Individual Therapy for Adults

People are naturally adaptive, it’s how we’re made. We adapt to our surroundings, our environment, our culture, our families, peers, and even shifts in our internal worlds. But at each of these levels, the adaptations we’ve made in past contexts can stop working for the present circumstances. It could be that our environment has changed and what used to work for us isn’t working well now. Or it could be an internal change like depression or anxiety that now needs to be adapted to, either to minimize it’s impact or to eliminate it altogether. Whatever it is, it is normal and expected to encounter multiple periods in your life where the set of adaptations we’ve developed up to now aren’t working as well as we’d like, and we need help from others to develop new skills and ways of being, or shift to explore alternate solutions to what’s overwhelming us.

As humans, we are foundationally relational, and counselling and psychology is embedded in this reality: that adaptive change is mediated by learning in relation to another person. By providing a non-judgmental, warm, open and safe place to explore what’s happening, what mistakes might have been made, or injuries suffered unjustly, you can find just the right set of conditions in place with which to explore the big questions that come up for us when we face moments in life where out past adaptations are overwhelmed by the present circumstances.

I endeavour to provide this environment with everyone I work with, and in the context of this environment, to provide a range of different ways of exploring best suited to your contextual needs. Sometimes this is a process of exploring less integrated parts of processing, especially embodied senses and feelings, in order to fill in the gap of “that feeling that something is missing” with concrete guided experiences bringing a person back into integration. Sometimes it is building a set of concrete skills to counter problems like anxiety and depression. Sometimes it involves straight shooting analysis and guidance. Different problems in psychology require considerably different approaches and through life-long training I am always trying to broaden and deepen that base in my work with clients.

The Details of My Approach

Whatever the best approach is for the issues you want to work on in counselling, the one universal is that the approaches must be embedded in a relational framework of trust, openness to exploration, empathy, non-judgment, and warmth. These are necessary prerequisites to change for everyone, and are the most important thing to look for in finding a psychologist that matches well with you and your needs. I prioritize these values in my practice and my relationships with all of my clients.

A cornerstone of my therapeutic approach is the psychodynamic view that present experiences are shaped by life-long patterns that show up across multiple relationships in a person’s life. That is, by exploring which patterns emerge across different relationships, key aspects of your set of adaptations can be easily learned and worked on in sessions, leading to changes in patterns that used to work but aren’t as well anymore, or which you might think have never worked for you. The outcome of this work includes not only short-term change but, according to research, deeper change that changes the core personality and produces lasting change years after therapy is over.

The reasons for seeking counselling are incredibly diverse, and so I bring a wide array of training and skills integrated within a simple philosophy of presence to my work with you. For trauma-related challenges, I am trained in multiple modalities, stretching from the more assertive and challenging approaches to the more patient, sensitive, and gradual approaches, through the techniques of EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, or Clinical Hypnosis. For deeper or older trauma with more long-lasting or pre-verbal impacts, I also integrate EMDR Sand Tray approaches into a holistic approach.

Many seek counselling from a feeling of a deficit of social and psychological skills necessary to overcome current hurdles. For these, CBT skill sets often serve as practical ‘boost ups’ to help lift your skills to the level needed to overcome current obstacles, and when supplemented with psychodynamic and emotion-focused approaches (EFT), can add to the tools and skills developed (with CBT) towards personality-growing therapy that helps shift the fundamental way of relating to the world.

For issues beyond building new skills that stretch into the realm of transforming the self into a more adaptive, healthy, and flexible way of being, I use a psychodynamic (attachment) based paradigm that works on the fundamental way of relating to self and others in ways shown to produce lifelong, long-term change. Supplementing this are approaches such as EFT, MI, MBSR (mindfulness), and the approaches listed above to help grow and shape parts of the self such as the motivational system, willpower, and relational ways of being.

For issues such as lack of motivation, disengagement, and years-long concerns, I use psychodynamic and Sand Play modalities for more fundamental work that touches on transforming mechanisms of the lower brain regions (somatic, brain stem, and archetypal) to help produce more long-term, life-long change that is resilient through time.

Couples Counselling

Relationships are profoundly complex, often a combination of what we seek the most in life and where our weaknesses and vulnerabilities are most at play. When working well, they are extraordinarily healing areas in our life that often provide the bulk of peak experiences we look back on as we consider our lives. Surprisingly, the science of relationships as a discipline of science has discovered more than many people know, and so there is much guidance outside the popular conception of relationships that can hone relationships to reduce where things can go wrong and emphasize all of their positive benefits.

Couples face unique challenges, obstacles, and even pathologies that transcend any one individual and emerge only when the relationship develops. In addition to crises such as affairs, major losses, and major changes, even the past including identity, and historical grievances can come to dominate relationships and challenge their resilience.

My work with partners is communication-centric, reflecting the science of relationships and the finding that communication is central to most problems that arise in relationships. Sessions are typically focused around one or both of two central activities: those that teach, practice, and increase scientifically backed up communication skills and methods, and those that facilitate supportive listening not only for the couple and each member, but also guiding each partner to provide the needed supportive listening to their partner, the end goal being for the therapist, myself, to be made irrelevant and unnecessary as these skills are honed by the couple.

I am trained in the Gottman Method approach to couples therapy, a method that began as primary research (that is, no focus on therapy itself but rather just the science itself of relationships) for many years before its findings were developed into guidelines for a scientifically grounded set of therapeutic interventions. Because the Gottman method historically derives from a purely research based look at the science of relationships, it is especially notable for teaching clients the facts, and myths, of what makes relationships tick, and therefore it helps couples focus from the beginning on what matters most in strengthening relationships and avoiding common but wrong assumptions about what matters most.

Infants, Children and Adolescents

Childhood is a most extraordinary time of life where the same world of challenges that adults confront are experienced by children in the context of a nervous system and psyche that are still developing. Children often experience the world very differently than adults do. For children, there are many unique challenges that adults largely don’t face anymore: lagging skills, developmental hurdles, and locked future developmental milestones that can create struggles.

But it is easy to forget or miss that in addition to these unique challenges, children also face the entire world of adult-sized challenges, experiences, and struggles, but at immature stages of development that complicate how they are processed. Beyond formal diagnoses, children face loneliness, sadness, bullying, loss, trauma, attention and compliance difficulties and so much more with unique understandings, and lacking the full skills of adult development. These can be shaped and manifested in ways that can be confusing to parents and children alike. Sometimes, just like adults, children just need someone to help them make sense of a very confusing world.

I offer a child-centred approach that is grounded in science-based research and balanced with caring, patient, and supportive processing. This approach occurs not only within the counselling hour but also through coaching and training caregivers and supporting them to increase these attributes outside the counselling hour in their homes at the same time. This increases the amount and effectiveness of long-term progress and interventions for the child who is struggling or suffering in this moment.

The Details of my Approach

Parenting-specific interventions

My particular approach to child psychology contains a notable emphasis on systemic level (school and community, but especially parenting) interventions. The science on the weight of influence of parenting on childhood struggles is clear and considerable, and so my therapeutic approach attempts to mirror this weighting of importance by biasing towards a heavy involvement of the parents in my work with children. Parents can usually expect to be involved considerably both in interventions and feedback of what to experiment with, change, and keep the same or emphasize at home and in relationship with their children. Regular parent update sessions are usually scheduled including special emphasis at the beginning of the therapeutic relationship.

Child-specific interventions

Therapy works. Specifically, it has an effect size of .7, the same effect size as, for example, coronary bypass surgery. For adults, this is mediated through language, or ‘talk therapy’, but for children, whose language and cognitive centres are at various stages of development, the benefits of what ‘talk therapy’ provides are mediated by areas of the brain that are still being grown, and so another modality is necessary to bypass these undeveloped areas of the brain and get to the heart of what needs support, help, growth, encouragement, or change—in what can be contributing to the suffering of your child.

This other modality is play, and play therapy is the means by which children process events, experiences, emotions, sensations, and thoughts that trouble them or overwhelm them. Through experiences that are too confusing or overwhelming for the child to be able to comprehend through language alone, children use role play, sensory play, or play with toys to create a level of separation between themselves and the overwhelming problem, and in doing so, project the problem outside themselves and make it possible to relate to and process through without the danger of being emotionally overwhelmed by it. Play therapy is a broad school of techniques that facilitate this process by creating an environment in which the child feels safe to explore what is troubling them, and then walks with the child through their exploration of it to a level of processing or cohesion on the other side—the equivalent of what an adult does using talk in therapy.

In early childhood work (0 months to preschool years) I am a Registered Circle of Security Parent Facilitator. I am trained in and able to help with issues arising out of parenting questions and problems in the early years of life. I am also trained to help parents who want to engage in protective and preventative work to set their children on the right course from the beginning of their lives with maximizing access to the most scientifically grounded approaches to parenting. The attachment of an infant and toddler to their caregivers is their base for understanding much about their world and about relationships and this secure attachment is correlated with future success in marital relationships, happiness indexes, and future success in school and work.

In middle childhood work (later preschool years to onset of adolescence) I am a Registered Play Therapist (RPT) (Association for Play Therapy, #T4948) with a commitment to extensive ongoing training. My particular focus is in Child Centred Play Therapy, the most extensively researched approach in play therapy to date. For children who have experienced trauma and are able to engage with it in sessions, I am trained in the EMDR Sand Tray approach, which modifies the highly effective EMDR approach for the play-based sand tray approach. I am also in ongoing training in Sand Play, which lends itself especially well to children who speak less or are particularly shy of working directly on what is troubling them. For anxiety and depression focused work, I utilize especially Lynn Lyons’ systemic level approach that embeds the work with the anxiety within the framework of the family to maximize the effectiveness of the interventions. For parent-child relationships and lagging skills (developmental delays and other delays in maturing) I utilize both Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS, Ross Greene) and Child Parent Relationship Training (CPRT) when contextually appropriate to help parents and children understand each other better when communication is difficult both ways.

Adolescence is, for many, a turbulent time in which many of life’s biggest problems are faced head-on and sometimes without all the resources needed to face them ready or available. This can make for especially challenging battles with any number of difficulties including but not limited to clinical issues like depression and anxiety. In adolescent work, I utilize a hybrid of both Sand Play and talk therapy approaches depending on the preferences of the adolescent themselves, and their needs and goals (some requiring more emotion-based approaches, others more analytical). My particular strengths are in work with adolescent depression, Lynn Lyons’ systemic approach for anxiety, EMDR and EMDR Sand Tray, and psychodynamic (attachment) approaches emphasizing identity development.

Individual Therapy for Adults People are naturally adaptive, it’s how we’re made. We adapt to o... Read More

My approach with children

Play therapy works for children because play comes naturally to children and because play leads development. For children who’ve endured trauma and grief play therapy also allows a separation between the content and what is being worked through and the child themself. This allows a child to remain more emotionally regulated while still dealing with difficult subject matter. Every child is different and so play in the therapy room can involve Sandplay, art, toys, games, puppets, stories and more. Through play, assessment of diagnoses for the child can be explored, parent/caregiver-child relationships can be strengthened and many presenting issues can be dealt with (such as anxiety, depression, school problems, shyness, bossy-ness, anger issues, attention deficits, developmental delays, emotional expression and communication, and also grief, bedwetting, fears, obsessive compulsive behaviours, exposure to trauma, or chronic pain.).

In play therapy children are given a platform to express what is going on for them and while parent/caregiver goals usually align with the goals of their children, parents gain insight into their child’s world to understand what it feels like for them and better understand what they are needing/asking for. Children enjoy play therapy as they feel in the driver’s seat, and even difficult subject matter can be dealt with in a fun way.

I use a collaborative approach and parents are highly encouraged to provide feedback on how their child is doing in between sessions and also to book sessions with me where we can discuss how they may help continue what has begun in therapy at home for their child. Some sessions may be booked to include a child with their parent(s)/caregivers or siblings to work on issues related to family dynamics or attachment. I have training in Circle of Security Parenting to help with attachment to caregivers in younger children specifically. Ensuring your child is best equipped to deal with their next phase of life is important to me and we will work together to ensure this happens!

My approach with adults

I have found that people are happiest when living in a way that is congruent with who they are authentically. I will strive to create a relationship and atmosphere where you can explore beneath the surface of who you are while feeling safe and respected. Goals in counselling are set by you and we will work in a way that honours your values and beliefs. A frequent goal in therapy is to first come to a place of self-acceptance and understanding. Once someone can accept themselves where they are currently at, they are ready to begin a transformation to better become who they want to be. Together we will explore your emotions, thoughts, beliefs and work to create a shift so that you begin to live life more meaningfully or joyfully. My particular areas of focus with adults include depression, anxiety, trauma, grief and loss, chronic pain, sexual health, identity, life transitions, and difficulty in relationships. No problem is too big or too small to discuss in our sessions. I am grounded in a psychodynamic framework which sees the self as shaped by internal dynamics rooted in early attachments attachment, by developmental experiences, and by emotions, instincts, and thoughts that are influenced by our external and internal worlds. I add to this approach with specific additional training pertaining to my areas of focus. I strive to tailor treatment for each person to meet their individual needs. I’m not afraid to sometimes call you on things, am super caring and sometimes funny . I hope to provide some comfort as we deal with the important things. While I provide some details about how I may work with specific difficulties or situations, setting up a first session to is important to help us lay out a road map of how we might proceed based on your own unique personality and goals.

Trauma Therapy

A strong focus for my work with clients is trauma based. Traumatic responses can occur when events outside of our expectations occur that leave us feeling threatened, scared or anxious. Car accidents, deaths, abuse or other distressing events can be traumatic to us. If you experience flashbacks, nightmares, have difficulty sleeping, feel triggered by certain situations, are easily irritated or angered, notice shakiness, hypervigilance and/or you have begun to avoid certain places or people you may have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. If you feel your living is limited due to these symptoms, you may consider beginning trauma work.

One highly researched modality to work with trauma is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). This empirically supported technique is helps to lessen the strength of associations and triggers that develop and eave us feeling vulnerable and increase our ability to be triggered by random stimuli (thoughts, smells, locations, etc.). Using this method in therapy I can help you reprocess traumatic memories and decrease or remove their negative influence in your life. If you don’t feel you have post-traumatic stress disorder but feel triggered or overtaken when you are in a specific situation or think of a specific event, EMDR may also be helpful for you. Traumatic memories are distinct from ‘normal’ memories in that they feel more real, like recordings of the event that can be replayed. EMDR helps integrate the realistic part of the trauma memory so that, like all other memories, the details fade and only a partial narrative with flashes of realism remain—in such a way that they no longer ‘spontaneously’ invade your mind when you don’t want them to. Once this is achieved, the symptoms of traumatic memories leave or diminish, and the power the memory once had over you is taken away from the traumatic event. Another vital element of choosing to do trauma work is that left unchecked, traumatic memories can guide how we live by leading us to avoid certain people, areas, or activities, thus making our world smaller and scarier. Over time, these limitations we put on our lives to cope with the power the trauma has over us can shape a smaller world, and that means a world that looks scarier and causes more anxiety and sadness than is objectively real. Interrupting this process by engaging in trauma work as early as you think you can manage is an important decision. If you feel you have already waited too long, you may be in a place where you are making lifestyle choices you are unhappy with but feel you can’t stop making. Trauma can feel overwhelming, but the truth is that the impacts of trauma are some of the most changeable psychological aspects most receptive to therapeutic work. Together in counselling we can work towards helping you become the self you were meant to be.

Grief & Loss

Grief and loss feel like the hardest things we can go through—impossible even to live through at times. Some loss is more visible, such as loss of loved ones or divorce, while other loss is not seen by others, such as miscarriages, loss of a job, loss of a sense of self, and loss of one’s place in life or sense of meaning. Too often the psychological toll these terrible events can take on us can be seen by those around us and ourselves as mental illness or pathology. Really, however, the processes of loss are better understood as painful journeys of mourning, of grief, redefinition and reintegration, rather than as symptoms to be treated. I believe the best course forward is not alleviation of the ‘symptoms’ but rather honoring the impact of the loss and working through the hole it leaves in us to help shape what will now grow in its place. In working with grieving clients I rely on my background in psychodynamic and existential approaches to help navigate the overwhelming impact of loss through its widespread effects on the psyche. This is from conscious sharing of memories, through exploring alternate meanings of the loss of those we had broken relationships with, through dream work and analysis as our minds attempt in their own unique way to process the loss when we sleep. Hidden emotions we didn’t know we would feel, like anger, are often difficult to acknowledge or express around those sharing our loss, and I offer a place where such nuances can breathe and find a place to be understood and organized as you develop and co-create a new relationship and understanding with who or what was lost. Identity and Self-Discovery One of my favorite areas to work in with clients is in the area of creating meaning or in developing one’s own identity. Often, we may “wake up” in our lives to find ourselves questioning how we got to our place in life, wondering if we consciously made decisions to arrive here or whether we just went along with what others expected of us. In a time like this it is valuable to re-assess and to gain an understanding of who we are, what our values and dreams for our lives are and begin to work towards living in a more authentic way. This work may also be important when dealing with major life changes such as loss of job, a loved one dying, graduating high school or a recent divorce or life change. This work may include gaining an understanding of how your personality was formed in early childhood. Often, with greater insight into the “where did this come from?” clients can then feel more choices for future behaviours or ways of interacting in the world. Often times this work is accompanied by a sense of grief… grief for the person that was or the person that one could have been but wasn’t. Clients who decide to take the journey of self-discovery often express feeling more alive and more present in their life day to day. Sexual Health & Dysfunction Sexual difficulties can affect a person outside of the bedroom by increasing feelings of inadequacy, grief, loneliness and anger. As humans are sexual and relational by nature, it is important not to leave sexual difficulties as they are. I work with individuals to explore their personalities and their relationships to determine how their sexual behaviours are enhancing or decreasing fulfillment in their lives. I believe sexual issues such as pain or erectile dysfunction have physiological roots, but that they can also be affected by psychological reasons as well. My job in dealing with sexual health and dysfunction is to determine what is occurring on a psychological level for a person that may be contributing to their difficulties engaging or enjoying sex with their partner. I work with clients experiencing vaginismus (pain during intercourse), difficulties with orgasm, erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, low libido, anxiety surrounding sex, polyamory, open relationships and sexual exploration. Sometimes sexual issues are best addressed with one’s partner in couple’s counselling, and I often see couples to work through these issues.

Couple’s Therapy

Couples usually agree to spend money to renovate their homes, but then live inside them feeling lonely, sad or angry when it comes to their relationship with their partner. I encourage couples to attend counselling to improve the parts of their marriages that need tune-ups before resentment or detachment begins. I enjoy working with couples because healthy relationships add meaning and happiness to not only the couple’s lives but to their families as well. Couples who communicate well, share a deep friendship, and care about one another’s goals and dreams are happier and even physically healthier. I have specific training in Gottman Method Couples Counselling as well as training in Emotion Focused Therapy to focus on what is going on beneath the surface of your relationship. Rather than focusing on problem-solving, I prefer to focus on changing how couples view and/or solve their problems. In session we will look at how each partner feels, and also how their partner reacts to them having emotions (meta-emotions). I hope to facilitate each person learning more about their partner and gaining a deeper understanding of their personality and the background that has caused them to become the person they are today. I also invite partners to make changes once the partnership becomes a safe and friendly place in which they can become vulnerable. My style is one that focuses on emotions and words spoken in the present moment. I am unafraid to ask the tough questions but I also value humour in session. Some sessions may feel heavy or difficult and others a little lighter. What is important for me is to tailor therapy to fit your needs as a couple considering how ready each partner is to change and also each person’s personality and comfortability with the counselling process. Changes and experiments are invited throughout the week to encourage the cementing of what has begun in the therapy session. Couples can expect to work on increasing their knowledge of one another, increasing positive communication, building trust, growing friendship, having deeper conversations about goals and dreams and discussing perpetual problems in a new way. I will ask you to experiment with small changes in your interactions throughout the week and we will debrief these on our next sessions. I’m happy to see you, even if you haven’t completed your “homework” ;) Every couple is treated as unique and therapy is tailored towards their concerns. For instance, if you and your partner are arguing about the same things over and over again or your conversations always tend to end up in the same place, we will work on what is deeper beneath the surface of these interactions so that they happen less and less often. If you are feeling you have lost the spark in your relationship and you have become like friends or roommates without the romance, we will work on changing interactions to revive that which was once there. I view consensual and healthy sex between couples as very important and work with couples to ensure that their sex lives become satisfying to both partners. At times a couple’s difficulties in their sexual interactions is an extension of what is going on a deeper, more subconscious level within the relationship. Counselling can help bring these to the surface so that shifts can occur within the relationship that then relate to a more satisfying sex life. I work with couples who struggle with specific sexual issues such as pain during intercourse (dysperunia), chronic illnesses that effect sexual intimacy, erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, differences in sexual preferences, frequency preferences as well as overcoming affairs or previous sexual trauma. In session together, we will work to build affection and respect for one another and deepen your connection. We will work on learning to approach conflict in a different manner where you can gain a deeper understanding of one another’s personalities and needs.

Degrees and Additional Training

-Master of Counselling degree from City University of Seattle -Bachelor of Arts Psychology Major from the University of Alberta -Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Basic Training & Recent Traumatic Event Protocol (RTEP) -Existential Analysis -Gottman Method Couples Therapy Level 2 -Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) -Motivational Interviewing (MI) Level 2 –Play Therapy (Green Stream & Red Stream) -Registered Circle of Security Parent Facilitator

My approach with children Play therapy works for children because play comes naturally to childr... Read More