rarely possible to eliminate all uncertainty about health completely.
Anxiety and depression often occur together, with each having the potential to intensify the other. Living with ongoing anxiety can be exhausting, and over time this strain may contribute to withdrawal, low mood, reduced motivation, or a sense of hopelessness.
When anxiety and depression overlap, it can be helpful to understand how they interact rather than viewing them as separate problems to address one at a time. Therapy can provide space to explore both the distress you are experiencing now and the patterns or experiences that may be contributing to it.
Read More About Depression Treatment
Over time, anxiety can begin to shape decisions in ways that are easy to overlook — the opportunity not taken, the conversation avoided, the plan cancelled at the last minute, or the standard set impossibly high. It can affect sleep, concentration, work, relationships, and your ability to feel present in daily life. Much of what anxiety involves is not visible from the outside, which is one reason some people carry it for a long time before seeking support.
The reasons anxiety develops are different for everyone, and some of the patterns that contribute to it may sit outside immediate awareness. Anxiety is not always something that can be understood simply by looking at the thoughts we notice in the moment; it can also be shaped by past experiences, relationships, and expectations that continue to influence how we respond.
Influences that often come into view over the course of therapy include:
Exploring these influences is not about finding a single explanation for anxiety, but about developing a richer understanding of how it has developed and what may help it shift.
People seek support for anxiety at different stages. Some come to therapy when anxiety has become overwhelming or difficult to manage, while others reach out when they start to notice patterns they would like to understand or change. Whether anxiety has recently become more intense or has been present for a long time, what matters is the impact it is having on your life and whether support may be helpful.
It may be worth speaking to a psychologist if anxiety is:
Becoming used to anxiety does not necessarily mean it is no longer affecting you. Some people seek support because they feel overwhelmed by anxiety, while others do so because they recognise the ongoing effort involved in managing it. Therapy can provide space to understand these experiences and explore different ways of responding.
Alicia Shevlin (she/her) is a registered psychologist and clinical psychology registrar, based in Melbourne and working with adults across Australia via telehealth. She holds a Master of Applied Psychology (Clinical Psychology) from Victoria University, where her training took an integrative approach spanning both cognitive behavioural and psychodynamic traditions. In her current practice, she works psychodynamically.
Alicia has worked in mental health since 2016, beginning in the domestic and family violence sector and going on to work across community, university and public health settings before entering private practice. Mood and anxiety disorders are among her core areas of practice. She works with adults aged 18 and over, and with people of all genders, sexual orientations and sex characteristics.
AHPRA registration: PSY0002275993
Member: Australian Psychological Society
Every course of therapy is different, and Alicia works in a non-directive way, allowing the focus of therapy to emerge from your experiences and what feels most important to explore. Rather than following a predetermined programme, sessions involve thinking together about your anxiety and how it operates in your life.
Therapeutic work with anxiety may involve:
These are possible areas of exploration rather than a fixed process. Therapy is shaped by your history, needs, and the things that feel meaningful to explore together.
Alicia has training in a range of evidence-based approaches, including forms of cognitive behavioural therapy such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). In her current practice, Alicia focuses exclusively on providing psychodynamic therapy, an approach that reflects her clinical interests and the way she believes many forms of psychological distress can be meaningfully explored.
Applied to anxiety, this means looking beyond anxious thoughts alone to explore the emotional patterns, relational experiences, and ways of responding that may shape how anxiety is experienced. Psychodynamic therapy considers how earlier experiences can continue to influence present-day responses, including in ways that are not always immediately obvious. The therapeutic relationship itself also provides an opportunity to notice and explore these patterns as they emerge.
This tends to be a good fit for people whose anxiety is longstanding, or who have already tried other approaches and found that something was still missing. Understanding why the anxiety is there — rather than only managing it once it arrives — is what psychodynamic work considers, with the goal of sustainable long-term change.
Alicia also works in a non-pathologising way. Although she is trained to diagnose mental illnesses and will do so where it’s genuinely useful, she places less emphasis on labels and more on understanding your particular circumstances, including how relationships, life context, work, class, sexuality and broader social pressures contribute to anxiety. Anxiety is rarely just an individual problem.
Alicia works with individuals and does not provide couples therapy. Sessions are for therapeutic support and are not conducted for medico-legal purposes such as court reports.
Alicia is Melbourne-based and works entirely via telehealth, with sessions held over Zoom. For some people experiencing anxiety, telehealth can make accessing therapy more practical and manageable.
Online anxiety therapy can be particularly helpful for people living in regional or remote areas, those with busy schedules, or those who find attending appointments in person difficult to arrange. Telehealth can remove practical barriers such as travel time, parking, and attending a clinic, which can make consistent attendance easier for some people. It also allows some people to access therapy from a private and comfortable environment that supports them to engage openly in the work.
Telehealth is not the right fit for everyone, and the most suitable format depends on your circumstances, preferences, and therapeutic needs. Some people find online sessions work well for them, while others may prefer the structure of attending in person. If you are unsure whether telehealth would be suitable for you, this is something you can discuss with Alicia during the free 15-minute phone call.
Practically, you will need a private space where you will not be overheard, a stable internet connection, and a device with a camera. Headphones can help with privacy.
Appointments are available on weekday mornings only, scheduled in Australian Eastern Standard Time (or AEDT during Victorian daylight saving), both before and after 9:00 am AEST.
Service area: Given the session times, treatment for anxiety with Alicia is typically most suitable for people in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, the ACT and the Northern Territory.
Whether you’re looking for an anxiety therapist in Victoria, an anxiety psychologist offering telehealth from Melbourne, or online therapy for anxiety anywhere in eastern and central Australia, sessions are available within those time zones.
Alicia works with anxiety in its various forms, including generalised anxiety and persistent worry, social anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic attacks and panic disorder, health anxiety, and anxiety occurring alongside depression, trauma, grief, workplace stress or relationship difficulties. She works with anxiety whether or not you have a formal diagnosis.
Psychodynamic therapy for anxiety explores what sits underneath the anxious thoughts — the emotional patterns, relational dynamics and unconscious processes that generate them. Rather than focusing only on managing symptoms as they arise, it looks at how earlier experiences and relationships shaped the anxiety, with the aim of change that lasts
CBT typically focuses on identifying and changing unhelpful thought patterns and behaviours, often using structured exercises between sessions. Psychodynamic therapy explores the origins and meaning of anxiety, and pays close attention to relationships, including the therapeutic relationship itself. Neither approach is better in general; they suit different people and different goals. Alicia provides psychodynamic therapy, which can be particularly useful when anxiety is longstanding or when other approaches have left something unaddressed.
Anxiety is a normal human response that serves an important purpose: it can help us to recognise potential threats, prepare for challenges, and respond to situations that matter to us. Eliminating anxiety is not possible, but difficulties can arise when anxiety becomes overwhelming and starts to interfere with the life you want to live. Therapy can help you understand the origins and meaning of your anxiety, while learning to develop a more manageable relationship with it.
The length of therapy varies from person to person and depends on factors such as what brings you to therapy, how long you have been experiencing anxiety, the experiences and patterns that may be contributing to it, and what you hope to explore. Alicia’s approach is suited to medium- to long-term therapy, where there is time to develop a deeper understanding of anxiety, the experiences that shape it, and the ways it affects your life.
Alicia generally suggests beginning with weekly or fortnightly sessions where possible, as this supports continuity and meaningful therapeutic work. Frequency can be discussed and adjusted over time if your needs and circumstances change.
No. You can book directly with Alicia without a referral or a Mental Health Treatment Plan. A referral from your GP or psychiatrist is only needed if you want to claim a Medicare rebate. Without one, sessions are privately billed. See current session fees.
Yes, with a valid Mental Health Treatment Plan and referral from your GP or psychiatrist. Anxiety is a common reason for referral. The session fee under the Medicare Better Access Program is $210, with a rebate of $101.55 per session paid to your nominated bank account by Services Australia, for up to 10 sessions per calendar year. Rebates are subject to eligibility requirements.
Enquiries are also welcome from clients accessing therapy through the Victorian Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS, formerly VOCAT), and from self-managed and plan-managed NDIS participants.
Anxiety can feel isolating, especially as difficult thoughts, feelings and sensations might not be obvious to others. Nevertheless, anxiety is a common reason why people seek therapy, and meaningful and effective support is available.
If you are considering whether therapy might be helpful, a free 15-minute phone call provides an opportunity to ask questions, share a little about what you are experiencing, and decide whether you would like to take the next step.
The information below outlines what therapy involves, how telehealth sessions work, and practical details regarding fees and Medicare rebates.
Learn about how a range of mental health issues can be treated with psychodynamic therapy.
Access therapy without leaving home. Learn what to expect from beginning telehealth therapy.
Medicare rebates available for eligible patients. A referral from your GP or psychiatrist is required.