Werner van der Westhuizen is a clinical social worker offering psychotherapy and counselling to adolescents, adults and families, in person in Gqeberha and online across South Africa. Sessions are available in English and Afrikaans.
With many years of experience working with young people — including in residential child and youth care — Werner has a particular focus on adolescents and their families, supporting teenagers through anxiety, low mood, trauma, relationship difficulties, and the emotional and developmental challenges of growing up. He works equally with adults facing anxiety, depression, stress, grief and loss, life transitions, and the effects of past or recent trauma. A longstanding interest in resilience runs through all of his work: the belief that, with the right support, people can face difficulty, recover, and grow stronger through it.
Werner's areas of expertise include anxiety and stress, low mood and depression, trauma and difficult life experiences — offering both early support in the aftermath of a distressing event and longer-term trauma recovery — grief and loss, relationship and family difficulties, and adjustment to change and life's demands.
His therapeutic approach is warm, practical and collaborative, working from a systems perspective and drawing on an integrative, eclectic range of evidence-based modalities suited to each client. These include cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), transactional analysis, reality therapy, solution-focused therapy and systemic family therapy. Where clinically appropriate and with the client's consent, hypnotherapy may be used as an adjunct within the therapeutic work.
Recent Comments