About Us
I am a philosopher, seeker, outsider, author, educator, and a pioneer.
Driven by the four key questions in life; why am I here, who am I, what do I want and what do I fear. My life’s work has been about change and my passion to be authentic. A third-generation Armenian genocide survivor, with a background in clinical psychology and thirty years in management consulting, my life’s journey has led me on a psychological-spiritual journey seeking knowledge, understanding, and experience to heal myself and others. These journeys took me to Indian gurus, Filipino faith healers, Buddhist temples, Peruvian shamans, Sufi teachers, Jungian psychology, and alchemy. I needed to grapple with the dimensions of the psyche often avoided by cognitive psychology; what is unconscious. Essentially my quest was to explore what motivates and drives our hidden desires, passions and fears, and how conflict created from betrayals, emotional hurts, and personal traumas can be resolved.
My life experiences, combined with my formal and informal studies have led me to re-examine and re-imagine how to be in relationship with ourselves and with others. This brings into sharp focus the importance of considering the larger social-cultural-political constructs and their often hidden impacts on individuals and their relationships. I embraced a depth and liberation framework to look at what is hidden or unconscious in ourselves and our relationships, both as the source of our disturbance and also as the source of potential resolution, of transformation.
These understandings converged to be embodied into profound insights about the nature of Being and Being-in-Relationships. I coined the term “metapscyhotherapy” to describe the process I developed to see into areas beneath the surface of consciousness to explore difficult areas of relationships which goes beyond conventional psychology.
My epiphany is that all personal or interpersonal issues (not just extremes such as domestic violence) have roots firmly nested within larger social, cultural, and political constructs. It is through increasingly being conscious of ourselves, we can consciously be-in-relationship to ourselves, to others, to our families, and to the world we live in.
Only now in my journey am I able to offer these metapsychotherapeutic insights in service to others. I have chosen to do this by weaving them into the larger tapestry of the Transforming Relationship Program.
Thank you for joining me on the journey.
Caroline Shahbaz
MPsych; MA(Depth Liberation Psychology); MAPS
Program Creator and Facilitator
Our Team
I am a culture shifter, explorer, thinking partner, teacher and writer.
A descendant of Irish and British immigrants, my life’s journey has been shaped by ongoing growth and change. Coming from the most isolated city in the world (Perth, Western Australia), I ventured abroad early and lived and worked in Europe for over 15 years. Although I’ll always be a global citizen, I currently call Perth ‘home’.
We live in a time of shifting power dynamics at multiple levels which bring both opportunities as well as critical challenges to the connection we have with ourselves, our lovers, our families and our broader local and global communities. I’m committed to supporting people to thrive in an age of increasing complexity and change. Core to this is deepening our relational awareness so as to catalyse transformation that enables authentic connection and (hopefully) a more loving and harmonious world for everyone.
I’m driven by a long-running desire to understand how people connect, love and relate, supporting them to look within so as to build and nurture enduring and transformative relationships.
I have spent my life combining my formal and informal studies to cultivate a deeper awareness of the evolving nature of human relationships amidst the backdrop of a ‘noisy,’ information-saturated and increasingly uncertain world. I work on that pointy end of increasing complexity, change, and leadership. I do this by partnering with my clients to work systemically to build resilience, self-awareness which leads to cultures able to perform and bring about positive transformative change in the face of increasingly complex career, business and global challenges.
My passion is to facilitate meaningful processes for individuals, teams and organisations to explore and understand the critical elements of cultural, behaviour, relationships and change. My career spans working with leaders internationally in a range of industries including professional services, government, media, arts management and financial services.
I bring my knowledge and expertise through my coaching to support individuals, leaders and communities to go within, to deepen their awareness about their desires, needs and wants, as well as the systemic (familial, socio-cultural, neurobiological) influences that impact how we connect, love and relate.
What is central to my practice and philosophy is how people connect, and how they interact; their relationship to themselves, to each other to their organizations and more largely to their communities. This is at the core of my practice: practical, systemic and embodied.
I look forward to taking this journey with you.
Bridget Blackford
BA(hons) MSc
Facilitator
What is MetaPsychotherapy?
Accepted practices in evidence based psychotherapy have their advantages and their challenges. However, current psychotherapeutic practices and theories are individual centric and often ignore social, economic, cultural, and familial intersections and influences. Evidence based psychotherapy is rooted in cognitive behaviour and often ignores the unconscious, depth psychological aspects impinging on the deeper causes for behaviours.
MetaPsychotherapy goes beyond current psychotherapeutic practices and theories to incorporate depth-psychological principles in order to look at what is hidden, unconscious, and beneath the surface in us. It does this by examining the individual within the context of their unique biological, neurological, psychological, economic, sociocultural, familial, and intergenerational intersections. From there MetaPsychotherapy uses a trauma-informed neuro-psycho-biological framework to evaluate and change their perspective on being human.
More fundamentally, MetaPsychotherapy draws on transformational practices that have been known across cultures and time, rooted in transformative alchemical principles. Change is hard because we are neuropsychologically hardwired to resist change and maintain predictable patterns of being. Alchemists have long understood how to deal with resistance to change by creating tools to navigate the more challenging and dark aspects of existence, such as: life, death and rebirth. MetaPsychotherapy translates arcane principles of alchemical transformation into a practical process for generating real change in today’s world.
Transforming Relationships is one piece of our overall business, MetaPsycotherapy.