Individuals

I have now been a student of and working in the field of personal growth for 14 years. During this time, I have collaborated with people in a great variety of personal circumstances and varying backgrounds. My experience in the field has taught me that no one style or modality works for everyone. I picture counselling to be like a mosaic design - a balance between variety and structured form. I feel this helps keep open-mindedness and attentiveness at the fore-front of our collaborations together, especially in the beginnings of our work.

Our initial meetings will likely give you the opportunity to inform me about the story or narrative you believe describes your life. Telling your narrative helps us both learn about who you are. In this telling you may wish to inform me about your cultural beliefs or other important details about how you identify as a person. You can also sort through relevant personal history, assign meaning to your experience, as-well-as identify your gifts and on-going dilemmas. Working in this narrative style allows us to be inquisitive about your needs in a collaborative way. Together we will begin to see a framework of how to proceed and what to focus on. I like to keep in mind that there are multiple options to explore. Some people need support in altering the external circumstances they find themselves in, while others decide to enhance or develop practical cognitive skills they feel will assist them. I also find that many people find the processes of re-authoring or re-framing parts of their story to be liberating and empowering.

Beyond this narrative, I am also able to guide you in therapeutic work that asks you to “look within” and explore the emotional experience of your life. These therapeutic endeavours work less with the cognitive mind and more with our feeling or sensing mind & body. Exploring our inner experience is a process that has a long tradition in the field of therapy and is also something that has been part of many cultural traditions for centuries. Inner child / inner family healing are two such process-oriented approaches that people often seek out. I am able to facilitate these and other emotional healing practices, if so desired.

As is always the case, you have the final say on what we will and will not do in our sessions together. I believe in practicing collaboratively with you and that therapy is highly variable and flexible. One basic analogy I often refer to is that people will often see progress if they notice that their problems / life dilemmas lessen in intensity, frequency, and duration. I will do whatever I can, within reason, to support your growth as a person.         

“My teacher is always in front of me.”

 –  Barry, one of my teachers   

I am accountable to clients for practicing inclusively regarding one’s gender & gender expression, race, sexuality, culture, abilities or economic situation.

I specialize in the following areas:

Relationship / Couples

In every relationship we bring a personal “love code” that functions as our “operating system” through which we experience and share love. This love code influences all aspects of our participation in the relationship, including our communication style, how we perceive and give affection, and our emotional safety needs. Similar to theories about our “attachment style”, our personal love code has been influenced by the experience of how we have been loved, or witnessed love, in the past. An understanding of our love code will help us in all our familial or intimate love relationships.

Given that our past experience of love plays such a significant role in how we experience our relationships in the present, I begin relationship / couples counselling by asking each person to come in by themselves. In this beginning phase of individual relationship counselling, I invite each partner to explore their individual feelings and truths, their perceived “love code”, and above all, their own individual responsibility for the current state of the relationship. Participating in these initial individual sessions is in itself an act of love and commitment. It also helps bring the presence of equality, a very important factor, into our further collaborations about the relationship.

Once each partner has taken equal part in doing their own individual sessions, we are then ready to start the second phase, which brings both people together to explore what they need to do to grow together, communicate harmoniously or re-open their heart and minds to each other. I often call this phase the “work of love”.

I do not believe that people or relationships should or ever need to be “perfect”. But what is often needed is an agreed upon way to communicate and vision of what love looks, thinks and feels like in the context of your mutual well-being.

Please contact me by email or phone to inquire about relationship counselling.

 Youth / Adolescents

The focus of my professional life for the past 14 years has been working with young people as a high school Physical Education and English teacher. The thousands of students I had the honour of instructing and coaching in the school system were my greatest teachers in learning how to provide authentic counselling to young people.

When working with young people, I first invite them to teach me about who they are. In this first session, many young people choose to share several personal stories about themselves that they feel best represent their identity. Other young people prefer that I help guide them through interesting and thoughtful questions. The goal of these initial conversations is for the young person to feel understood, valued and known for who they are. We also discover your “insider youth knowledge”, which tells us about your strengths, which you need to be encouraged to use. As I have learned through years of experience with youth, trust and therapeutic relationships are built when mutual authenticity is present from both adults and the young people they wish to help.

It is through an authentic, respectful partnership that the young person and I begin to discuss how the problems and dilemmas that brought them to counselling are adversely affecting their lives. I often suggest a variety of therapeutic activities, explaining each one’s purpose and possible outcomes. These include Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Mindfulness, Narrative therapy and Solution Focused Therapy. This gives the young person some choice in what they feel is right for them. One example is therapy that involves art, novels, music or movies that young people find especially important to them and help explore their emotional experience. Another example would be a personal identity project in which the young person explores their values and then sets process-oriented goals that will align their life with these values.

The circumstances of young people coming to counselling can vary greatly. Many young people prefer to do their counselling sessions in a one-on-one scenario with me. Others prefer to involve a parent / guardian, family member or trusted friend in the sessions for support. It is also the case that a young person and their parent / guardian may wish to do relational counselling together. All of these scenarios can be accommodated and planned prior to our first session.   

 Young Professionals / Students

The old saying, “being thrown in at the deep end” is perhaps never more appropriate than for young professionals and students in their 20s and 30s. This phase of life is filled with significant transitions where young people are initiated into a new existence we call “adulthood”. Part of this transition comes through some concrete changes such as leaving home for post-secondary school, independently assuming financial responsibilities or starting your career. These concrete changes can be tough enough to adjust to on their own, but what about the symbolic transitions that occur inside our psyche?

The experience of many young professionals and students is one of deep frustration and confusion. How can a time that is so exciting leave you feeling like you are simply “trying to keep your head above water?” Is this what adulthood is really like? What have you gotten yourself into?

Our current culture is lacking in support for the symbolic transitions that assist young people in feeling initiated into becoming an independent and resourceful adult – what I like to call a “choiceful adult”. It only takes a little bit of historical insight to see that formal, meaningful psychological initiation into adulthood has been a multicultural tradition for thousands of years. In the present day, however, the goal of building of a strong “LinkedIn” profile is not doing the trick in providing young adults with the meaningful initiation they need.

To support my position, I would like to draw from personal experience and share that I first went to counselling as a young adult at 24 years old. I had just started my first career as a high school teacher and, simultaneously, was going through the break-up of my first truly loving intimate relationship. Again, these are very clear concrete transitions, but they had nothing to do with the symbolic, inner changes that I needed to talk about and experience. I began to see, over time, that those external events actually mattered less in comparison to letting go of the myths and emotional struggles that accumulate in childhood and adolescence.

Young adulthood is such an important time to invest in your psychological and emotional development. The effort and pace of life present during university and our first career experiences are enough to unsettle even the highest achievers. As a counsellor I can help you strategize what steps will be best for you to get out of feeling constantly overwhelmed and to also grow into being a conscious and capable adult.           

Dissolving Depression: Effective Experiential Psychotherapy

Many people will experience a period of time in life where persistent depression and unhappiness takes hold as their day-to-day “normal”. I have seen periods of depression like this appear for people of all ages – from adolescence to middle age – and it often comes and goes for months or even years.

This depression can also stay present regardless of how our life appears on the outside – excellent grades, well-paying jobs and even long-established relationships with friends and family have little effect in changing how we feel. In many cases, people may have devoted a great deal of effort in trying yoga, mindfulness practices or meditation only to feel “stumped again” when a lasting change doesn’t occur. Needless to say, anyone who relates to this knows just how tiresome, hopeless and scary it can be to live this way.

Because this depression is so persistent, people develop methods to cope or temporarily alleviate the suffering – by now we all know these common symptoms and coping methods – using alcohol or marijuana to escape, sacrificing sleep to be online, purposeless dating or repeated superficial relationships and sometimes even our exercise habits – these can all be “used” as ways to “hang in there” or hide depression. The trouble with these coping mechanisms is that they actually act as pillars that keep the depression standing.

Much of my own personal growth has been discovering how to dissolve persistent depression, as I have described it above. I have also seen many other brave souls go through their own work against depression during this healing journey. It is this real lived experience that I bring with me into my work as a counsellor.

Now, as my life’s work, I have the privilege of assisting my clients in finding a lasting way out of their own depression. For people who relate to the type of depression and unhappiness I have described here, I believe that experiential personal therapy is an undeniably powerful tool to begin a major shift in your life experience.

The premise of experiential therapy, as I practice it, is that unlike interview-based styles, it integrates your thoughts, sensations and emotions to “imprint” new, preferred experiences that will override previous ones that have brought depression into your life. These new impressions “go with you” into your life outside of therapy and, little-by-little, they help guide your path away from the patterns of depression.    

These experiential practices are conducted gently, with skillful facilitation on my part to ensure that there is no “re-traumatization”. It is often said that in experiential therapy we re-experience the past in the present – leaving you, the participant, with a qualitatively different moment of life that helps you turn towards your preferred future.

A significant part of why experiential therapy is so impactful is the aspect of being “witnessed” or seen by another – we humans are relational beings, and often need the presence of a trusted “other” to initiate our growth. Our body / mind / heart do not care whether an experience occurs in “real” life or in a counsellor’s office – if the experience is authentically “felt”, it will be remembered. This is why experiential therapy is so powerful.

Although it may feel like persistent depression may never end, think for a moment what it would be like to say or feel something that you might have been holding in for years? Perhaps it is the experience of standing up for a past version of yourself in moments when you were treated wrongly by another? What will it be like to experience courage and allow sadness to be released and witnessed as it deserves to be? These powerful experiences could all be part of your journey and they can be facilitated in a safe and caring environment.  

For those interested in specific experiential styles – I can facilitate in-depth Inner Child work and Inner Family Systems therapy. My experiential practice is also influenced by Gestalt therapy, guided imagery / meditation and somatic therapy approaches.

Please connect with me if you have any questions or would like to set up an appointment.      

Counselling Sessions

Individuals

$180.00 / 50-minutes

Individual, one-on-one session. Session length can vary between 50 and 80 minutes and will be agreed upon prior to the first session.

Couples

$250 / 50-minutes

Two participants in an intimate or family relationship. Session length can vary between 50 to 80 minutes as needed.

All fees for service include 5% GST. Fees are subject to annual review (January 1, 2024).

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