Integrative practice for parents, families & the complexity of real life
Katrina Gow
For parents who are doing everything right and still feeling stuck. A space to slow down, make sense of things, and find new ways forward.
Begin the conversationMost support around children is focused on the child. Yet the parent navigating all of it, the appointments, the advice, the worry, the exhaustion of not knowing what to try next, often carries that weight largely alone. That is where this work begins.
About Katrina
Katrina Gow is a counsellor and psychotherapist who works with parents and caregivers navigating some of the most demanding and complex seasons of family life.
Her focus is the parent. Drawing on a background that spans nursing, occupational health, shiatsu, and psychotherapy, Katrina brings a distinctively holistic and systems-informed perspective, one that recognises how stress, capacity, relationships, and environment all shape what is and isn't working for a family.
She is skilled at finding a different angle on a stuck problem, and at helping parents build a toolkit that goes beyond what their own experience has given them so far. She has particular knowledge of school attendance challenges, anxiety, and the intersection of child distress and parental burnout.
Katrina also writes regularly on parent wellbeing and capacity for the Victorian Parents Council, and currently serves as an advisor on a Deakin University research project focused on school attendance.
The approach
This is not a quick-fix service. The work is slow by design, because lasting change in family systems requires understanding what is actually happening, not just what is most visible. We take the time to find the real stuck point.
Drawing on somatic awareness, nervous system understanding, and more than thirty years of embodied practice, this work engages the whole person, not just the presenting problem. The body carries what the mind hasn't yet found words for.
We all arrive at parenting with a personalised toolkit, shaped by our own experience, temperament, and what we were shown. The children in front of us are unique humans who need personalised responses. This work is about finding other tools: different ways of seeing, responding, and moving forward when the familiar approaches have run out of road.
Work with me
Melbourne Children's Clinic & Telehealth
For parents and caregivers who are overwhelmed, exhausted, or simply running out of ideas. Katrina works alongside you, not with your child directly, to understand what is driving your child's distress and help you find more effective, sustainable ways to respond. Sessions are available in person at Melbourne Children's Clinic or via telehealth.
Writing & thinking
Katrina writes regularly on parent wellbeing, capacity, and the complexity of raising children in demanding times, contributing to the Victorian Parents Council and developing her own body of work on the stress response and family systems.
Victorian Parents Council
Regular contributor on parent wellbeing, capacity, and family stress
The Allostatic Engine
The body's stress response as an interconnected system — an original model in development
Deakin University
Advisory role, School Attendance Research Project
The philosophy
We live in a world that wants fast answers to complex problems. But families are not problems to be solved, they are living systems, shaped by history, relationships, stress, and love in equal measure.
More than thirty years of Iyengar yoga practice sits quietly in the background of this work. What it has offered is a training in attention: the practice of pausing long enough to notice what is actually present. Slow work creates the same conditions. A space to look at a moment clearly, and to find a response that belongs to it, not one borrowed from old patterns, old fears, or someone else's story entirely.
The slow work is not passive. It is deeply active, noticing, questioning, finding the angle that hasn't been tried yet, and building something more sustainable than the next quick fix.
"We all arrive at parenting with a personalised toolkit. This work is about finding other tools and ways of seeing and responding that can unstick the sticky bits and help things move forward again."Katrina Gow
Get in touch
If something here has resonated, the first step is simply a conversation. You are welcome to self-refer, or come via your GP or paediatrician. There is no obligation and no mental health plan required to make an appointment.
A note on fees & access
The slow work does not attract a Medicare rebate. There is no requirement for a mental health plan. You can self-refer directly, or come via your GP or paediatrician. You simply decide when you need support, and book accordingly.
For paediatricians & GPs
Katrina welcomes referrals from medical practitioners and is happy to attend practice meetings or visit your clinic. She works best with families navigating complexity, children with multiple supports, parental overwhelm, school challenges, where a skilled, unhurried thinking partner for the parent can make a meaningful difference.