About

Denika Thomas-Witoko is a qualified counsellor and registered social worker specialising in creative, relationship-based therapy for women and young people.

Get in touch

 

I was born on Anaiwan Country (Armidale, NSW) where the rivers leap and dance through boulders and fall trustingly into the area’s iconic gorges. I still call Armidale home, but Dharawal Country (Illawarra) with its strong connection between ocean and mountain, has now become my beautiful second home.

I am a fully qualified counsellor and Mental Health Social Worker. I’m a registered provider with Medicare and can offer services to people with an NDIS plan. Some private health care plans will also cover sessions with me.

I have been working in this industry for over 17 years, in out-of-home care support for youth; foster care placement support; and womens health, including sexual assault, domestic and family violence and complex PTSD.

I spend my free time with my family doing outdoor activities, swimming, camping and being creative. I'm a mother to two children, who are constantly teaching me the importance of slowing down, giving myself over and loving unconditionally. I love that every day is different and that, through my relationship with my children, I have the opportunity to more deeply understand myself.

I've been making art since I was a teenager and find comfort in painting what I am unable to express with words. Exploring my world through the lens of colour, emotions and feeling has supported me to maintain an open heart and has been a way to stay connected to whatever life throws my way.

I've recently trained as a Transpersonal Art Therapist in order to bring all the benefits of working with creative expression into my work with clients. This way of working combines so well with the other approaches I use, such as narrative therapy, EMDR and mindfulness.

I believe that every individual holds within them knowledge about how to live the life that's best for them. I can support people to uncover this inner wisdom by providing a space and relationship which helps people to understand themselves, their experience and their emotions and learn how to navigate their world.

 Qualifications

  • Bachelor of Social Work - University of New England

  • Advanced Diploma of Transpersonal Art Therapy - College of Complimentary Medicine

  • Graduate Certificate in Grief, Loss and Trauma Counselling - Flinders University

  • Diploma of Community Services - TAFE

  • EMDR Level One and Level Two - Psychology Training

 

Experience

  • Manager of mental health team and senior social worker at Illawara Women’s Health Centre.

  • Sessional unit coordinator, lecturer and tutor and external supervisor at University of Wollongong.

  • Member of expert review panel on childhood sexual abuse for NSW Ministry of Health.

  • Youth Worker and Co-ordinator at Waminda, Exodus Foundation, Life Without Barriers and Armidale Youth Refuge.

“Denika embodies a rare mix of mainstream and alternative qualifications, extensive work experience in challenging fields and a sense of humour and humility that mean she is constantly reflecting and learning.”

- Rachel, colleague.

Ways of working

  • Art Therapy

    Art therapy is about expressing your experience through art-making to gain deeper understanding of yourself and make meaning from your experiences. This may include mapping your experience, dialoguing with aspects of yourself or bringing imagery from your unconscious mind into conscious awareness.

    Diving into a creative process can help to resolve issues, change or manage behaviour, heal from trauma and generally increase physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing.

    You do not need to create artistic masterpieces to benefit from art therapy! These tools are accessible to everyone, as we all have an innate human ability to use imagery and symbolism for our own healing.

  • Narrative Therapy

    Narrative therapy is a respectful, non-judgemental approach to engaging with your own experiences and trauma. You’ll have the opportunity to explore your story, including any traumatic experiences, and will be supported to move into a place where you are no longer impacted by the trauma; a place where the story becomes something that happened to you, not something that is you or defines you.

    The narrative therapy approach assumes that, even when you are struggling, you are the expert on your own life and have many internal resources, such as helpful beliefs, values and abilities. A narrative therapist will help you tap into these strengths and support you to write new stories and experience different outcomes.

  • Transpersonal Work

    Transpersonal Counselling includes and utilises everything that traditional counselling has to offer whilst going beyond it to explore the resources that can be accessed via different states of consciousness (via mindfulness, meditation, relaxation or guided visualisation for example). Transpersonal therapy provides a map and a space for you to explore the fullness of what is possible and create your own meaning.

    Whilst Transpersonal work can move beyond the personal to the spiritual, unconscious and archetypal domains, it also includes the personal as a valid and meaningful part of the whole. Talking, thinking, meaning-making, feeling and expressing emotions and creating strategies can all be a part of the process, which is always non-judgemental, client-led and full of curiosity.

  • EMDR

    EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences.

    The speed and consistent results achieved with EMDR therapy show that the mind can heal from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical trauma. Using bilateral stimulation EMDR activates the brain to fully process traumatic memories that may have become ‘stuck’, so when a trigger happens or a memory comes up you are able to engage with the memory without re-living the trauma. This in turn can allow you to release coping mechanisms that may not truly be helpful or supportive e.g. addiction, self-harm, avoidance etc.

  • EMDR Intensive

    • Intensive application of trauma-focused therapy seems to be well tolerated in patients with PTSD, enabling faster symptom reduction with similar, or even better, results, while reducing the risk that patients drop out prematurely. Learn more here and here.

    • Intensive EMDR treatment is feasible and is indicative of reliable improvement in PTSD symptoms in a very short time frame. Learn more here.

    • An intensive program using EMDR therapy is a potentially safe and effective treatment alternative for complex PTSD. Learn more here.

    • The economy is compelling: even compared to other trauma therapy, the intensive format may decrease treatment time, because of time not spent on a) checking in at the beginning of each session, b) addressing current crises and concerns, c) focusing on stabilizing and coping skills that the client won’t need after trauma healing, or d) assisting the client in regaining composure at the end of the session. Learn more here.