Ben Carter is an AHPRA registered psychologist. Ben has a strong passion for helping adults with their mental health and providing them with ways to improve their relationships with others, especially the relationships with their children and family. Ben is passionate about Attachment Theory and its use in sessions to focus on how parents can improve the emotional bond they have with their child, along with supporting their infant’s emotional health. Early in his psychology studies, Ben was fortunate enough to learn how to administer the Strange Situation Procedure Ainsworth et.al. (1978), which has helped him to better support parents to improve how they connect with their children.
Since completing his Master of Professional Psychology at Monash University, Ben has worked in Positive Education (Positive Psychology), in schools, NDIS, public mental health and across various areas of government.
Ben works with mums, dads, carers, couples and families. He has experience working with different cultures including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Ben particularly enjoys working with men and dads and, as a father himself, he brings a unique blend of evidence-based therapy along with his lived experience of being a dad and a husband.
Ben has extensive experience providing therapy for the following:
- Being/becoming a parent;
- Being a new parent with a pre-existing mental health condition or post-natal depression;
- Shifting belief from being a “perfect parent” to a “good enough” parent;
- Improving the emotional bond and relationship between adults and their child and/or partner;
- Processing challenges relating to conceiving;
- Infertility, support with fertility treatment and family planning;
- Processing birth trauma;
- Processing experiences of miscarriage or still birth;
- Processing historical or complex trauma;
- Adjustment difficulties;
- Relationship challenges;
- Depression;
- Anxiety;
- Grief;
- Making sense of, and understanding, neurodivergence for yourself and/or your child or family members;
- Personality disorders;
- Substance use; and
- Having thoughts of suicide, self-harm or thoughts of harming others.
Ben’s evidence-based approaches include:
- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT);
- Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT);
- Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Therapy (MBSR); and
- Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy (Level 2 trained).
Ben’s passion as a therapist is to help his clients understand why they behave or respond to certain situations in the way they do and help them to change this response and in doing so create more peace.
Outside of his clinical practice, Ben enjoys spending time with his wife and son and with his extended family and friends. He enjoys food, being in nature and is interested in all things sport, including umpiring football.
Ainsworth, M.D.S., Blehar, M.C., Waters, E. and Wall, S., 1978. Patterns of attachment: a psychological study of the strange situation. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
