I'm Helen Billows.
Psychologist, accredited EMDR therapist, and someone who has spent the last decade doing one thing: trauma therapy.
This isn't a side interest. It's my entire practice, research focus, and what I've built my clinical life around.
I didn't start out as a trauma therapist.
My first job after registering in 2018 was in alcohol and other drug services, doing basic counselling and CBT, the approaches I'd been trained in.
But almost everyone I worked with had a significant trauma history, and most of them met criteria for PTSD.
I was helping people manage their addiction while completely ignoring what was likely driving it. That didn't sit well with me.
I didn't want to help people cope better with their substance use. I wanted to help them heal from whatever had made it feel necessary in the first place.
In 2018 I trained in EMDR. During the practicum, I was required to process one of my own memories. That moment changed the direction of my life, because EMDR worked for me in a way nothing else had.
By 2022 I founded my private practice, Billows Psychology, with a full focus on trauma and EMDR. That year I also earned practitioner accreditation through EMDRAA, then built on that by completing consultant accreditation in 2023. Short of becoming a certified EMDR trainer, that's the highest level of credentialing available in Australia, held by a small number of psychologists nationally.
In 2025 I was selected by national EMDR training providers to assist in delivering EMDR training programs across Australia. If you attend an EMDR training in Adelaide, it's highly likely I'll be there helping you count your saccades.
In 2026 I launched The Trauma Nerd Podcast, because the gap in quality trauma content online was frustrating me and I decided to do something about it.
Outside the therapy room I'm an Adelaide Hills local, a pilates regular, and the mother of a boisterous toddler who has strong opinions about everything (he fits right in).
7,000+ sessions delivered. Across trauma, PTSD, complex trauma and personality disorders. This is not generalist work. Trauma is the entire focus.
Registered Psychologist. Registered with the Psychology Board of Australia since 2018.
EMDRAA-Accredited EMDR Therapist and Consultant. The highest level of EMDR accreditation available in Australia, held by a small number of psychologists nationally.
EMDR Training Facilitator. Selected to assist in delivering EMDR training programs across Australia by national training providers Psychology Training and EMDR Therapy Training Australia. One of a small number of clinicians chosen to teach other therapists how to do this work.
PSYBA-Approved Psychology Supervisor. Approved to provide formal supervision to psychologists.
Eight years of university training. Including a Master of Clinical Psychology, the highest level of clinical postgraduate qualification in the field. Completed with a perfect GPA.
Private Psychology Practice Owner. I own Billows Psychology, a high-demand 1:1 clinical consulting practice with an exclusive focus on EMDR and trauma therapy.
A near decade of continuous investment in specialised training, EMDR supervision, and clinical education.
A career built on staying at the front of this field.
My Approach
Early in my career I was too passive in the therapy room, and it took me longer than I'd like to admit to recognise it.
I thought being supportive meant only following the client's lead. Checking in, listening, holding space. Those things are important, but I was letting sessions drift into weekly updates with no real clinical direction, and that's not therapy.
That's an expensive conversation.
Being a more active therapist means being willing to name what isn't working, redirect when a session loses focus, and sometimes challenge you directly.
It means caring more about your healing than about keeping the session comfortable. For you, and for me.
Most psychological difficulties make sense when viewed through a trauma lens. Not every problem is a trauma-related problem, but there's almost always something worth paying attention to underneath the surface.
Trauma lives in the body, not in the story you tell about it. You can spend years developing a sophisticated understanding of your history and still flinch at the same things, still shut down in the same moments, still feel it in your body the same way.
Insight is valuable. It doesn't, on its own, heal anything.
I work with nuance, ethics, and evidence, delivered with irreverence and humour.
This is my wheelhouse. I know what holds up, and what doesn't.
It's also why the podcast exists, so that thinking has somewhere to go beyond the therapy room.
This is What it Can Look Like
Most people who find me have already tried therapy.
It helped a little, or it helped them understand themselves better, but something stayed stuck.
The same reactions, and the same feelings in the body that insight and logic couldn't help.
That's not a personal failure. It's usually a sign the work wasn't reaching the root cause.
When it does get there, people don't describe it in clinical language.
They say they feel physically lighter. That they see things differently.
That something they'd been carrying for years just isn't there anymore.
Not managed, not coped with. Gone.
That's what trauma-focused work can do, and that's the standard I hold my work to.
The Trauma Nerd Podcast exists because most trauma content online frustrated me.
Too much of it is watered down to the point of faffy uselessness, or dressed up in wellness language that sounds impressive but doesn't offer much in the way of help.
I wanted to make something that treated the listener as an intelligent adult. Grounded in scientific evidence, free of filler, and genuinely useable.
The podcast is where everything on this page goes to work; the clinical thinking, the conviction that you deserve better than what most of the internet is offering — and the knowledge that you're smart enough to handle the real version.