Lisa Mackinnon, AASW

Lisa Mackinnon is an Accredited Social Worker (AASW) based in Melbourne, Australia, with 17 years of experience working as a counsellor. She supports people navigating stress, anxiety, depression, anger, grief and the lasting impacts of trauma, helping them understand how these experiences affect daily life and relationships.

With additional training in family therapy, she works with stresses that arise within significant relationships, including parenting challenges, separations and caregiving roles. Her practice is grounded in a supportive, validating stance that responds to each person’s unique situation and what feels right for them.

Lisa works collaboratively to identify strengths, practical solutions and ways forward that reduce distress and create new pathways. Her sessions draw on practical tools and techniques informed by contemporary understandings of how the brain and body respond to stress and emotional pain, and she integrates body-focused methods where appropriate.

She has extensive experience addressing the effects of trauma and aims to do so in a safe, supported manner. Lisa is also trained in Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), also known as tapping, a mind-body technique used alongside counselling to help with emotional distress and trauma responses.

She listens without judgement and supports people to move through depression, anxiety, trauma responses, grief and anger, helping them make sense of their struggles, clarify choices and reconnect with what they want from life.

Therapeutic approaches and online counselling with Lisa Mackinnon

Lisa Mackinnon draws on client-centred therapy to place the person’s experience at the heart of the work, offering a respectful, empathic environment where someone’s values and goals guide the process; this approach helps with building understanding, self-compassion and clearer choices when facing anxiety, depression or relationship stress.

She also uses trauma-focused therapy to attend directly to the impacts of traumatic experiences, working in ways that aim to reduce trauma responses and support recovery from post-traumatic stress, panic and dissociation. In addition, somatic therapy techniques are used to explore how distress shows up in the body, offering practical, body-based strategies to complement talking therapies and help with symptoms such as intense anxiety or trauma-related arousal.

Finding the right approach is part of the therapy journey, and Lisa collaborates with each person to identify which methods fit their needs, goals and preferences. She tailors the plan over time, combining different techniques as appropriate to support progress.

Online therapy with Lisa is offered via video calls, phone sessions, live chat or text-based messaging, providing flexibility to engage in ways that suit a person’s schedule and comfort. These options make it easier to access consistent support from appropriately qualified or registered professionals without the need to travel, helping people maintain momentum even when life is busy or movement is limited.