Coralie Ponsinet.

Compassionate. Decolonising. Feminist.

Coralie is an authentic and bubbly French-Australian human who made the decision to become a counsellor after her own lived experiences of mental and physical health struggles.

As a white French cis and heterosexual woman, Coralie is aware of her privileges and thus as part of her commitment as therapist and human, she challenges the status quo of the many systems of oppression that surround us (ableism, gender norms, racism, sexism, etc). She believes in reducing power imbalance in therapy and that clients are the only experts in their own lives.

Born in rural France, where none ever talked about mental health, Coralie began her adult life as a high-achieving corporate professional who believed the only approach to life’s problems was to “get on with it” and just find a way to keep going. Until she realised this didn’t actually work effectively or wholeheartedly and discovered that mental health is a real, normal, valid part of being a human. Coralie now walks the talk and values her physical, mental, emotional health.

Coralie relocated to Hobart from Melbourne in early 2024, where she worked for 3 years for an Employee Assistance Program (EAP), supporting organisations and their employees in industries including aged care, corporate and office-based organisations, health, wellbeing and social services, and funeral and cemetery operations. She has worked as a counsellor for over 2 years and is currently completing a Master of Social Work (Qualifying) at the University of Tasmania. 

She is the Australian representative for a French not-for-profit organisation that supports French migrants who experience domestic and family violence. Previous volunteer telephone support at Melbourne’s WIRE (Women's Information & Referral Exchange), exposed Coralie to a wide variety of incoming distress from women and LGBTQIA+ individuals, most often in relation to domestic and family violence, separation/divorce, and housing or financial stress. As a result, Coralie grew even more passionate about supporting folks to try to make sense of their situation, process, and support them to move through it and recover.

Coralie's lived experiences and journey of seeking and finding help have taught her a lot about the standards and values that she embodies: authenticity, vulnerability, human compassion, self compassion, and connection through these values. For this reason, Coralie meets people where they are at, whether they have seen therapists before or this is their first time talking to someone, whether they know what has helped them or not in the past or they feel that nothing will ever help them. She genuinely believes that none is broken beyond repair, regardless of what they have been thinking or feeling or what others have told them in the past. Coralie is here to help breakdown stigma, barriers and help connect you to your inner desires, truths and optimising your daily and thus longer term existence.

Her feminist approach does not mean that she only works nor cares about working with people who identify as womxn. Feminist therapy acknowledges that therapy should not solely focus on "mental health issues" but help to review how people’s context (social, cultural, environmental) has played a role in their presenting thoughts, feelings, behaviours and beliefs about the world and their place in the world. This includes structural, critical ecosystems and anti-oppression theories application.

Her approach to therapy is deeply compassion-focused. She strongly believes that people who come to therapy are already resilient but often don’t have a deep, felt, embodied sense of this. She uses the science and art of Compassion Focussed Therapy (CFT) to help clients identify and understand the ways and strategies they have developed to cope with what their lives have been like so far. She sees therapy as a kind of sounding board, helping clients to see their struggles from another viewpoint, and offering a place where they can deconstruct (and reconstruct) beliefs, stories, relationships, in order to empower them to live a life that is more aligned with their needs and desires.

You can read more about Coralie's working and volunteer history on LinkedIn.

Coralie has a particular interest in supporting adolescents and adults who:

• Have never been to therapy or have felt that previous therapy attempts did not work for them

• Identify as womxn, LGBTIQ+

• Have experienced gender-based violence

• Live with chronic pain and illness

• Have migrated to Australia or Tasmania from overseas or interstate