About Dr. Leila Davis
Dr. Leila Davis is a registered Gestalt Therapist based in Toowong, Brisbane, Australia. She helps high-achieving women facing burnout, to reconnect with themselves, get clarity and start making good choices through unique programs like Empowered Women
Does this sound familiar?
You’re a high performing, busy person with a good brain and a warm heart, serving others but never getting your own needs met. Life feels overwhelming and unsatisfying, but your focus is always on others….what happened to those friendships and intimate relationships which have all been put on hold? I’ve been there, it’s no fun at all.
It’s time for change
If, like me, you’re thinking “Enough is enough, I want life to be different, more fulfilling, less of a treadmill” then it’s time to start looking after yourself. No one else can invite back the warmth, connection, and intimacy into your life again. Nobody but you alone can reach out for your happiness. My big learning was counterintuitive. Reaching out for what I needed also helped others around me more than anything else I could offer them. I needed to fit my own oxygen mask before helping my children! They were inhaling the passive smoke of my desperation, resentment, and unhappiness anyway! Get your life back! Being your best self is the greatest gift you can offer those around you. To have learned this lesson, I am forever grateful!
I know your life can be so much better
You have the capacity to choose how you live, to make each moment matter, and to build satisfaction and delight as you create your best life. I’ve been on the journey and I know how much I have changed. Now I enjoy better quality friendships, deeper contact with others, more intimacy and support with my partner, and a work life that I choose. I did it by getting clear about what I needed and taking steps to get my needs met.
How I work
When we sit together you will feel really seen and met in all your uniqueness. You are the expert on your situation and I will pay attention in great detail to how you bring yourself to our relationship. We will dive deeply together below the words and into the feeling and energetic tone of your story. There you will find more awareness and clarity on how you choose to bring yourself into your world and start to make decisions that serve you and those around you better. No judgment is passed, only interest and exploration.
And in the words of a client…
‘ I learnt new tools to handle stressful situations as they rose up into my life, therefore I learnt to trust myself. I learnt to handle my reactions, no matter what was being triggered, by finding my own inner calm and so embodied more grace and less panic.’
My Story
I have always had a hunger for authentic connection and helping others since I was a small child.
Beginning my career as a young doctor I was uncertain where my career would take me, but I knew I wanted to learn how to connect deeply with other people.
All I knew was that hospitals were not places I wanted to hang out and that medicine somehow wasn’t offering me a way of being with people that energised and excited me.
After traveling around the world, living in three different countries, and experimenting with Buddhism and Yoga I was lucky enough to come across Gestalt therapy. It was at a time in my own life when things were not going well! I had a young family and the pressures of work, illness, and poor relationships. My spirit was overwhelmed, cut off from my own inner resources by a self-limiting belief system and lack of support.
The beginning of change for me
Starting a four-year group process training in Gestalt therapy invited me to come alive to myself again, it was like a renaissance, I felt my gifts blossoming and growing, and I became purposeful and effective in my life, choosing what was best for me instead of feeling helpless and victimized.
My purpose gets clearer every day!
I love doing this work!
My purpose is to meet you in your uniqueness and help you to realize the gifts which are inside you.
You have everything you need right here! I know that transformation is available to all of us and a life of joy, autonomy and vitality are available for you.
The life you dream of is waiting for you…
Professional Biography
- Bachelor of Science UQ 1984 Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery University of QLD 1987
- General Practice training 1994 (UK)
- GP in partnership Brixton Hill Group Practice
- GP George St Medical Centre Brisbane
- Masters in Gestalt Therapy 2011.
- Convener GANZ conferences, Brisbane 2014 and Canberra 2016
- Communities chair, GANZ Council 2014-2016
- President GANZ 2016-2018
- Psychotherapist and GP in private practice to present.
- Owner, Therapy for Life.