emily mcgurk
Senior Clinical Psychologist
BPsych, MPsych(Clinical)
Emily provides a safe space for clients to explore challenges, shift unhelpful patterns, and feel more like themselves.
Emily sees adults.
Emily has a special interest in parenting from an attachment framework, anxiety and depression, health issues, identity, as well as burnout and perfectionism.
Emily’s clinic day is Tuesday. Book online with Emily using the button below, or Contact Us if you are new to The Skill Collective or have not seen Emily before.
emily’s areas of interest
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Emily has extensive experience supporting families through difficult times including:
Adjusting to parenthood
The impact on parenting on relationships
Managing difficult child behaviours
Enhancing relationships with children and teens
Having difficult conversations
She uses an attachment framework to help parents understand and navigate their child’s developmental stages, and assists with building practical strategies for emotion regulation, communication and repair.
Emily has a great working knowledge of shifting parenting paradigms over the last decade and prioritises supporting parents to find a way through that fits families and their individual needs.
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Pregnancy and birth are such significant times in a family’s life. Emily takes a non-judgemental and supporting approach in helping individuals and families to navigate the changes that arise during this period:
Changes to routine and relationships
Impact on body image and self-esteem
Changes to mood
Changes to identity
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Emily helps individuals who find themselves stuck in unhelpful cycles of anxiety and depression to shift thinking patterns and behaviours in order to live a more fulfilling life.
She has a particular interest in supporting those experiencing panic and chronic worrying.
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With a keen interest in supporting those with burnout and perfectionism, Emily helps individuals to:
Explore how their expectations impact on wellbeing and performance
Set boundaries with themselves and others
Help them to make practical and sustainable changes so they can live in a way that is more aligned with their goals and values.
Her goal is to help individuals thrive in life and to become more resilient.
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Emily helps with health issues and adjustment(e.g. adjustment to diagnosis, health anxiety).
Emily has extensive experience working within a hospital system and recognises the impact of health issues on mental health, and the toll it can take on carers and family members.
Emily brings a compassionate approach to helping individuals adjust to health diagnoses and the resulting impact on psychological wellbeing.
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Emily recognises the wide-ranging impact that strain in relationships can have. She supports individuals in navigating more positive relationships, and assists with:
Issues of trust and infidelity
Relationship anxiety
Improving communication
Exploring ways to relate better
articles written by emily
about emily
Emily completed her Bachelor of Psychology (with a minor in Business) at Curtin University, and her Master of Applied Clinical Psychology at Murdoch University. She worked for many years in hospital settings and also with youth, supporting individuals with adjustment and improving wellbeing, mental health, and quality of life.
Emily’s therapeutic approach is one grounded in evidence-based research and informed by clinical experience. She draws on techniques from Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Schema Focused Therapy, Mindfulness, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy and has completed further training in Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing.
Emily runs her own independent practice and engages The Skill Collective to provide administrative and other business services to support her provision of assessment and treatment to clients.
As rewarding a role that parenting may be, parental burnout is very real - exhaustion, feeling detached from your children, being less effective as a parent, and feeling fed up with the parenting role. Learn what to do to bounce back and improve your relationship with your children.