Career Counselling
Career counselling is more than choosing a profession — it’s about designing a life-project that feels meaningful, intentional, and truly yours.
At DreamLab Psychology, we integrate psychology, career development theory, and creative reflection to support your personal and professional journey. Grounded in the Life Design paradigm (endorsed by UNESCO), our work helps you navigate career transitions with confidence and depth. It’s a process that invites you to explore your identity, redefine your purpose, and align your work with your authentic self.
Theoretical Frameworks That Guide Our Work
At DreamLab Psychology, we blend psychology and career theory to help you clarify what truly drives your choices. Using models like Holland’s RIASEC, Social Cognitive Career Theory, and Super’s Life-Span Theory, we explore your values, identity, and motivations. Grounded in the Life Design paradigm - a UNESCO-endorsed model - our approach sees career as a lifelong, meaning-centred journey. As a CDAA (Career Development Australia) member and former career counselling lecturer in Brazil, I bring both academic depth and global insight. We also rely on CDAA-endorsed tools and up-to-date labour market insights to ensure your next steps are not only meaningful, but future-ready.
The Journey We Walk Together
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Exploratory Phase I
Diagnostic Phase
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Exploratory Phase 2
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Informative Phase
Decision-Making and Creative Integration
.Outcomes: Where Dreams Take Form
Every career counselling journey at DreamLab is unique and co-created
We offer both fully tailored and semi-structured pathways, shaped by your goals, availability, and how deep you’d like to go. Sessions may include a mix of clinical dialogue, psychological and vocational assessments, and creative methods like writing, storytelling, or visual tools.
Sessions: We usually offer packages of 6 or 10 sessions, but this can be adjusted based on your needs and goals. Integration: Between sessions, you’ll receive curated materials — including readings, reflective practices, and guided exercises — to help insights settle, deepen, and grow. Metacognition is a key focus: learning how you think, choose, and act, so you can move with more clarity and agency.
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Mapping the Landscape: your vocational conflict
We begin by listening — not just to your words, but to your longings, questions, and the quiet discomforts that may have brought you here. Whether you arrive with a clear direction or a sense of being lost, our first conversations help uncover the terrain of your current experience. We tune into your identity, hopes, and stuck points, while also honouring the achievements and challenges that shaped your story. This phase also allows us to gently diagnose the core of your vocational dilemma — so we can understand not just what is happening, but why.
We also acknowledge how your story has been influenced by social, cultural, and historical factors — including pressures around success, belonging, and visibility — offering a critical and compassionate lens through which to map your present.
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Your story and inner compass
There is no single route — your process is personalised. We may use dialogue, assessments (e.g., SDS, VIA, Morrisby), narrative tools (e.g., writing, symbolism), and insight practices rooted in CBT, Schema Therapy, and psychodynamic approaches.
Together, we explore five core dimensions that shape your life-work path:
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Your Story & Inner Compass – We reflect on your values, identity, dreams, and core beliefs — the elements that give your life meaning. A decolonial lens allows us to honour plural ways of knowing, being, and contributing beyond dominant career narratives.
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Psychological Landscape – We explore internal narratives, emotional patterns, and invisible barriers that might be shaping or limiting your sense of direction.
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Decision-Making Patterns – We look at how you relate to choice, risk, time, and uncertainty — including how past experiences have shaped the way you approach decisions today.
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Mapping Interests, Strengths, and Competencies
This phase invites you to identify what energises and inspires you. Through integrative tools and reflection, we help you recognise your natural talents, acquired competencies, and the strengths you may not yet fully trust or feel permitted to claim. We validate not just what you do, but who you are — encouraging vocational choices that honour your pace, your truth, and your whole self.
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The Heart of the Process
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The World around you
The World Around You – We connect your internal world with the broader social and economic landscape — exploring both opportunities and systemic barriers with critical awareness, so you can move forward with clarity and adaptability.
Understanding the Labour Market and Socioeconomic Context
We examine career pathways, training options, and labour market trends — not only from a mainstream view, but also through a decolonial lens that challenges dominant narratives of success. We explore how structural inequalities, cultural capital, and social location impact access and opportunity, allowing for more informed, equitable, and socially conscious decisions.
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From Insight to Choice
This is the moment where clarity meets action. Drawing from the insights developed throughout the process, we work together to resolve your vocational conflict and explore aligned, intentional choices.
You are supported not to simply pick a path — but to create one that feels meaningful, flexible, and grounded in your personal truths and broader context.
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Outcomes: Where Dreams Take Form
Career Planning: Development and Action Plan
We close the process with a co-created, flexible career plan tailored to your needs, aspirations, and circumstances.
This may include a written report, a values map, a decision-making journal, or even a narrative CV — depending on what feels most supportive for you. You’ll leave the process with:
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A personalised career plan, with practical strategies to get you started.
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More clarity about who you are, your competencies and where you're headed
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More confidence to choose with purpose and intention
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Tools to navigate change with emotional steadiness
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Renewed trust in your voice and pace
A life project that feels true — and truly yours
Career Counselling at DreamLab is ideal for
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Adolescents and school leavers
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University students and postgrads
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Career changers and professionals in transition
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Artists, freelancers, and entrepreneurs
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People navigating burnout, migration, or identity shifts
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Anyone wanting to live and work with more clarity, alignment, and intention