Healing Trauma & Strengthening Relationships

Individual and Couples Therapist in Anglesea

More About Me

I’m a trauma and family therapist passionate about helping people reconnect with themselves and each other. My approach draws on systemic family therapy, schema therapy, and internal family systems (IFS), using evidence-based, experiential, and somatic processes to support real, lasting change.

My own journey of making sense of family dynamics and healing old wounds has shaped how I show up in this work. I know what it’s like to feel disconnected or unseen, and I’m deeply grateful to the therapists who helped me come home to myself.

I love supporting people to understand their stories, find their voice, and feel safe enough in their mind and body to live with more freedom and self-worth.

I believe everyone deserves to feel seen, heard, and deeply valued. This shows up in my work—I’m not an expert on you or an impartial observer looking in. I see myself as part of the system with you, committed to collaborating in a way that honors your choice, voice, and power.

Together, we’ll navigate your inner terrain with curiosity and care—supporting the emergence of self-leadership so you can move through life with more clarity, confidence, and connection.

Edward Stubbings, trauma-informed psychotherapist in Anglesea offering evidence-based relational, somatic, and systemic therapy for individuals and couples.
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Areas of Focus & Experience

  • Anxiety

  • Depression

  • Trauma and Complex PTSD

  • ADHD

  • Autism

  • Attachment Wounds

  • Sleeping Difficulties

  • Addiction and Impulsive Behaviours

  • Family and Intimate Relationships

  • Life and Parenting Transitions

  • Sexual Abuse

  • Stress and Burnout

  • Grief and Loss

  • Spiritual and Existential Concerns

A couple sitting outdoors during daytime, woman smiling and man thoughtful, symbolizing relational and attachment-based therapy in a natural setting with mountains and trees.

Working as a Couples Therapist

I absolutely love working with couples. Most of us grow up without clear guidance on how relationships actually work — who we’re drawn to, what to expect, or that they take ongoing care and effort.

What really interests me is how our early family experiences quietly shape the way we show up with our partners. The stories we grew up with, the roles we learned, and the patterns we inherited often influence how we connect, communicate, and sometimes get stuck.

It’s incredibly meaningful to witness couples begin to see their own part in the dance—not in a blaming way, but with curiosity and compassion. When partners start breaking out of old cycles, understanding each other more deeply, and reconnecting emotionally, it opens the door to real healing and a much more fulfilling and fun partnership.

Why Held By Water?

People often ask why my practice is called Held by Water, and I often answer differently, as there are many reasons and evolving meanings.

The most obvious is geographical; my practice is held near the ocean—a beautiful place where a lot of people love to take a post-therapy swim, sometimes to cleanse old stories they no longer need or to honor their integration in an embodied way.

The next is a nod to our physiology: we are, quite literally, made mostly of water.

But the most personal reason is that I’m drawn to water and the way it mirrors our emotional lives. The emotions we hold in our bodies move and shift just like water—fluid, powerful, and sometimes overwhelming.

Before becoming a psychotherapist, I worked as a swim teacher, supporting children—and often adults with water trauma, including many migrants and refugees—who hadn’t had the opportunity to feel comfortable in water.

I saw firsthand how our bodies move into protective states: tense shoulders, shallow breaths, and rigid limbs bracing against the unknown.

This time in my life paralleled my own healing journey in therapy, and this deepened my fascination with trauma and the meanings I found in water.

Learning to float often meant asking people to do something that felt deeply unsafe: to lean back, put their head under, and surrender to the water’s hold. It wasn’t just a physical challenge; it was an invitation to trust, to let go, and to find safety in a new way.

I carried these early lessons with me into my therapeutic work. Just as in the water, our nervous systems learn to brace against emotional pain — against memories, relationships, or parts of ourselves that feel too overwhelming to face alone.

Held by Water grew from this understanding. Water holds and moves; it shapes and adapts—as we do. It is both gentle and powerful, capable of carrying us if we allow ourselves to trust it. Our emotional experiences shape who we are, hold our memories, and invite us into deeper connection with ourselves and others.

I’ve seen how important it is to create a space where people feel safe—where we can learn to float.

To explore our inner worlds without judgment, to reconnect with parts of ourselves that have been pushed away, and to discover new ways of being.

Credentials & Training

I hold the following qualifications:

  • Bachelor of Arts

  • Graduate Diploma in Counselling

  • Graduate Diploma in Clinical Family Therapy

  • Master of Clinical Family Therapy (in progress) — The Bouverie Centre

I’ve also completed additional training in:

  • Acceptance Commitment Therapy

  • Internal Family Systems (IFS)

  • Meditation Teacher Accreditation

  • Schema Therapy

  • Gottmans Couples Therapy

  • Somatic approaches to trauma

  • Attachment and Relational therapies