Online Therapist
dr. Johan Cloete
Helping you recover and reclaim your life
More About Me
Hi, I’m Johan Cloete.
Most of my clients come to me because of real struggles in their lives.
Some are wrestling with things inside themselves:
the lingering effects of traumatic experiences,
or a sense of feeling disconnected from their lives and from who they are. Others are struggling in their relationships:
constant fighting,
or a slow drift into silence and distance.
And some are worn down by burnout and exhaustion.
At the same time, the people around them often can’t help – however much they’d like to.
And all of them have reached a place where they simply can’t find a way out on their own.
It’s a very painful place to be.
But… you do not have to go it alone!
That’s where I come in.
I’m a licensed provider of psychological services, registered with the Professional Board for Psychology at the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) as a Registered Counsellor.
My path to this work spans more than 40 years.
My first career was as an ordained pastor, where my focus was on pastoral therapy: walking with people through the hardest seasons of their lives.
In 2011 I registered with the HPCSA, opened my private practice, and worked across both callings at once.
Over these four decades I’ve helped people navigate anxiety, trauma, and major life transitions, and provided counselling for individuals and couples.
I was initially trained in psychology and pastoral counselling. For many years I tried to help people as best I could. But it never quite felt like enough. Something was still missing. I knew I needed more knowledge, and deeper skills.
My move from pastoral therapy into psychological counselling was never a break from my past. It was a deepening of the same lifelong calling to walk with people through their suffering.
Driven by a genuine enthusiasm for the psychological field, a deep compassion for people, and a constant search for more effective ways to help, I set out to grow as a counselling professional. My journey began with a post-graduate degree in narrative counselling.
And it changed everything. It helped me:
- to know myself better,
- to understand the person in front of me more deeply,
- to feel the way they experience their own lives, and
- to work alongside them to co-create a new, better story for their lives.
As I kept listening to what my clients needed, I went on to complete specialised training in trauma therapy, relationship therapy, and neurofeedback – approaches that work with both mind and body to help the nervous system settle and heal.
Today I offer evidence-based counselling and neurofeedback for individuals and couples to help them discover new paths forward.
I believe therapy is a collaborative process:
I work with you
and together,
at your pace,
we find clarity, healing, and practical ways to build a better life.
And when I’m not working or doing research, you’ll find me reading adventure stories, doing woodwork, 3D printing, stained glass, and sometimes walking the neighbourhoods of Heidelberg (where I live) with my wife. Or simply sitting on my porch with a cup of coffee, enjoying the life I’ve been given.
If you’d like to work with me, click here to reach my contact page and book an appointment.
Or, if you’d like to learn more about my counselling style, read on below.
The Style in which I do online therapy
The narrative approach uses the stories we tell about of our lives as the key to the healing or growth process. In the face of serious and sometimes potentially deadly problems, the idea of hearing or telling stories may seem rather trivial. It is hard to believe that conversations can shape new realities. But they do. And they help to shape events into narratives/stories of hope.
Often when people go to see a therapist, their experiences of life are dominated by problem stories (for example: stories of ‘failure’, self-blame, a deficiency in something etc). Narrative therapists look for exceptions to these problem-dominated stories because these exceptions are entry points into alternative stories (for example: stories of survival, of resilience, resistance, coping or managing etc). Although we sometimes find ourselves reducing our experience down to a few words (e.g. ‘I’m a failure at relationships’), other stories can and do exist. Therapeutic conversations can then assist you to discover alternative ways of understanding your life and recover lost or forgotten experiences of yourself. A narrative therapist possesses technical skills that can be used to investigate a range of problems (and the stories associated with it). If utilized correctly hese kinds of counselling conversations can even be quite enjoyable!
The way we usually talk in courts, schools, the workplace and the rest of our daily lives, we tend to glue the person and the problem together. Talk such as: ‘He/she is the depressed spouse’, or ‘They are a dysfunctional family’, or ‘She/he is a problem child’ or ‘He/she is the problem in the organization, is accepted ways of speech as common to kitchens as to the boardrooms in the corporate world.
In narrative therapy we prefer to separate the person and the problem.
This approach not only frees the person victimized by the problem of guilt, but also empowers her/him to take action against the problem. Furthermore it helps the people surrounding the victim to join hands in a collaborating action against the problem.
The Problem (capital letter ‘P’, because the Problem has its own identity – remember you are not the problem) may have a tight grip on your life. However, in our conversations you will soon discover that it is not the case all time . These brief moments which the Problem does not have all the power are called ‘sparkling events’. The reason for this is that you certainly do have specific skills at your disposal to resist the Problem with. These skills are called ‘unique outcomes’!
Won’t it be terrific to discover yours?
Joining hands with me as your online therapist
In many ways being human is our biggest challenge. We have complex thought processes, feelings and ways of reacting to the world we live in. Therefore our personal experiences and ways of relating to our world are difficult to understand – even by ourselves! These complexities become even more difficult to understand when one is faced with hardship, trauma, uncertainty and change.
It is therefore very helpful to join hands with a professional counsellor – especially if his/her preferred way of working is to assist you how to help yourself. In meeting with your counsellor the two of you will agree upon the areas to work on, as well as on the outcomes you would like to achieve. It is in the process of working together (called individual counselling) that you will be able to unpack the issue at hand, gain perspective, acquire skills and find solutions.
What then can you expect from online therapy?
Well, you can expect:
- One-on-one meetings (for example, once a week for between 45 and 60 minutes) with your therapist;
- A safe setting where you get the undivided attention of your therapist;
- Focused attention to the agreed upon goals (e.g. to gain perspective, skills, solutions or relief for the issue at hand, to help you establish or re-establish your life as a thriving, nurturing process, to empower you to move forward with freedom in your life, etc.);
- An atmosphere for learning and exploring alternatives;
- Minimization of re-experiencing pain and discomfort due to the progress made during sessions; and
- A longer or shorter journey, depending on the yourself and the problem at hand
Online Therapy will help you …
- To find new ways to cope with stress, anger, depression, anxiety and other emotional pressures;
- To heal old wounds related to alcoholism, incest, and other traumas
- To get “unstuck” from the effect of past experiences by breaking old patterns and developing new ways of dealing with old issues
- To deal with grief, loss, loneliness
- To resolve sexual difficulties
- To discover creative ways to address life style challenges
- To improve your self-identity and boost your self-confidence
- To clarify commitments
- To explore purpose, meaning and spiritual growth
- To develop healthy boundaries
or to help you cope with any other challenges that results in overload in your life or create the feeling that you are alone against odds that are too high.
In the end online therapy is a process of joining resources with a professional therapist in order to get your life under control and to steer it towards a better future.
Qualifications
BA (UF)
BA Hons Psychology (UF)
MTh Pastoral Therapy with focus on Narrative Counselling (UNISA)
DTh (Ph.D) UNISA
Certified EMDR Practitioner
Certified Emotional Focused Couples Therapist
Advanced TRE ™ Practitioner
Licensed Heartmath® Trainer
Brainspotting Practitioner
Biofeedback Practitioner
Qualified STRENGTHSCOPE® accredited user
Registrations
I am a Psychology Practitioner, registered under the Board of Pychology at…
The Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) PRC 0012726
and the…
The Board of Health Care Funders of Southern Africa PR 0414298)
Affiliations
Psychological Society of South Africa (PsySSA)
ACRP as professional body and Council for Pastoral and Spiritual Counsellors
International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy
EMDR International Association
TRE International and TRE Africa
Biofeedback Association of South Africa
Services:
- Trauma Therapy
- Effective stress Management
- Organic relaxation techniques
- Anger management
- Organic pain control
- Enhanced personal functioning
- Relationship improvement and couselling (couple therapy)
- Life coaching and design
- Mindful living
- Biofeedback
- Mindful Living
- EMDR Therapy
Click on this link to look at some questions people ask about online therapy
Click on this link to look at a summary of the services I provide