Denis Hamilton

Denis Hamilton, Clinical Psychologist in Melbourne
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Denis Hamilton

(he/him)
“I believe that you are the expert in your own life. As a clinical psychologist, my role is to listen with curiosity and compassion, and attune to both your internal and external experiences. Together, we can work to make sense of your challenges, understand patterns that may be keeping you stuck, clarify your goals, develop helpful skills, and reconnect with the strengths and resources you already possess.”

AREAS OF EXPERIENCE

I work with adults aged 18 to 80 across a broad range of concerns. I commonly support people with:

  • Attachment wounds: Exploring how early relational patterns can shape trust, closeness, and emotional safety in adult life.
  • Developmental trauma: Working gently with the longer-term impacts of early trauma on identity, relationships, and emotional regulation.
  • Perfectionism, strong internal criticism, and difficulty making decisions: Helping people loosen harsh self-judgement, build self-trust, and move through indecision with greater clarity.
  • Interpersonal concerns: Supporting difficulties in communication, boundaries, conflict, and patterns that can arise in relationships with others.
  • Relationship difficulties and attachment concerns: Exploring recurring relationship patterns, fears of closeness or rejection, and difficulties maintaining secure connection.
  • Neurodivergence (Autism, ADHD): Providing neuro-affirming support around self-understanding, executive functioning, emotional wellbeing, and navigating daily life.
  • Trauma (including complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder): Supporting trauma recovery through approaches that prioritise safety, regulation, and compassionate processing.
  • Emotional and mood dysregulation: Helping people better understand intense emotional states and build skills for steadiness, reflection, and regulation.
  • Mood and anxiety disorders: Supporting presentations including Generalised Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, Phobias, Major Depressive Disorder, and Dysthymia with evidence-based care.
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD): Working with intrusive thoughts, compulsive behaviours, and the distress these patterns can create in everyday life.
  • Bipolar Disorder Types I and II, and Cyclothymia: Supporting insight, emotional stability, and coping in the context of fluctuating mood states.
  • Personality stressors (including Borderline Personality Disorder): Working with emotional sensitivity, relationship instability, identity strain, and distress tolerance in a validating therapeutic space.
  • Self-esteem concerns: Supporting people to understand and shift longstanding beliefs about worth, confidence, and self-acceptance.
  • Identity concerns and exploration: Making space for personal, cultural, and relational aspects of identity with curiosity, reflection, and care.
  • Values exploration: Helping people clarify what matters most to them and make choices that feel more aligned and meaningful.
  • Sleep issues: Supporting the emotional, behavioural, and stress-related factors that can affect sleep and restorative rest.
  • Procrastination: Exploring the emotional and cognitive factors behind avoidance, and building more workable patterns of action.
  • Family challenges: Working through conflict, boundaries, caregiving pressures, and complicated family dynamics with greater clarity and support.
  • Adjustment difficulties: Supporting people through periods of change, uncertainty, loss, or transition with practical and emotionally attuned care.

Background

I aim to offer a warm, accepting, and non-judgmental space where you feel safe to share your story. I place strong value on relational work and believe that the therapeutic relationship itself is central to creating lasting change. Within this collaborative process, we can explore your concerns while drawing on clinically informed approaches tailored to your goals. Over time, therapy can support meaningful change through deeper insight, practical skills, and greater integration of emotional and physiological experience.

I have worked in a variety of settings, such as public mental health, university counselling clinics, and private practice. My clients have included people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, including children, families, university students, working professionals, First Nations peoples, older persons, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

When not working, I love to read, write, and spend time in nature.

THERAPEUTIC APPROACHES

I use a range of therapeutic approaches to tailor the best therapeutic support and intervention for each individual. The approaches I commonly use in my therapeutic practice are:

  • Internal Family Systems (IFS) informed therapy: Drawing on Level 1 IFS training to help clients understand and compassionately relate to different parts of themselves, while building greater internal safety, self-leadership, and emotional healing.
  • Attachment and process-oriented therapy: Approaching therapy through an attachment-focused and process-oriented lens, helping clients mindfully cultivate a more stable, nurturing, and secure internal sense of attachment.
  • Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT): Exploring the links between thoughts, emotions, and behaviours, and working to shift patterns that may be keeping people stuck or distressed.
  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): Supporting people to respond to difficult thoughts and feelings with greater openness and flexibility, while making choices guided by their values.
  • Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) principles: Building practical skills in emotional regulation, distress tolerance, mindfulness, and interpersonal effectiveness.
  • Motivational Interviewing (MI): Helping people explore ambivalence, strengthen motivation, and move towards change in a way that feels collaborative and respectful.
  • Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT): Supporting the development of self-compassion, emotional warmth, and a less critical relationship with the self.
  • Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP): Using structured, evidence-based strategies to support people with OCD to gradually face feared situations and reduce compulsive responses.

QUALIFICATIONS

  • Master of Clinical Psychology
  • Graduate Diploma of Psychology
    (Advanced)
  • Bachelor of Fine Arts


PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIP

  • Registered Psychologist with Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA)
  • Member of the Australian Psychological Society (APS)