Claudia has completed her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with first-class Honours at the University of Western Australia in Perth Australia, and then completed her Masters in Clinical Psychology at the National University of Singapore. Claudia has both volunteered and worked at Lifeline in Australia for three years, offering crisis support to people experiencing very challenging times. She has further provided psychological services at NUH, CHPC (NUS Clinical and Health Psychology Centre), and two private clinics in Singapore, before joining Psychology Blossom. Claudia believes in advancing her professional training to keep up with the most current research and therapy trends, therefore she regularly attends training courses and has regular supervision in the areas she specialises in. Claudia is a member of the Singapore Psychological Society.
Claudia is professionally trained in multiple psychological approaches: Schema Therapy, Gottman Method Couple Method, Schema Therapy for Couples, Family Therapy, Acceptance Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavioural Therapy, Mindfulness, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Psychodynamic Therapy, and Compassion Focused Therapy.
Claudia has two main specialisations: couple therapy and personality disorders.
Claudia is passionate about helping couples improve their relationship, by using the most efficient approaches that are supported by research. Her couple therapy sessions are very structured and her clients have a say in both the treatment plan that is customised to each couple, and also in the agenda that is set for each session. Claudia draws her therapeutic tools and skills from the Gottman Method Couple Therapy, and from the Schema Therapy for Couples when helpful. Claudia completed Levels 1, 2, and 3 of training in the Gottman Method Couple Therapy, and a training module for Schema Couple Therapy. She attends regular peer supervision sessions with other couple therapists. She is a romantic at heart and believes that with help and motivation, every couple can improve and rekindle their relationship.
Claudia is also passionate about helping individual clients who struggle with patterns that impact their functioning and their ability to choose and maintain healthy relationships and lifestyles. Her focus is not on diagnosing disorders, but instead she focuses on customising a treatment plan and bringing about awareness in a gentle and non-judgmental way, helping her clients feel safe and understood. Only with awareness can we change the patterns that we implicitly learnt as children. Usually these patterns have roots in our childhood, when we view the world through the eyes of a child. By using experiential work, Claudia helps her clients experience corrective experiences, whereby childhood memories and interpretations are processed and re-evaluated from an adult perspective. To do this, Claudia has an eclectic approach. While she draws mainly from Schema Therapy, she further incorporates techniques from other approaches, such as Acceptance Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavioural Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Mindfulness, Gottman Method Couple Therapy, and Psychodynamic Therapy.
Claudia’s clients come to therapy with a variety of presentations, such as marriage problems, relationship problems, family challenges, childhood trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety disorders (eg. social anxiety, health anxiety, panic attacks and disorders, specific phobias), mood disorders (eg. depression, bipolar disorder, adjustment disorder, pre- and post-natal depression, premenstrual dysphoric disorder), anger management challenges, stress challenges (ie. feeling overwhelmed: work burnout, parenting, relationship or marital pressure/stress), addictions, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), perfectionism, personality disorders: narcissistic personality disorder, obsessive compulsive personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, etc.
Claudia is Australian and has lived in NSW, QLD, and WA. She was born in Romania and she has a close affinity with Australia and Europe, where she visits once a year. Claudia has three children and her husband is Scottish. She can provide therapy in English, French, Romanian, and Italian.