Anat Guy - Counsellor
Address: Kauri Centre for Wellbeing, 4 Whitmore Street, Edgeware, Christchurch, 8013
Phone: 020 40916224
Email: guyanat75@gmail.com
Work Experience
Dr Anat Guy has over a decade of experience working therapeutically with individuals, couples, and families. Over the past few years, a significant part of her work has been within the ACC Sensitive Claims framework, providing individual therapy to support recovery from sexual trauma and its ongoing impacts.
Her work focuses on supporting clients to process and integrate traumatic experiences, and to reduce the impact of trauma on emotional well-being, relationships, and day-to-day functioning. She works with a range of conditions commonly associated with trauma, including anxiety, depression, shame, difficulties with trust and safety, emotional regulation challenges, and the lasting effects of abuse.
Anat supports clients at different stages of recovery, including those who are beginning to make sense of their experiences, as well as those working towards longer-term integration, reconnection, and improved quality of life. She places a strong emphasis on creating a safe, respectful, and collaborative therapeutic space, where clients can work at their own pace.
In addition to her ACC work, Anat has extensive experience working with couples and families, particularly where trauma has impacted relationships. This includes difficulties related to intimacy, communication, trust, and connection. She brings this relational understanding into her individual work, supporting clients to make sense of patterns and develop safer and more secure ways of relating.
Anat’s experience also includes working with complex trauma, sexual difficulties, grief and loss, and significant life transitions. Her work is grounded in trauma-informed, attachment-based, and systemic approaches, with a focus on supporting recovery, restoring a sense of safety, and improving overall functioning.
In addition to her clinical practice, Anat has held senior academic and clinical leadership roles in the field of family therapy. She previously led a postgraduate program in family counselling and worked as a senior lecturer, contributing to the training and supervision of therapists.
Clinical Approach
Dr Anat Guy takes an integrative, trauma-informed approach to working alongside individuals. Her work is informed by attachment-based, dynamic, and narrative frameworks, with a focus on understanding how trauma shapes emotional experience, identity, and relationships over time.
She works with clients within the ACC Sensitive Claims context, supporting recovery from sexual trauma and its ongoing effects. Her approach focuses on helping clients make sense of their experiences, develop a coherent understanding of their story, and reduce the impact of trauma on daily functioning and wellbeing.
Anat draws on analytic and narrative approaches to support deeper exploration of patterns, meanings, and internal processes, particularly those shaped by early experiences and trauma. She works collaboratively with clients to explore how these patterns have developed, how they continue to influence their sense of self and relationships, and how they might be understood differently.
A central part of her work involves supporting clients in the process of meaning-making and identity reconstruction following trauma. This includes helping clients re-author aspects of their story, integrate traumatic experiences, and develop a stronger, more coherent sense of self.
She places strong emphasis on creating a safe, respectful, and thoughtful therapeutic space. Anat works at a pace that feels manageable for each client, recognising the importance of safety, trust, and readiness in trauma work. Her approach is flexible and responsive, and she adapts therapy to align with each client’s values, goals, and lived experience.
Qualifications and Memberships
Bachelor of Social Work (Magna Cum Laude)
PhD in Social Work and Social Psychology
Master of Social Work and Education (Summa Cum Laude)
Bachelor of Social Work (Magna Cum Laude)
Imago Relationship Therapy Training
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) Training
Gottman Method Couples Therapy – Level 1
Imago Relationship Therapy Training
Advanced training in trauma and PTSD, including NICABM and Trauma Research Foundation
ACC Registered Sensitive Claims Provider
NZAC Member