The Lane Cove rooms are at 2 Austin Street, directly opposite the Lane Cove Library and a few metres from Longueville Road. If you are coming from the village it is a walk of two or three minutes, and the parking behind the library is the easiest option in the middle of the day.
Lane Cove sends a particular mix of problems through the door. There are the desk-and-commute necks and low backs from St Leonards and the city, the shoulders and elbows of a suburb that plays a lot of tennis, and the knees and Achilles tendons that come with living on a hillside — the stairs down to Tambourine Bay and the streets off Burns Bay Road are their own kind of training load. Lane Cove also has a lot of people in their thirties and forties carrying small children, which is its own demand on a back.
A first appointment is mostly questions and movement testing: where the pain is, what makes it worse, what it stops you doing, and how it has behaved over weeks rather than days. From there you should leave knowing what is proposed, roughly how long it is expected to take, and what would mean changing the plan.
Worth bringing: any imaging or specialist letters you already have, a list of medications, and the shoes you actually walk or train in. If the pain is new and severe, follows a significant fall, or comes with numbness, weakness, fever or any change in bladder or bowel control, see a doctor first — that is a medical assessment, not a treatment question.
The nearest alternative if Lane Cove does not suit you is the Freshwater side, about 14 kilometres away across the Spit.
CBT, DBT and ACT are often mentioned in conversations about pain and mood. You do not need to master the acronyms before asking for support.
If you live with long-term pain, you may have heard therapy acronyms from a GP, a pain clinic or a friend. CBT, DBT and ACT are handy shorthand for practitioners, but they can feel like a foreign language to everyone else. Thankfully, nobody expects you to decode them before reaching out. The place to begin is whatever has been weighing on you most.
Perhaps pain flares leave you anxious about the next one. Maybe frustration spills into arguments at home, or you have stopped doing things you used to enjoy. Describing those experiences in your own words is a better place to begin than choosing a method because its initials sound familiar.
With her psychotherapy qualifications, Dr Christine Shen, Acupuncturist, can describe how a suggested approach would actually unfold in a typical session. Ask practical questions. Would you learn and practise particular skills? Would you spend time reflecting on experiences and patterns? Would there be small tasks to try between appointments? An explanation tied to your goals is more useful than a definition from a textbook.
Your priorities should guide the work. Some people hope to make sense of moments that feel overwhelming, others to pace their activities or to feel less isolated with their pain. Think about how you would notice change in daily life. Christine can tell you how regularly you will both step back to look at progress, and what to do if a hard week arrives between sessions. Keep your GP involved in managing the physical side of your pain.
People who come to the Freshwater clinic for psychotherapy are not expected to know the jargon. If a term comes up that you do not understand, asking what it means in practice is always a reasonable question, and it often leads to a clearer plan.
Copyright© 2002-2026 visuallink© SaaS - Web Hosted Solutions, Design and Maintenance by Visual Link IT Pty Ltd - Software Solutions
Please Login or Sign up to be able to comment