Dr Alla Demutska

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Fitzroy North, VIC
Dr Alla Demutska

I am an experienced clinical psychologist who can help you improve your psychological health and general wellbeing.

I am committed to delivering the best quality care. I use evidence-based intervention to achieve the best outcomes. As an experienced clinical psychologist, I bring over 12 years of clinical work to help you enhance your psychological well-being and overall quality of life. I worked with a diverse range of clients in a number of settings, including private practices, public and private psychiatric hospitals, outpatient programs, and universities. I have been providing individual and group-based therapy using a range of evidence-based interventions. I established a successful private practice nestled in the heart of Fitzroy North, Melbourne, Australia. However, in 2019, I made the bold decision to close my practice and start a new chapter in Singapore. My passion for exploring diverse cultures and lifestyles led me to this exciting crossroads. Over the course of nearly four years, I was a Lecturer at James Cook University, Singapore, where I had the privilege of guiding and supervising students in the prestigious Master of Psychology (Clinical) program. It was a rewarding experience that allowed me to share my expertise and shape the next generation of mental health professionals. Today, I am deeply honored to fulfil the role of the Clinical Director of Counselling and Psychotherapy at the School of Positive Psychology in Singapore. I find great joy and purpose in my role, which enables me to make a meaningful impact on the field of psychotherapy in Singapore. Simply put, I love what I do, and I am dedicated to helping individuals to progress to greater well-being, self-discovery, and self-realisation.

09/02/2026

For many women, the changes don’t arrive as a clear event or a dramatic turning point. They arrive as something subtle - something that simply stops cooperating.

For me, it was sleep.

I didn’t stop sleeping because I stopped trying. I did everything “right”: consistent bedtimes, early nights, clean habits, discipline. And still, I slept three or four hours a night - for years.

At first, I assumed it was situational. A new country. Singapore. Noise. Light. Adjustment. But eventually I realised something more unsettling was happening. My body was changing, and willpower was no longer enough.

That was the moment midlife became real for me. Not as a crisis, but as a responsibility.

I understood that no one was coming to fix this for me, and that I needed to learn my body again, almost from the beginning. So I read widely, deeply, and persistently. I read about sleep science, hormones, perimenopause, exercise across different life stages, nutrition for a changing nervous system, and hormone replacement therapy with nuance, not ideology.

In a strange way, I was lucky. The disruption came early enough to force education, curiosity, and commitment, before the larger shifts arrived. By the time estrogen truly began to decline, I felt informed, prepared, and less frightened.

Midlife doesn’t announce itself politely. It often arrives through friction: sleep that won’t come, energy that doesn’t return, a body that no longer responds to strategies that once worked.

But friction is not failure. Sometimes it is an initiation.

What initially felt like a problem became a teacher, an invitation to stop outsourcing authority and start listening more carefully.

Midlife, I’ve learned, is not about decline. It’s about becoming responsible for yourself in a deeper way, with curiosity instead of panic, and respect instead of denial.

This is also why I’m beginning to create small group spaces for women in midlife spaces to explore these changes together, with honesty, intelligence, and care. Not to fix ourselves, but to understand what’s happening, to be supported as we adapt, and to reclaim agency, vitality, and self-trust in the second half of life.

More on that soon.

26/01/2026

I’ve been asking this question a lot lately — in therapy, with friends, and with myself.
If you had to live the same ordinary day for 100 years, but you could choose the day — where would it be?
Not a fantasy. Not the “best” day of your life.
Just a real day you could return to again and again — with appreciation, presence, maybe even joy.
What people choose is rarely about status or achievement.
For me, it’s about: being in community and seeing people I love being close to nature moving my body through dance learning new skills — singing, dancing sharing my love and wisdom with my clients, students, and community
Values live in small, repeatable moments. Not in extraordinary ones.
Save this if you want to come back to the question. Share it with someone who’s questioning their direction.
Tell me — what would your Groundhog Day look like?

25/12/2025

What I thought 48 would be (when I was much younger):
After years of psychological therapy and so much personal work, I thought I would be fully healed and “normal.” Instead, I’m accepting myself - and all my weirdness - more. I don’t even know what “normal” is anymore.
My defences are still there. My stories still come up. Painful feelings of being a burden, bad, or unlovable still appear.
What’s different is that they no longer dominate my life. Most of the time, I can see them for what they are. I know how to create room for them and return to my centre more quickly. I’m more ready to loosen my defences - not because I’m done healing, but because I trust myself more.
I thought I’d understand relationships and master them by my age. I’ve learned how to speak more honestly, set better boundaries, acknowledge my part, and communicate with kindness. What I haven’t figured out is how to have relationships without triggers or complexity - and I no longer believe that’s the goal. Relationships are living systems, not problems to solve. Because so much trauma happens in early relationships, relationships can also be a pathway to healing - especially when care replaces what once was absent.
I thought I’d have answers. Instead, I have better questions. I’m more at ease with not knowing, and more trusting of my ability to respond to whatever unfolds.
I thought my body would slow down. What actually happened is that I learned how to listen. I can do more now than when I was younger - not by pushing, but by responding. My body feels like an ally, not something to manage.
I thought life at this age would be quieter, smaller. It isn’t. I’m learning constantly - about people, the world, myself. My capacity to feel, stretch, and be challenged keeps expanding.
I thought I’d be sitting at home watching TV, like the adults I grew up around. I haven’t owned a TV in 17 years. Curiosity still leads me - only now it’s less intellectual and more embodied: dancing, acro, letting my body take up space.

05/12/2025

We have protectors - the parts that step in before we even realise it. Some soften our voice. Some over-function. Some keep us invisible. Some numb everything out. They all learned their jobs in moments where we had no other choice.
I’m curious… which protector shows up strongest for you right now? My loudest ones at the moment are: the Attuner (feeling everyone else before I feel myself) and the Numbing Wall (the one that shuts down my emotions).
Tell me yours below - you’re not alone in them.

13/10/2025

(warning: death and heavy content)
Because I know what life looks like without them.
I was reflecting recently on why joy is so important to me.
I grew up in the Soviet Union, and when it collapsed, the years that followed were dark and unstable. I didn’t know if we would have food to eat, let alone clothes to wear. Life felt unsafe, frightening, unpredictable.
My great-aunt, who had raised my father like a mother, carried wounds that ran deep. Her own father - my great-grandfather - was taken to Siberia as an enemy of the state by Stalin and vanished. That history branded our family. It stole opportunities, futures, dignity. She lived with bitterness, grief, and resentment, and whenever I visited, her stories were heavy with pain, sadness, and anger. Listening was hard - I felt her suffering and the weight of the past pressing into me.
When I was 16, I walked into her apartment and found her dead in her bed. She lived alone by then. Almost blind, hardly able to walk. The sorrow in that room was suffocating. I called the ambulance and my parents, and then I sat there for hours beside her body, waiting for help to come. I can still see it — the stillness of her face, and the cockroach crawling across it. That image has never left me. Even now, as I write this, I cry.
In that moment, I made a vow:
 I will not let resentment eat me alive. I will not stay trapped in the past. I will not let bitterness define me.

And I chose a different path - one where I would try to alleviate suffering, and help life become more meaningful and worth living, for myself and for others. Because I know how unbearable life feels when pain is the only lens. I know the heaviness of trauma, the way grief can turn air into stone, the way hopelessness can empty out a person …

I became a psychologist not because I was untouched by pain, but because I was shaped by it. I know what it means to live in fear, to sit with despair, to feel like joy is impossible. And I also know the miracle of a moment of beauty, so many of them - a glimpse of sun playing on the sea after a long cold winter, the first fresh strawberries, spending time with people I love, feeling my body strong and able..

15/06/2025

It’s not a feeling. It’s not something you wait to feel before you begin.

It’s a decision. A practice. A quiet, radical commitment to not abandon yourself — especially when it would be easier to, when it is your habit.

Self-love is staying with your truth when it is hard.
It’s saying no when you want to disappear into someone else’s comfort.
It’s letting yourself rest when the old voices tell you to earn your worth.
It’s hearing the part that says “I’m too much” or “I’m not enough” — and staying anyway.

Carl Rogers said, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

And I think that’s it. That’s the heart of this work.

Because when we betray ourselves — in small, quiet ways — we keep teaching the little one inside us:

Your needs don’t matter. Your voice doesn’t matter. You don’t matter.

And it hurts more than any external rejection ever could.

Self-love is not about becoming the best version of yourself.
That’s another trick of the critic.
It’s not a battle.
You’ are not something to overcome.

It’s about turning toward the parts you’ve hidden or pushed away — the ones that were too loud, too sad, too much, too hurt — and saying:

I see you.
You’re still part of me.
You don’t have to be alone anymore.

Integration over exile.
Kindness over fixing.
Presence over perfection.

And on the hard days, when you forget — you begin again.
Not because you feel worthy.
But because you are.

13/06/2025

Validation isn’t about fixing. It’s about finding each other.

Many of us grew up hearing “you’re too sensitive,” “don’t cry,” or “just be strong.”

We learned to shut down, smile when it hurt, and keep going — even when we were unraveling inside.

But healing begins when we’re allowed to feel.
Not questioned.
Not reassured.
Just met.

Validation sounds simple — but it’s what our nervous system has been waiting for:

👉 “That makes sense.”
👉 “I get why you feel that way.”
👉 “You don’t have to explain.”

These words say: you matter, just as you are.

If no one said them to you when you needed them — I’m sorry.

But you can offer them now.

To yourself.
To the people you love.
To the parts of you that are still waiting to be seen.

Try this:

Share something vulnerable with someone safe.

Ask them to simply reflect, without advice.

Practice staying with each other — gently, honestly.

This is how we begin to feel again.

10/06/2025

The Psychology Behind Why We Stay in Relationships That Don’t Work

Why do so many of us stay in relationships that leave us feeling unseen, unsupported, or unsettled?

It’s not because we’re weak.
It’s often because the dynamics are familiar.

Many of us unconsciously repeat what we learned early in life—especially if we grew up in environments where love was conditional, inconsistent, or unavailable. In those families, we might have learned to earn love by being helpful, quiet, needed, or “good.”

Later in life, these patterns don’t just disappear.

We’re drawn to partners who reflect the emotional landscape we grew up with—not because it’s healthy, but because it feels like home.

Psychologists call this repetition compulsion: the tendency to recreate early emotional dynamics in an attempt to resolve them.

But we’re not resolving them—we’re reliving them.

In this dynamic, we often:

Confuse intensity with intimacy

Accept emotional unavailability as normal

Stay in roles like the caregiver, the peacemaker, or the one who holds everything together

Feel guilt for wanting more

Healing begins with awareness.
Not blaming ourselves—or our partners—but recognising when we’re acting from old survival strategies rather than conscious choice.

When we name the pattern, we interrupt it.

When we stop trying to change others, and start tending to the parts of us that were never truly met, something shifts.

From this place, we start to choose relationships based on alignment, not old emotional familiarity.

Because real love doesn’t ask you to perform, prove, or shrink.
It meets you where you are—and invites you to grow from there.

01/06/2025

When I first heard this quote by Mark Nepo, it was Amy .finlay.jones who read it aloud, as we held space together at the retreat.

I remember the moment vividly—how it opened something in me. I was meant to be guiding, holding, witnessing. But the words found a home inside my chest. I had to swallow hard to keep the tears at bay.

It still speaks to me now. Perhaps even more.

Because this is the very heart of the work: 
How do we move through the world with an undefended heart? How do we stay open—tender, present—without armouring ourselves against the very closeness, care, and connection we long for?

We slip on these invisible layers—sarcasm, avoidance, productivity, perfectionism, numbness—to protect us. But they often dim life’s brightness. Keep the world at arm’s length. Dull the moments that could have mattered.

This quote reminds me that the work isn’t about becoming stronger. It’s about becoming softer. Less covered. More felt.

So we can touch life as it is.

The hesitation before reaching for someone’s hand, not knowing if they’ll meet you there.
The tremble in your voice when truth rises faster than your fear.
The sunlight on your cheek—and for a breath, life floods in, and you remember: this is what it means to be alive.

Nothing numbed. Nothing avoided. Nothing postponed for a time that may never come.

What do you feel, reading this quote?

18/05/2025

I went to renew my passport the other day. A simple, safe task. But something strange happened—my body was tense, breath shallow, heart tight as I stepped into the Australian embassy.

Cognitively, I knew I was safe. But my body didn’t feel that way.

I grew up in Ukraine, in the long shadow of the Soviet Union—a system where authority wasn’t just respected, it was feared. Where survival meant submission. Where standing out could get you erased.

My great-grandfather, a passionate school director who believed in education, was declared an enemy of the state and vanished into Siberia. My family bore those scars. That legacy of fear was passed down silently, encoded in our nervous systems, in the way we moved through the world.

You don’t have to be told these things as a child. You feel them. You absorb them like air. At that time in my culture, to survive was to be small, invisible. Don’t speak too loudly. Don’t stand out. Don’t draw attention.

I’ve spent years working through these patterns—unlearning what was never mine to carry. But still, moments like this remind me: healing doesn’t erase the past. It allows us to witness it with compassion.

When I did family constellations, I saw it so clearly—how my father’s fear lived inside his body, expressed through rage. How my mother learnt to shrink, to hide. How I learnt to feel safest when unseen.

And yet, here I am. Feeling it, noticing it, not running from it.

Healing is not about never getting triggered again. It’s about recognising when the past shows up in the present—and choosing not to abandon yourself when it does.

What are the traces of your history that still live in your body?

What do you carry that doesn’t belong to you—but still shapes how you feel?

13/05/2025

I never thought I had abandonment issues. I used to believe I was fine on my own, that I didn’t need anything from anyone. But then I started noticing the way I would check my phone, hoping for a message. The way I would wonder if anyone was thinking of me. The way I felt like I disappeared the moment I wasn’t reflected in someone else’s thoughts.

I don’t need constant attention. I don’t need grand gestures. But I do need to feel like I exist in someone’s mind—that someone, somewhere, holds me there, even in the smallest ways. A message. A thought. A moment of “I wonder how she’s doing.” Because when no one remembers me, I feel like I vanish. Like I am of no consequence. Like I could slip away, and the world would go on exactly the same.

They say you die twice—once when your body stops breathing, and once when your name is spoken for the last time. But what if you can feel that second death while you’re still here?

I’ve come to understand that this feeling didn’t just appear in adulthood — it began in childhood. Home never felt safe. I didn’t feel like I mattered, like my thoughts or inner world had a place. I learned early that my feelings were too much, that being visible could invite danger, and that love often came with conditions. So I adapted. I became a child who asked for little, who stayed quiet, who disappeared to survive. And now, as an adult, I know I’m not simply seeking attention —I’m reaching toward a child who never felt genuinely seen. The child who once wondered if anyone might ever care enough to be curious about who she is and what she needs.

I don’t want to need this. I want to believe that my existence is enough, even in silence. But right now, I am still learning. Still unlearning. Still finding my way back to myself, without waiting for someone else to hold me there.

Have you ever felt like you only existed when someone else saw you? What helped you start finding your way back to yourself?

03/05/2025

There’s something about dancing that goes beyond movement.

It’s how the body remembers joy, even when the mind forgets.

It’s how rhythm finds its way into places that words can’t reach.

I didn’t grow up dancing.
I watched dancers and dreamed of being one. But instead, I spent eight years at the piano—disciplined, rigid, disconnected. I didn’t love it. I wanted to move. To feel. But there was no room for that.

Later, as an adult, I told myself it was too late. That there was no point if I couldn’t be good at it. My perfectionist mind couldn’t yet hold space for joy without achievement.

But something in me kept pushing.
So a few years ago, I started to dance.
At first, I resisted. I felt silly. Stiff. Ashamed even. But I kept going.
And slowly, it became a way home to myself.

Dancing is my therapy.
It’s where I meet myself in truth—in feeling, in vibration, in presence.

And science confirms it, too.
A 2024 study from Australia found that dancing improves mood more than yoga, strength training, or running. It supports nervous system regulation, alleviates depressive symptoms, and boosts cognitive function.

I dance because I can feel my aliveness again.

Because when my energy is heavy or stuck, music moves what words can't.

Because movement allows what’s hidden to surface—and find release.

Dance is my meditation.

My mirror.

My learning about myself.

A soft spotlight on the parts of me I rarely show.

My relational patterns show up. My fears. My hesitations.
How I respond to closeness, to pressure, to silence.
The same protective strategies I’ve worked through in therapy show up on the dance floor.
There’s no hiding in movement.
Always learning, breathing, feeling.

I want to feel alive in every moment I dance.
Even when it is painful.
I choose this over numbness and disconnection—even when they feel safer and more familiar.

Because life isn’t just about staying safe — it’s about showing up fully, feeling deeply, and being awake to what’s here.

Thank you for making this happen!

Thanks for beautiful photos

Address

Thought Partner Studio, The Riverside Piazza
Fitzroy North, VIC
059608

Website

https://drallademutska.com/

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