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.
Persistent pain often brings stress, poor sleep and strain at home or work. A first psychotherapy conversation can start from wherever you are.
Pain that lingers for months rarely stays physical alone. It can shorten your temper, interrupt sleep, make work harder and leave you withdrawing from people you care about. You do not need a neat account of all of this before seeking psychological support; it is enough to know that something has become difficult.
An opening session often starts with what feels hardest right now, how long it has been going on and what you would like to be different. Sleep patterns, relationships, work demands and any support you have had before can help map out a starting point. Dr Christine Shen, Acupuncturist, also holds qualifications in psychotherapy, and offers this kind of conversation as a separate service from her acupuncture work.
You can ask how goals will be agreed and how you will both check whether the work is useful. Ask what confidentiality covers and where its limits sit. There is no set number of sessions that applies to everyone, and the name of a method on its own will not tell you whether it suits you. Fit becomes clearer as you talk.
For someone managing pain, priorities might include coping with frustration on bad days, talking with family about limits or worrying less about flare-ups. You can say what you want to understand, what feels hard to shift and how you might notice progress. It is reasonable to ask Christine when you will look back at the direction together, and who to contact if things shift between appointments. If your pain itself has not been assessed, keep your GP involved alongside this work.
You can book psychotherapy sessions with Christine at the Freshwater clinic on the Northern Beaches. If speaking about personal matters feels daunting, jotting down two or three points beforehand can make the first few minutes easier, and you can decide how much to share.
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