I've spent over 25 years listening to women's stories.
And for most of that time, I could see what was missing.
I'm Maia - counsellor, trauma therapist, and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. I work exclusively with women and birthing parents navigating fertility, pregnancy, birth, and the aftermath of loss and trauma in the perinatal period.
The practice I've built exists because of what I witnessed working in a public hospital perinatal unit: women moving through one of the most significant transitions of their lives, carrying wounds that the healthcare system never acknowledged, let alone helped them heal. Women who were dismissed, minimised, or told they should be grateful when their baby was safe. Women whose grief had no name, and no real space to exist.
I wanted to offer something different.
ABOUT MAIA
What I kept seeing — and what led me here
After years of frontline perinatal social work - supporting thousands of women through fertility challenges, birth complications, NICU admissions, pregnancy loss, and the early months of motherhood - one thing kept becoming clear to me.
The body was always part of the story. The visceral, hormonal, physical experience of fertility, pregnancy, birth, and early motherhood influenced everything - a woman's mental health, her sense of self, her relationships, her capacity to mother. And yet it was almost never part of the therapeutic response she was offered.
Most mental health approaches were working from the top down - thoughts, behaviours, cognition.But these approaches didn't always work. There was something missing.. They were struggling because something was held in their nervous system, in their body, that talking alone couldn't reach.
That understanding is what led me to Somatic Experiencing®. Finally I had a clinical framework that matched what I'd been witnessing for decades, that was grounded in neuroscience and offered the hope and relief my clients were looking for.
HOW I WORK
My approach is integrative - which means I draw on a range of evidence-based modalities depending on what you need and where you are.
But everything is grounded in one foundational understanding: healing that doesn't include the body is incomplete.
In practice, that means:
01
We move at the pace of your nervous system - not a fixed agenda.
Safety and stabilisation come first. Building your capacity to tolerate and work with what you're carrying, before moving toward processing and integration. This cannot be rushed, and I will not rush it.
02
You don't have to tell your whole story.
Taking a somatic approach works with what your body is holding in the present moment. You don't need to revisit or detail what happened to begin healing from it. Supporting you to become more embodied supports greater capacity to shift patterns, create more ease and to do the talk therapy if needed.
03
The work is genuinely integrated
Working from a foundation of relational, attachment-based practice informed by neuroscience and current trauma theory, I weave together somatic based approaches of SE and TCTSY with talk therapies. I integrate into this various approaches including Interpersonal Psychotherapy, parts work, compassion focussed therapy and contemporary grief approaches, drawing on practical tools from cognitive focussed therapies if needed. My response is always collaborative and unique to what you bring.
04
I see you as adaptive, not broken.
Everything your nervous system learned to do, it learned for a reason. My role is not to fix you. It is to walk alongside you as those responses are slowly, safely completed - supporting integration and transformation to emerge.
SESSIONS
Session Fees
I offer sessions face to face on the Gold Coast and online Australia-wide.
60 min
$155
Face to face or online
75 min
$90
Face to face or online
90 min
$225
Face to face or online
All new clients begin with a free 15-20 minute intake call - a chance to talk about what you're looking for and to see whether we're a good fit. There's no obligation to book after the call.
GOLD COAST & ONLINE
A practice built from the inside out
I came to this work with a long held passion for women’s health rights and experience as a social worker. Through my own experience of reproductive health challenges, loss, and transition to motherhood, my commitment has only strengthened and further shaped the depth of compassion I bring to this field.
I have spent over 25 years in community welfare, social work, and the perinatal field. For many of those years I worked in a public hospital perinatal unit, supporting women through some of the most difficult experiences imaginable - unexpected diagnoses, traumatic births, NICU admissions, stillbirth, pregnancy loss, and the complex grief that follows.
What I witnessed there never left me. And it drove me, over the years that followed, to pursue further postgraduate qualifications, specialist training, and eventually the three-year Somatic Experiencing Practitioner programme that allowed me to build the practice I had always wanted to offer.
I believe this work matters beyond the individual. Every woman who heals, who reclaims her sense of safety and empowerment, influences how she moves through the world, how she parents, and in some small way, how the systems around her are pushed to change.
QUALIFICATIONS & TRAINING
Professional Background
TRAUMA THERAPY
Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP)
Somatic Experiencing International — three-year practitioner training
PRENATAL MENTAL HEALTH
Postgraduate Certificate: Applied Mental Health
Perinatal & Infant Mental Health
GRIEF & BEREAVEMENT
Postgraduate Certificate: Bereavement Counselling & Intervention
SOCIAL WORK
TCTSY Facilitator
Trauma Centre Trauma Sensitive Yoga — Centre for Trauma and Embodiment, Massachusetts
BODY-BASED THERAPY
Bachelor of Social Work, First Class Honours
University of Queensland, 2006 — University Medal
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS & ACCREDITATIONS
RECOGNITION
Red Nose Hero Award
Awarded for outstanding support to bereaved families
2008
Academic University Medal
University of Queensland — Bachelor of Social Work, First Class Honours
2006
IN THEIR WORDS
READY TO BEGIN?
Ready to take the first step?
The intake call is free, and it's simply a conversation. No pressure, no commitment - just a chance to talk about where you are and whether I might be the right person to walk alongside you.
Or reach out directly: maia@maiaanin.com.au