Less Thinking, More Living with Metacognitive Therapy
Therapy provided by an MCTI® Registered Therapist.
Metacognitive Therapy (MCT) is an evidence-based treatment that helps individuals reduce worry, rumination, overthinking, and self-focused attention.
Rather than analysing or challenging the content of thoughts, or trying to suppress or eliminate them, MCT focuses on changing the patterns of thinking and attention - and the metacognitive beliefs - that keep emotional distress going.
The aim is to help you spend less time caught in mental struggle and more time living with clarity, flexibility, and greater choice over where your attention goes.
What is Metacognitive Therapy?
Metacognitive Therapy (MCT) is a modern evidence-based treatment developed by Professor Adrian Wells.
MCT starts with a simple idea:
Most people experience intrusive thoughts, worries, doubts, memories, and uncomfortable feelings. Difficulties can persist when people become caught in worry, rumination, threat monitoring, excessive self-focused attention, and other unhelpful coping strategies.
MCT helps people step out of these thinking patterns and regain flexibility over where their attention goes.
What makes MCT different?
Many therapies focus on the content of thoughts. MCT focuses on the thinking processes that maintain distress and how people respond to them.
"Is this thought true?"
"What happens when I keep responding to this thought?"
The goal is not to replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts. The goal is to reduce the worry, rumination, self-focus, and threat monitoring that keep distress alive.
It isn't simply the presence of a thought that maintains distress, but how we repeatedly respond to it.
Areas of Clinical Focus
Metacognitive Therapy Australia focuses on helping people reduce the thinking patterns that drive and maintain psychological distress.
Treatment is available for individuals experiencing:
Support is also available for individuals navigating self-doubt, chronic indecision, perfectionism, and other patterns of repetitive thinking that can leave people feeling stuck.
Core Skills Taught in MCT
Detached Mindfulness (DM): Learning to notice thoughts, feelings and physical sensations without engaging in worry, rumination, analysis, suppression or other extended processing. The aim is to leave thoughts alone rather than trying to control or eliminate them.
Worry Postponement: Learning to postpone the worrying process rather than engaging with worry whenever a thought appears. This helps challenge the belief that worry is uncontrollable.
Attention Training Technique (ATT): A structured attention-training exercise that develops voluntary attentional control and flexibility through selective attention, attention switching and divided attention.
Modifying Metacognitive Beliefs: Learning to change beliefs about the usefulness, uncontrollability or danger of worry, rumination and other thinking processes through guided discovery and behavioural experiments.
MCT Therapy
Sessions are practical, structured, and focused on reducing the thinking patterns that maintain distress.
Treatment identifies the specific mental habits—such as worry, rumination, threat monitoring, and self-focused attention—and the underlying metacognitive beliefs that keep these patterns active.
Rather than focusing primarily on the content of thoughts or the past, therapy focuses on helping people change how they respond to thoughts, increasing attentional flexibility and reducing the thinking processes that maintain emotional distress.
Therapy is provided by an MCTI® Registered Therapist. Appointments are conducted securely via telehealth and are available Australia-wide.
Why People Seek MCT
Many people arrive at MCT after years of trying to manage their thoughts. They may have spent countless hours analysing worries, searching for certainty, monitoring symptoms, seeking reassurance, or trying to stop unwanted thoughts.
These strategies can feel necessary in the moment, but they often keep attention locked onto the problem and leave people feeling mentally exhausted. When these responses are reduced, the mind is able to regulate naturally rather than becoming trapped in cycles of worry, rumination, and threat monitoring.
MCT offers a different approach. Rather than trying to control what thoughts or feelings appear, therapy helps people change the patterns of worry, rumination, threat monitoring and unhelpful coping that maintain distress.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a referral?
No. You do not need a referral to access therapy. A Mental Health Treatment Plan and referral are only required if you wish to claim Medicare rebates. Eligible patients can generally access up to 10 individual Better Access sessions per calendar year, subject to referral requirements.
Are appointments available Australia-wide?
Yes. All appointments are conducted via secure telehealth and are available throughout Australia.
How many sessions will I need?
This varies from person to person. Many people benefit from approximately 8–12 sessions, depending on individual needs.
Does MCT focus on the past?
MCT focuses primarily on the thinking patterns that are maintaining distress in the present.
What if I'm not sure whether MCT is right for me?
You are welcome to make an enquiry. All enquiries are reviewed personally to determine whether Metacognitive Therapy is likely to be a suitable clinical fit.
Fees
55-minute telehealth appointment.
If you have a valid Mental Health Treatment Plan and eligible referral from your GP or psychiatrist, you may be eligible for a Medicare rebate.
Current Medicare rebate: $89.50. Current out-of-pocket cost: $145.50.
Private health insurance rebates may be available depending on your policy and insurer. Medicare and private health insurance rebates cannot both be claimed for the same session.
No Referral Required
You do not need a referral to access therapy.
However, a valid Mental Health Treatment Plan and referral are required if you wish to claim Medicare rebates.
Suitability
Practice Scope
Metacognitive Therapy has a strong evidence base across a range of psychological conditions. This practice currently focuses on anxiety disorders, excessive worry, depression, stress, burnout, PTSD, traumatic stress, and persistent overthinking in adults aged 18 years and over.
To help ensure that clients receive appropriate care, this practice does not currently offer treatment where the primary focus is:
- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
- Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
- Psychosis or schizophrenia-spectrum disorders
Crisis and Risk Support
As a focused outpatient telehealth service, this practice does not provide crisis intervention, emergency mental health care or intensive risk monitoring.
Suitability for treatment is considered individually, including whether a person's current needs can be safely and appropriately supported through this service.
Less Thinking. More Living.
The goal is not to eliminate thoughts.
The goal is not to control which thoughts or feelings occur.
The goal is to stop responding to them in ways that keep distress going.
A thought occurs.
You don't have to engage in worry or analysis.
A feeling occurs.
You don't have to analyse or control it.
Your Therapist
Graham Barlow is an Accredited Mental Health Social Worker (AMHSW), MCTI® Registered Therapist and AASW Accredited Supervisor, based in Brisbane.
Through Metacognitive Therapy Australia, Graham provides focused, structured MCT to adults across Australia via telehealth.
Ready to Get Started?
Contact
Metacognitive Therapy Australia
Phone: 0431 756 512
Email: info@metacognitivetherapyaustralia.com.au
Secure telehealth appointments available Australia-wide.
Your Privacy
Information submitted through this form will be used to respond to your enquiry and assess suitability for therapy. Please avoid including unnecessary sensitive health information. For further details, see our Privacy Policy.
To learn more about Metacognitive Therapy or to request an appointment, please complete the enquiry form below. All submissions are reviewed to ensure Metacognitive Therapy is a suitable clinical fit before an appointment is offered.