Dr Toula is a clinical and Jungian (spiritual/non-religious) psychologist working in schools, medical centres and private organisations on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. She’s been an integral member of high school administrative teams, as well as self-employed in private practice, for most of her career.
People are referred to Dr Toula with diagnosed mental and behavioural health conditions, including anxiety, depression, alcohol and substance abuse etc. To treat them effectively, she works on the spiritual and transcendent aspects of the person in conjunction with modern psychology methods. This is because research consistently shows that people with a spiritual or philosophical understanding of life do have better mental health. This finding aligns with Dr Toula’s lived experience of treating her own adolescent stress and trauma (known as her adolescent shadow) that significantly affected her as an adult.
The Rise of Jung in Me is Dr Toula’s second book and her origin story. She writes about how she became more conscious of her unconscious adolescent patterns as an adult, and how she now treats adolescent mental/behavioural health in youth and their adult carers through STORIES & IMAGES. Her teaching and counselling method is called Story Image Therapy (SIT®), and its spin-offs SIT Education and SIT Shadow Work™, are grounded in research, are evidence-based, and have been continually refined and improved over the past fourteen years. The Rise of Jung in Me also includes six case studies as a practical demonstration of SIT Shadow Work™.
The Rise of Jung in Me and Dr Toula’s first book, Shadows of Sylvaheim, are SIT tools that Dr Toula uses in the SIT Solutions program and workshops for youth and their carers. Participants include ALL individuals: small groups, parents, professionals, even business owners and entrepreneurs, to heal their ‘adolescent wounds’ and be the best version of themselves they can.
Dr Toula Gordillo was born in Brisbane, Australia. She grew up travelling the country with a nature-loving father narrating stories, songs and poetry, and a mother who taught her music and distance education. The family eventually settled on the Great Dividing Range: a city called Toowoomba. Toula’s own life, in many ways, is as diverse as the protagonists in this book. Like Jack and Emily who also ‘lived’ west of the Range, Dr Gordillo followed a dream, escaping to an alternate reality through fantasy to cope with adversity during the teen years.
At seventeen, Toula and her mother moved to Katherine in the Northern Territory. Here, Toula attended Katherine State High School and was exposed to the storytelling method of the Territory’s First Nation’s population. In one of the most remote regions of Australia, living and working in a predominantly indigenous community, combined with her father’s passion for storytelling, Toula came to appreciate the value of using ancient ‘fantastical’ stories and images to pass on important information and knowledge.
As a young undergraduate psychology student, Toula was briefly introduced to the work of Carl Jung. Years later, studying a Doctor of Creative Arts (Creative Writing) at the University of the Sunshine Coast, she understood Jung’s premise. That is, conscious awareness of myth-based fantasy can not only help to explain ‘reality’, [1] but it is vital for health and healing.
Dr Gordillo witnessed the curative power of combining mythic fantasy with reality firsthand in her varied careers as a teacher, Guidance Officer Intensive Behaviour Support (GOIBS) and Acting Head of Student Services in some of the largest state high schools in Australia. Assigned to only the most difficult cases, principals called Toula ‘the pointy end of the stick’. For her, the ‘stick’ was a wand: a suite of fantasy-based stories and images that she used to transform young people’s lives.
Today, as a practicing Clinical psychologist and Jungian psychotherapist specialising in children and youth, Dr Gordillo continues to develop innovative ancient stories and images as part of her Universal Psychology and Story Image Therapy® (SIT) method. She has dedicated the rest of her life to helping to improve young people’s physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health through mythic fantasy. For more information, see Dr Toula Gordillo – Author – Clinical Psychologist
[1] As in one’s perception of reality, rather than reality as an absolute construct.
Published Articles, Interviews and Editorials
We’re now called Shadow Work Solutions, and our aim is to help you to better know, and understand, the unconscious part of you.
According to modern science, 95% of our brain’s activity is unconscious. Without a conscious awareness of the contents of our unconscious, it can have a significant impact on our daily thoughts, feelings and behaviours… sometimes with serious consequences.
The unconscious part of us is called our shadow, and by becoming more aware of our unconscious shadow self, according to the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Dr Carl Jung and the ancient Stoic philosophers, we can essentially change our fate! If you would like to know more, you are welcome to like and follow our Shadow Work Solutions
Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/ShadowWorkSolutions
Or the new Shadow Work Solutions Instagram account – https://www.instagram.com/shadow.work.solutions
On a more personal note, after fourteen years of working at Kawana Waters Medical Centre, I will soon be moving on. April 11th will be my last day. I will then be moving to Suncoast Health Centre where I have been offered a position as a clinical and Jungian (spiritual/non-religious) psychologist. Please note, this is a private billing practice, so there will be a modest gap fee of approximately $60 per 50 minute session if you have a current mental health plan.
If you would like to see me at Suncoast Health Centre, the address is 15 Grammar School Way, Forest Glen. The phone number is 5234 8033
Yours in peace and gratitude
Dr Toula