Individual Counseling
Do you want to create change in your life but are not sure how? Do you feel stuck? Depressed? Anxious? Are your relationships strained, harmful, or unsatisfying? Many people struggle with one or more of these experiences. It has become more common to experience distress, depression, or anxiety. Therapy can be short term or long term depending on your needs, goals, and level of readiness for change. Whether you want to reduce stress by learning relaxation techniques or you are seeking to make significant changes in your relational patterns, therapy is an effective place to start.
My approach to therapy is to create a collaborative relationship to work towards your goals based on your needs, strengths, and limitations. My job is to create a safe and containing space for you to open up and share you thoughts, feelings, and experiences. As a neutral and nonjudgmental party, I bring to light the obstacles that are preventing the changes you seek. I provide you with tools and strategies to address those obstacles at your pace. I help you identify and process the experiences that have contributed to the patterns that do not serve you. And I help you nurture your existing qualities and traits which contribute to positive outcomes.
Couples Counseling
Do you and your partner find yourselves having the same argument over and over? Have you lost the intimacy and passion or find it hard to connect? Do you have trouble communicating your wants and needs? Each of us goes into relationships carrying our past relational experiences - the proverbial “baggage”. In our family of origin, we learn patterns of interaction that influence how we communicate, negotiate boundaries, fight, make up, express love and receive love. These patterns can often be unconscious and difficult to distinguish. That’s why it is helpful to talk to a neutral and safe third party like a therapist. In sessions, couples will learn effective communication and conflict resolution, develop healthy boundary setting, and strengthen respect and empathy. Couples therapy can help whether it’s to build a strong foundation, to renew commitment to the relationship, or to make decisions about separation.
Child and Teen Counseling
Children have different developmental capacities and needs than adults. In therapy, young children are best able to tell their stories, express their feelings, and learn new behaviors by using play, art, or being physical. Each child has their own set of strength, needs, and limitation so it is crucial to tailor services to their learning and regulation capacities. Doing therapy in a young child’s natural setting, in their home or school, is helpful in addressing the specific behaviours that occur in those context.
Today’s adolescents face unique and significant challenges. Parents and teachers are seeing high numbers of anxiety, depression and suicide ideation. It is crucial for teens to have a safe space to open up and find support. In therapy, teens can share their story, learn coping skills, and work towards goals to become a well-rounded individual. They can navigate this critical period of development, seeking to develop their own identity, with support and guidance.
Family Counseling
Humans are relational beings who are programmed to be a part of a system in order thrive. A family is a basic system with specific division of roles: caretakers/parents, children, siblings, grandparents, aunts/uncles. Families can take on many forms. Therapists make a distinction between the family of origin (the family you were born into or raised in) and the family we create or enter later in life (for example through marriage, parenting or chosen families made of friends and loved ones). Your family of origin raises you with certain values that foster your core beliefs about yourself and the world around you.
Families will often have an ‘identified patient’ in mind, such as a child struggling with addiction issues. The therapist’s job is to treat the whole family as a unit. This means helping each member understand their role and how it contributes to the system in place. Families fall into patterns that can create healthy or unhealthy dynamics. The therapist can identify these patterns and assist the family to make changes together. Families learn to communicate effectively, resolve conflict, increase respect, and reconnect with each other.