Dr Yunfei Zhao
Counsellor - PMNZAC - PhD Psychology
Yunfei has worked in the public and private mental health sectors for three decades both in New Zealand and overseas. He has worked in many roles, including family and community mental health supporter; individual, couple and family therapy; as a Mindfulness and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) trainer; psychology and psychotherapy lecturer; and in adolescent mental health and family relationship research. Yunfei has been a practicing psychologist overseas for two decades. He is currently a provisional member of the New Zealand Association of Counsellor.
Yunfei has extensive experience with both Eastern and Western therapeutic approaches, including Confucianism & Taoism based Psychotherapy, Mindfulness and Meditation, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), CBT, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), Systemic Therapy, and Family Therapy. He works with individuals, couples, and families from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Yunfei has many years of experience in supporting individuals, primarily adolescents and adults, who experience a wide range of mental health and addiction challenges, including anxiety, depression, sleep problems, emotional dysregulation, grief and loss, ADHD, OCD, PTSD, personality disorders, eating disorders, addiction issues, and life adjustment difficulties. He also works with couples and families who have experienced family relationship problems, including marital conflicts, family violence, divorce, and post-divorce parenting challenges.
Yunfei applies a psychosocial assessment and intervention approach to individual mental health and family relationship problems. He is pragmatic and works with clients as a team to explore and identify culturally sensitive and therapeutically effective approaches, either Eastern, Western, or balanced ones, to meet the therapeutic needs of his clients. In this holistic and collaborative therapeutic process, Yunfei assists clients to explore their internal world including cognitive and emotional process, family dynamics, interpersonal communication, and social interaction in a social, cultural, and historical context, with an aim of helping his clients to understand how these individual, familial, and social process, in particular their interplays, could affect their mental health and family relationship. He also assists clients to explore and identify their individual/family strengths and social resources and helps them make the most of their strengths and social support to manage and adjust those internal and external processes to achieve their individual and family therapeutic goals including goals for individual self-growth and harmonious family relationship.
Yunfei is fluent in both Mandarin and English languages
Location: Highbrook and Pukekohe