Alexandra Frost

Locations

North Adelaide, Telehealth

Client Age Groups

Adolescents/Youth 16-25, Adults, Couples, Elders 65+, Families

Currently available for new bookings

Director/Senior Clinical Psychologist
t/a Attuned Psychology Pty Ltd ABN 41 626 315 893

Alexandra practices at our North Adelaide Rooms Monday – Thursday and alternate Fridays.

As part of this schedule Alexandra has after hours appointments available Monday and Tuesday evenings and 8.30am appointments on Wednesday and Thursday.

Please contact the Practice on (08) 8361 7008 to confirm her current availability and be waitlisted for openings.

Hello, I’m Alexandra, I prefer Alex, and I’m excited to share with you the deepest passion of my 30 year career.

I’m privileged to work with people who truly love what they do, who like me, bring a level of passion, curiosity, and commitment to their field that can be hard for others to fully understand. That level of commitment comes with real sacrifices, and showing up to perform at your best, consistently, asks a great deal of your nervous system. Many of my clients arrive frustrated that all their preparation seems to be swamped by anxiety that feels out of control when it counts, getting in the way of the very potential they’ve worked so hard to reach.

Does this sound familiar? You’ve technically prepared well. You feel like you have honed your skills and practiced effectively. Yet, in the moment when it counts, whether it’s a critical performance, opening night, an audition, a life changing fellowship exam, a viva, a theatre season, a legal case everyone’s watching, something happens that technical preparation alone doesn’t seem to prevent.

That moment is where most people assume performance psychology begins and ends. In my experience, it’s only the doorway. The nerves before you walk out, the audition you didn’t get, the tour season that’s left you running on empty, the question of who you are when the work goes quiet, all of it sits within my territory. Often the work that matters most happens well outside the spotlight.

I’ve spent close to 30 years as a clinical psychologist, and for all of that time I’ve also worked with performing artists including actors, dancers, musicians, their crew and more, while also being a working performer myself. That breadth of experience shapes everything about how I work. I understand performance pressure not only clinically, but from the inside. I know what it feels like to stand in that moment before walking out, heart racing, and harness the adrenalin to do exactly what I’d prepared to do.

I understand what comes after too. I know that the long game of sustaining a creative or high performing life, balancing it with everything else, without it costing you too much is an ongoing challenge. I also understand what it means to be genuinely passionate about your craft, in a way others don’t always grasp, and the sacrifice that passion demands.

Being a clinical psychologist, trained in mental health across the life span, as well as having relevant research and experience in working with a range of performers, means I can move between the two kinds of support people actually need. Sometimes that’s narrow and incredibly practical. It might be a pre performance routine, distancing from the specific catastrophic thought patterns that derail you two weeks out from an audition or exam and learning how to harness adrenalin effectively.

Other times it’s deeper work: addressing the perfectionism underneath the anxiety, or an old experience of public failure that’s never quite let go, the burnout that’s been building for years or the self doubt and confidence issues that have come from a string of rejections. You don’t need to know in advance which one you need as we can work at whichever depth or style that you and the moment calls for, and seemlessly shift as that changes, always being attuned to your needs at each step of the process.

Early in my career, the research on musical performance anxiety was sparse, and practitioners working specifically with performers were rare. Sports psychology, by comparison, had a substantial head start. I built my Master’s research in 1997 on the treatment for musical performance anxiety in that gap, and I’ve spent the years since building the knowledge to fill it. I’ve also coauthored published research in the Medical Problems of Performing Artists journal as a follow up to my Master’s research Shame and a lack of understanding still keeps performers in this field from accessing support that could help immensely and I have made it my mission to ensure that I contribute something meaningful to break down these barriers for current and future generations.

I help people work towards changing their relationship with anxiety, so a performance once shaped by fear or panic has the chance to become one defined by flow, mastery, and authentic expression. That combination of professional, lived arts experience and clinical rigour shapes everything I do in this space.

My approach is holistic, mindfulness based and systemic. It isn’t only about getting you through the next high stakes moment. It’s about sustainable performance, genuine enjoyment of your craft, and creating a meaningful life that holds up and supports you around it.

I don’t work toward eliminating discomfort, because both the recent mindfulness based research and my own experience point to a different way of meeting it. Anxiety, adrenalin, the racing heart before you walk out aren’t problems to fix or eliminate on the way to reaching your potential. They’re the body doing exactly what it’s built to do, reflecting that you care about your work and the outcome. My work is about helping you work with that activation rather than against it, so it becomes helpful fuel rather than an obstacle, by understanding what’s happening at the level of the body and nervous system, not just the mind, while always anchoring to your values.

Therapeutic Approach

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy/Coaching (ACT/ACTC): Building psychological flexibility, so you can hold difficult thoughts and sensations lightly and stay connected to what matters, rather than creating unnecessary discomfort
Performance Psychology : Including mental skill development, attentional control, pre performance routines, effective practice and the principles that underpin sports psychology’s approach to peak performance states
Somatic approaches: Working with what the body is doing under pressure using body (somatic) based approaches to support regulation and to help you feel grounded, safe and present in performance
Systemic family therapy :Understanding the systems you move through, including the temporary ones (a production, a band, an ensemble, a study group, a student year) that may be built to end, the more enduring ones around them, and the reality that you’re often still expected to perform as an individual within all of it
Trauma informed practice : For performers whose relationship with performance has been shaped by earlier experiences of fear, criticism, or failure
Neurodiversity affirming and LGBTQIA+affirming practice: Recognising that many performers, doctors, and other high achievers are neurodivergent, queer, or both, and that genuine performance psychology has to work with who you are and how you learn, not impose a one size approach over the top of it
Culturally responsive practice: For clients performing, examining, or practising in a second language or across cultural norms different from their own, including the many international medical graduates and doctors from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds I work with

Qualifications and Memberships

Master of Psychology (Clinical), University of South Australia
Honours Degree in Psychology, Flinders University of South Australia
Bachelor of Arts, The University of Adelaide
Registered Psychologist, Psychology Board of Australia
Fellow of the APS College of Clinical Psychologists
Full Member of the Australian Psychological Society
Full Member of the Australian Association of Psychologists (AAPI)
Founder and Chair of the AAPI Psychology for Performers and Creative Industries Interest Group
Member of the APS Psychology and the Performing Arts and Entertainment Industry Interest Group
Member of the APS Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Psychology Interest Group
Founder of the Attuned Collective
Member of the Performing Arts Medicine Group (PAMA)
Member of the Media Entertainment Arts Alliance (MEAA) Equity Wellness Database of arts affiliated practitioners
Master’s Thesis (Unpublished): Frost (1997), A comparison of a group cognitive behavioural treatment approach and a self-managed approach to the treatment of musical performance anxiety. University of South Australia.
Co-supervisor/Author of published research: Liston, Frost & Mohr (2003). The prediction of musical performance anxiety. Medical Problems of Performing Artists, 18(3), 120-125

Special Areas of Interest

Who I work with:

I work with a range of performers in the broadest sense of the word. I work with musicians, singers, actors, dancers, artists and with doctors preparing for fellowship examinations, alongside teachers, lawyers, dentists, business owners, CEOs, and other high-stakes professionals navigating the demands of performing at the highest level under scrutiny.

What links everyone I work with isn’t the professional domain. It’s the specific psychological demand of having to perform what you know, or who you are, or the character you embody, in real time, in front of evaluators, when the outcome matters. That’s the territory I work in, and where performance psychology has the most to offer.

Performing artists and arts professionals: Supporting musicians, singers, actors, and dancers, across every stage and style of a performing career, from music students walking into their first exam to professionals navigating an audition, a season, a touring life, or the quieter periods in between
The people around the performers: Supporting teachers, conductors, directors, designers, stage managers and crew: the people training, leading, shaping and supporting performers on and off stage. You carry your own version of the pressure, the responsibility and the exhaustion, often without anyone asking how you’re doing.
Family and partners of performers: Supporting the people closest to a performing life, who are often navigating its unpredictability, pressures, and demands alongside the performer themselves
Doctors and medical registrars preparing for fellowship written and clinical examinations: Supporting doctors across RACP, RACS, ANZCA, RACGP, RANZCP, RANZCOG, ACEM and other specialty pathways, working with the particular gap between the technical knowledge of medicine and being able to access it under exam pressure in strict, time based, unfamiliar conditions
Lawyers, teachers, dentists, business owners, CEOs, and other high stakes professionals: Supporting those for whom the classroom, the courtroom, the boardroom, or the client meeting carries the same pressure as any stage: credibility and reputation riding on a single performance
Students and emerging professionals under pressure — Year 12 students and university students facing critical exams and assessments, and those early in their careers navigating high stakes meetings, performance reviews and the pressure of being new

From performance psychology coaching to deeper work

The moment of performance is rarely where the work stops. The reality is that the people I work with are exceptionally capable. They wouldn’t be where they are otherwise as it comes from years of training and dedication. Technical expertise and exceptional ability doesn’t make anyone immune to being human.

Relationships strain under the demands of a performing or high pressure career. Grief and loss don’t pause for an exam timetable or a season. A past experience can still shape how safe performing feels today. None of that makes you “unwell” or incompetent, but instead it makes you someone doing something extraordinary, something activating multiple parts of the brain concurrently, under real pressure, who’s allowed to need support sometimes.

That’s the breadth I bring as a clinical psychologist, alongside the more specific performance psychology work. My focus areas include:

Mindfulness in performance: Helping you stay present and engaged during performances and auditions, rather than being pulled out of the moment by anticipation, evaluation anxiety, or self monitoring
Reframing anxiety and harnessing activation – Working with the nervous system rather than struggling against it utilising mindfulness and somatic regulation tools to help regulate emotions
Managing thoughts and distractions: Learning ways of loosening the grip of self critical and catastrophic thoughts that intefere with performance
Letting go of mistakes: Learning to respond effectively to errors by bringing yourself back to focus without judgement
Facing performance challenges: Supporting mindful performance practice and structured exposure work where avoidance is getting in the way of reaching potential
Values identification: Getting clear on what actually matters to you as an artist, doctor, student or professional, so your decisions and willingness to face discomfort in performance are directed by your own values rather than fear, comparison, or what others expect of you
Mental skills development: Cultivating the breadth of skills essential for peak performance and an en, not just managing the anxiety around it
Attention and concentration: Sharpening focus to work through internal or external distractions and other barriers
Confidence building : Boosting self assurance on and off the stage, the ward, or the field, by facing what matter to you with skills to support you
Recovery from failure and rejection: Recovering from the audition you didn’t get, the exam you have to resit, the season that didn’t go to plan, and rebuilding a workable relationship with your craft afterwards
Identity and sense of self : Particularly when work has been hard to come by, an audition cycle has gone quiet, or your sense of who you are has become tightly bound to your last performance or exam
Burnout and sustainability: Recognising when intensity has tipped into depletion, and rebuilding a way of working you can actually sustain
Career transitions: Injury, changing genres or repertoire, stepping back from performing, or reshaping a creative identity at any stage
Coming down and de-roling: Learning about the comedown after a performance, season, or production, and rebuilding a rhythm of rest around an unpredictable schedule
Sustainable practice: Making sure your craft complements a fulfilling personal life, rather than competing with it
Relationships: Supporting the connections a performing or high pressure career can quietly strain, including partners, families, peers, and crew
Enhanced mental health and wellbeing: Supporting the overall wellbeing of performers and working from a preventative framework
Addressing underlying trauma: Supporting this when it’s contributing to performance anxiety, blocks, or a loss of trust in your own ability

As you can see, these challenges performers face are rarely just about anxiety but involve identity, perfectionism, the weight of years of training, and the pressure that comes when your livelihood, credibility, or calling rests on a single moment and on everything you carry into it and away from it.

I understand the culture many high achievers work within too. The expectation that they should be able to manage this alone, and the reluctance to be seen to struggle. What close to 30 years in this field has taught me is that every high achiever is human and remarkably capable, and that vulnerability is something we all share, just not something we talk about enough.

Onlinc Courses

I’m also currently developing an online course ecosystem that includes mini and signature courses for performers, in addition to courses for doctors preparing for fellowship exams , bringing together evidence based ACT, performance psychology, and somatic work into a structured, self-paced format covering this same ground, from the high stakes moment through to the sustainability of a whole career.

Other work

Alongside this, I offer consultancy to arts organisations and companies seeking psychologists with genuine, specialised understanding of performance and creative life , including EAP style support for organisations wanting a psychologist who understands the field.

I’m also the founder of Attuned Collective, a multidisciplinary arts mental health group of aligned practitioners in South Australia. This was supported by an SA Mental Health Commission grant in 2024, working to build mental health literacy and accessible support across the performing arts sector.

Fee Schedule

Medicare rebate increase from 1st July 2026

Sessions of between 60-90 minute duration are available via Face to Face or Telehealth.

90 minute sessions are only allocated for initial consults, family or couple therapy or as agreed.

Please Note: Initial session is 90 Minutes and we book 2 subsequent 60/90 Minute sessions initially 2 weeks apart to ensure that there is continuity of access to the practitioner. This can be changed/ negotiated differently during the initial session.

90 minute sessions: (Initial, Family, Couple)

Business Hour Sessions – Between 9.00am – 5.00pm Monday to Friday – are $450.00
After Hour Sessions – Before 9.00am and after 5.00pm Monday to Friday – are $495.00

60 minute sessions: (Subsequent individual sessions)

Business Hour Sessions – Between 9.00am – 5.00pm Monday to Friday – are $310.00
After Hour Sessions – Before 9.00am and after 5.00pm Monday to Friday – are $360.00

Medicare Rebates of $145.25, can be applied if you are under a Mental Health Care Plan referred by your GP, Psychiatrist or Paediatrician, leaving a gap fee applicable of $164.75-214.75 (for 60 minute sessions) and $304.75 – 349.75 (for 90 minute sessions).

60 minute sessions are the standard length for subsequent individual sessions unless otherwise negotiated.

For full details of payment types and different payment processes for after hour appointments, Telehealth appointments, private health, and NDIS referrals, please visit our Fees and Payments page.

Booking Information