Josh Wasniewski

Josh works with adults experiencing anxiety, emotional reactivity, self-criticism, relationship difficulties, low mood, and patterns that can feel difficult to shift through insight alone.
Many of the people Josh works with have spent a long time trying to understand themselves intellectually. They may know why they react the way they do, but still find themselves caught in overthinking, shutdown, people-pleasing, jealousy, anger, emotional numbness, or repeating relationship difficulties. Therapy with Josh is often suited to people who want to understand themselves more deeply, while also working with how these difficulties are experienced emotionally, physically, and relationally in the present.

Josh’s approach is relational, attachment-informed, trauma-informed, and somatically oriented. Alongside conversation and reflection, he pays close attention to what happens in the body and nervous system during emotional stress. This might include noticing tension, bracing, disconnection, shutdown, numbness, or protective responses that emerge automatically. The aim is not simply to analyse these responses, but to slow them down enough that they can be experienced differently over time.

Josh draws from Somatic Experiencing, attachment theory, developmental psychology, and contemporary research on stress, emotion regulation, and the nervous system. His work is influenced by relational understandings of distress, particularly how earlier experiences can shape emotional regulation, self-perception, and the way people relate to others in adulthood.

His style is steady and collaborative, with attention to both emotional safety and honest exploration. His work may be especially relevant for people who may appear to be functioning well externally, but internally experience anxiety, emotional reactivity, self-pressure, disconnection, or difficulty feeling settled in themselves and in relationships.
Josh works with adults seeking longer-term psychotherapy, as well as clients wanting support through anxiety, grief, transition, burnout, relationship stress, or emotional difficulty.
Josh holds a Master of Counselling from Deakin University and is a Certified Practising Member of PACFA. Sessions are available in person at Hartington Centre in Northcote and online.