The Co-Founders of Restoring Resilience, Anna Skolarikis and Phyllis Traficante, are specialists in the area of Trauma, Attachment and Belonging in Families, Schools, Organisational and Community Settings. Together they have lead the way in Trauma Resolution Trainings Since 2016!
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Our Mission
Our aim is for people to feel safe and connected by creating a world where they feel understood and valued.
Our Aim
The programs are underpinned by a neuroscientific map, the Polyvagal Theory, and incorporates a combination of Somatic Experiencing and Gestalt Therapy interventions.
Our Goal
Restoring Resilience intends on achieving this via a suite of training programs that empower counsellors, mental health practitioners; organisational team leaders and managers; teachers, parents, families and communities.
Phyllis Traficante
Hello! I’m Phyllis. I am the Co-Founder of Restoring Resilience, a Gestalt-trained Psychotherapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Case Consult provider and Assistant to the SE Trainings and a Clinical Supervisor, currently working with the counselling team at Carer Gateways Merry Health, Melbourne. I am in private practice where I focus on working with children, youth, families and associated practitioners.
I am passionate about helping kids live a life where they feel understood and accepted in their experience, safe and connected so that they can grow to their full potential. I have spent much of my career teaching, counselling, supervising counsellors and teams and running parenting courses, all the while focusing on counselling children, youth, parents and supervising practitioners, in the hope to build supportive, connected families. I love what I do because I get to watch parents and practitioners transform the way they interpret difficult behaviours and respond in ways that directly lead to an increase in families bonding, children/ youth healing and growth. I am fascinated by how the energy within a child shifts as they start to feel safer externally, then internally. With this emerges growth, healing and connection to a sense of aliveness which supports an increase in capacity to venture into the world with a heightened sense of resilience and confidence.
The Restoring Resilience suite of GROW programs has emerged from a shared desire and passion with Anna to support the development of happy, healthy children. The GROW Working with Children program has fast become a significant resource for parents, educators, therapists, practitioners and schooling communities. The program aims to empower individuals with the skills to understand, help prevent and resolve stress, overwhelm and trauma.
In 2016 I developed and delivered a high school well-being program, findings published in the book ‘Brain Changing Strategies to Trauma Proof our Schools’, by Maggie Kline (2020). I have over 30 years experience as an industry trainer, delivering from certificate level to post-grad level training in counselling at the Australian College of Applied Psychology; MCOUNS; Clinical Member of PACFA.
Anna Skolarikis
Hello! I’m Anna, I am the co-founder of Restoring Resilience, a gestalt-trained psychotherapist, a Somatic Experience Practitioner/consult provider, Clinical Supervisor and trainer/facilitator. My work moves between working in intimate 1:1 therapeutic spaces to facilitating group reflective practice/ supervision to 80 Maternal Child Health Nurses, assistant to SE trainings, Consult provider of the GROW program in Early Years and Restoring Resilience facilitator.
Restoring Resilience Workshops emerged from a practice that is fuelled by my passion, determination and belief that all healing is relational and innate. Our bodies are hardwired not only to survive but to thrive post stressful, overwhelming and traumatic events but necessitate spaces and places where individuals feel safe, respected, heard and belong.
As a gestalt Psychotherapist in private practice I specialise in attachment and developmental trauma. I believe the therapeutic relationship provides a stunning opportunity in the here and now to renegotiate patterns of defence and protection into safety, intimacy and connection. I work from a place where the clients healing is considered within a context with the people, places and spaces around them that matter.
My role as Clinical Supervisor at Wyndham City Council is to support Maternal Child Health Nurses to be working form a place of health and sustainability. Wyndham City Council is one of the first to prioritise the health and wellbeing of their staff and actively looking to put processes in place to ensure staff health and wellbeing is protected. My focus is to implement a trauma informed Reflective Practice Framework to support MCHN’s to reflect and explore how they responding in the work and deepen their awareness and understanding of what psychobiological drivers are influencing choice points and responses in times of stress, crisis and trauma. The framework ensures MCHN’s are working within a window of awareness, health, presence and sustainability. The partnership with the City of Wyndham Council is to empower and protect MCHN’s from the inherent stress and overwhelm that precipitates vicarious trauma and burnout.
I am a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Assistant and I provide SE individual and small group consults at Intermediate level. I have assisted with trainings in Australia, Greece and New Zealand.
Phyllis and I have worked closely and co-developed GROW Working with Children’s Program which is an ecological approach to working in early years. The program invites educators, parents/caretakers, therapists to adopt a neuroscientific lens in understanding child behaviour and respond with potent Somatic Experiencing interventions that release trapped activation disregulating behaviour, reset the nervous system and restore safety, connection and resilience. The program has been delivered into 24 kindergartens, 270 Early Years Educators reaching 3500 children aged 3-5yo. The GROW program invites all adult caretakers in the Childs life to come together and prevent siloed and fragmented connections.
I love working in systems and organizations and believe they are powerful platforms for healing and growth . There is an opportunity to co-design and co-create optimal conditions where staff and teams can thrive and flourish. Mapping organisations ecology is a powerful approach to organisations achieving desired goals and outcomes. Individual staff needs being negotiated in a collective context can be a challenging and yet an incredibly rewarding space for trauma informed leaders and organisations.
