Sonia Smuts is a senior clinical psychologist endorsed by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency in recognition of post-graduate specialisation in the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness, abnormal behaviour, and psychiatric difficulties. In addition to having qualified as a higher-education teacher, Sonia holds a Masters’ degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Pretoria in South Africa, where she trained in systemic interactional and psychodynamic (object relations) psychotherapy.

She is a founding member of the Australian Clinical Psychology Association (ACPA), and a member of the Institute of Clinical Psychologists (ICP), and has played an active role on various local and national committees that further the practicing standards of clinical psychology in Australia. Sonia has been a part-time contract faculty member for Edith Cowan University’s School of Psychology and Social Science; and has served on various committees for the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD).

Sonia is passionate about better service delivery for people with a history of complex trauma. She started the Perth Complex Trauma Mental Health Professionals Network (MHPN) in 2014, and founded the not-for-profit health-promotions charity, Complex Trauma WA (COTWA) a few years later. Both initiatives aimed to enhance service delivery for survivors, by expanding service providers’ awareness of and clinical expertise in the specific treatment implications of working with complex trauma; and to support cooperative and trauma-informed multi-disciplinary networks in Western Australia. Her most recent professional endeavour, The Jānus Nexus, presents trauma-specific workshops and webinars, as well as individual and group consultation and supervision to everyday mental-health clinicians who work with clients with a lived experience of complex trauma and dissociation.

Sonia supports the neuroscience of psychotherapy. At her private practice, she offers individual person-centred trauma-trained psychotherapy to adults based on the premises of attachment theory, body-oriented psychotherapy, and a psychodynamic model of mind. Sonia has completed Level 3 training in Deep Brain Reorienting, and has further post-graduate training in working with Disorders of Self (including borderline, narcissistic, and schizoid personality styles). She consults with individual adult clients who present with complex trauma and/or attachment trauma and is proficient in working with people who present with personality disorders or complex dissociative symptoms.

“I have tremendous empathy and respect for the many ingenious solutions that survivors have adopted, to try and deal with difficult life circumstances. One of my goals in working therapeutically is to not only alleviate the more obvious symptoms that clients present with, but also to help people to get some traction on having more of the kind of life they might like to have.”

Sonia consults with clients on Mondays and Thursdays at The Richardson Group. 

Her books are currently CLOSED for new referrals.