“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” - Pema Chödrön

I am committed to holding what you bring to sessions with compassion and curiosity. Every harmful pattern had a useful function at one time in our lives. I work with clients by identifying these patterns and bringing awareness to how they show up in the present moment: our physical sensations, emotional reactions, and thoughts in the here-and-now. Being present can be vulnerable, so I prioritize building trust with my clients above all. I am here to witness the things that feel scary, dark, and shameful.

Modalities

I use an integrative approach that weaves together the following:

  • IFS therapy understands the psyche as made up of “parts” and “the Self.” Parts can be helpful or harmful, but always have good intentions. Some parts are protective (eg. a part of you that avoids conflict), and some parts carry wounds that need to be healed (eg. a part of you that believes “I am not good enough”). “The Self” is the well of compassion and confidence that we all hold within us, which has the power to heal our wounded parts. IFS therapy is a process of understanding your parts more clearly, communicating with them, and beginning to deepen our connection with the Self so that our parts’ needs can be met in a new way.

  • Our core wounds often surface in relationships. Relationships ask for vulnerability, authenticity, and trust - all of which can feel risky to our nervous systems. By incorporating a relational approach, I pull from attachment theory to help clarify not only relationship problems, but feelings of insecurity that are carried into all areas of life. The relational approach understands everything as relational, both external and internal; it is our tendency to believe that we are isolated that keeps us afraid. The therapeutic relationship is meant to both challenge you to explore deeper connection, and also create safety for you to do so.

  • Process-experiential therapy (or emotion-focused therapy, EFT) prioritizes the moment-to-moment emotional process that you are having during a therapy session. I will ask questions to explore this process with you, such as, What is it like for you to tell me that? Where do you feel that? By following emotions closely in this way, we can increase awareness of your present experience of past events.

  • Dreams can hold surprising insights that can help us along our healing journeys. For those who are interested, I approach dreams from an embodied Jungian perspective. Every aspect of a dream is understood as a part of you that is in the process of becoming conscious and integrated. We can explore dreams symbolically, or through exercises such as “active imagination” and dream character embodiment.

  • My creative background often emerges in sessions with clients. Writing (such as prompted journalling, or free-writing) can serve many purposes, such as making sense of complex emotions and past events, or simply getting to know where you’re at in the present moment. Other creative expressions, such as drawing and acting, can help us tap into emotions in a more embodied way than regular conversation. These ways of working will be offered as invitations when relevant, and are not a requirement in doing therapy with me.

  • Mindfulness can be defined in many ways, but I see it as the cultivation of nonjudgmental observation of oneself. This includes awareness of one’s senses, thoughts, and feelings, and slowing down to see the finer details. Honing this capacity underlies many types of therapy, but practicing it more intentionally can be beneficial, especially for those who struggle with intrusive thoughts, obsessions, addictions, and ADHD. Our sessions may at times include guided meditations for the purpose of developing mindfulness.

  • “Somatic” means relating to or affecting the body. A somatic approach to therapy prioritizes bodily wisdom (nervous system states, chronic pains, subtler sensations that we often ignore) as gateways into more deeply understanding what we are struggling with. Our bodies are often asking us to pay attention, and when we do, we find that there are answers: for example, “slow down,” “you need to cry,” “what happened wasn’t okay.” The wisdom of the body can be explored through questions such as What do you feel in your body when you say that? or Which body part is calling to you right now? , or through movement practices.

  • “The Imaginal” is difficult to define, but we can think of it as the realm of imagistic meaning, instead of logical meaning - images and symbols instead of concepts and ideas. This realm is always at play in therapy, but I find that using the imagination (eg. through guided visualization) can be a helpful way of entering it more directly. I often ask my clients to make metaphors for their experience and “play with it” until we begin to learn something new. To work with the Imaginal is to remember the part of us that is naturally creative; the source of sudden insights, spontaneous ideas, and our dreams.

  • I work under the assumption that all of us carry trauma, though the severity can vary widely from person to person. For those more deeply traumatized, the therapy process requires pendulation; stepping into our painful experiences to a manageable extent, and then moving back towards a more soothing focus. Bringing awareness to my clients’ strengths and inner resources, encouraging them to assert boundaries in session, and grounding when needed, are some ways that I practice trauma-informed therapy.

  • Even for those who do not consider themselves spiritual, how we cope with questions such as “what is the meaning of life?” and “why are we here?” can hold implications for our mental health and our ability to be present in our lives. Sometimes we avoid these questions entirely. Sometimes we use belief systems to answer these questions, which can be either helpful or harmful. Exploring the presence (or absence) of spirituality in our lives and the way it operates can reveal both important sources of health and strength, and also the places where we are attempting to cope with existential fears by distracting ourselves, feeding addictive behaviours, holding onto control, and so on.

Resonating with my approach?

You can either reach out to me for more information, or go ahead and book a free video consultation so we can get to know each other.