Dave is an Australian-trained and registered integrative counsellor specializing in cross-cultural environments, depression, anxiety, addiction, trauma, grief, and overall mental wellbeing. His lived experience shapes his approach and strong belief that every person has the capacity to rediscover hope, make meaning of the past, and move toward emotional stability, healing, and recovery.

Before becoming a therapist, he spent more than twenty years working in the corporate and non-profit sectors and has called Japan home for over a decade. Since 2019, he has worked with children and adolescents, while supporting people through moments of acute distress, including suicidal thoughts, abuse, and crisis situations. His research and clinical practice focus on helping people explore challenges with self-esteem, boundaries, dependency, and balance – deep issues often rooted in childhood. These struggles often show up as depression, anxiety, anger, control, or difficulties in relationship with others. By working through these, he hopes to help people lessen the pull of obsessive or compulsive behaviors, whether related to substance, love, co-dependency, or other self-defeating patterns, while developing healthier, more sustainable ways of coping.

Dave works from a collaborative, client-centered, and trauma-informed perspective, tailoring therapy to each person’s needs. He offers a safe, non-judgmental space for people to share their story, honoring how age, gender, sexuality, and cultural background can shape identity, resilience, and healing pathways.

He draws on a range of approaches, including:

• Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT)
• Attachment Therapy
• Client-centered Rogerian Therapy
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
• Gottman Method Couple Therapy (Level I/II)
• Pia Mellody’s Post Induction Group Therapy
• Mindfulness-based Therapy (MBT)
• Motivational Interviewing (MI)
• Narrative Exposure Therapy
• Narrative Therapy
• Peer support models, including 12-step and harm minimization
• QPR Suicide Prevention framework
• Solutions-focused Therapy

Dave is an accredited member of PACFA and JTA and holds undergraduate qualifications in International Studies and Japanese, with postgraduate qualifications in Psychology and a Master of Counseling. He remains committed to ethical practice, continued professional development and regular supervision while supporting people from all walks of life to rediscover hope, navigate life’s challenges, and move toward healing, recovery, and lasting emotional wellbeing