A Unique Counselling Experience

Beyond the theories & modalities, some values we bring to our sessions are:

Authenticity – The person my client’s meet in therapy is the same person that my friends and family know and love. If sharing myself or my story will benefit you I am not afraid to so. I will share both my strengths and my mistakes with my clients. And at some point we’ll probably laugh, cry, and swear together.

Experience – I have worked with vulnerable youth and adults for the last 20 years. I know trauma both personally and from helping other survivors. I have seen and experienced how society treats those who are vulnerable or slip through the cracks. I wrote my capstone thesis on the effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences. The skills and therapies I bring my clients are not just supported by research but also by my own personal healing journey.

Accountability – As someone who prioritizes working through their own stuff. I bring a strong self-awareness of how I may impact others and I work hard to reduced the power imbalances that can show up in therapy when your counsellor is a person of privilege. Not only that but I welcome when my client’s can show me my own blindspots and where I need growth.

Allied – As clinical counsellor and as a person I inhabit almost every intersection of privilege but my life’s work has been to lift up the vulnerable, the marginalized, and the oppressed. 

Depathologizing – To pathologize is to treat someone as the source of their problem. For example much of modern health science has located ours problems within the ourselves by labelling it a disease (a problem with your body), a disorder (a problem with your mind/personality), or problematic behaviour (a problem with your morality) but the latest research invites us to consider how our protective biological survival responses can have a devastating impact our lives when they are chronically activated particularly in our early years of development.