My Approaches
In my work with clients, I draw from a blend of experiential, somatic, relational, emotion-focused, trauma-informed, and evidence-based approaches and techniques.
This means that I believe:
Our emotions and bodies hold so much knowledge – we only have to learn the language they speak, which sometimes may not be obvious to us.
Creating a different relationship to our body sensations than we once had may aid us in releasing what needs to be released.
We can experience wounding or fractures in our relationships (including our relationships with ourselves), but we can also experience healing in them too. Therapy is a powerful way to experience relational healing — through the therapeutic connection and in the therapeutic space — thus, allowing us to show up with more trust and clarity in our own relationships.
Cultivating trust, compassion, and connection in the therapy space provides a foundation for safe and deeper exploration, the ability to recognize and interrupt patterns and cycles, and a different way of relating to oneself and others.
The therapy space provides a platform in which we can experience the shifts we hope to experience, so that we can – with gentle support and guidance – bring these shifts out into the real world.
I also approach my clients’ challenges by drawing from internal family systems, psychodynamic, and attachment-focused therapies.
These frameworks provide myself and my clients the understanding that:
All of us are naturally made up of different inner parts. Rather than struggling against our parts; befriending, understanding, and relating to them in a different way may bring about a sense of resolve. Often, this resolve allows us to access a newfound ability to connect and relate to ourselves and our worlds in a way that is more empowered, balanced, and healing.
How we relate to ourselves, our emotions, and others has been implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) taught by our first attachment figures — our caregivers. Our current deepest emotional and relational wounds often may be traced back to our early formative experiences or our relationship with our caregivers. Profound healing of these wounds can be experienced in the therapeutic environment.
Many of the behaviours that no longer serve us stem from ways we tried to cope to survive. Understanding this with a compassionate lens can help us tap into our deep underlying need(s) for the behaviour, and thus, make an empowered decision on how to fulfil our needs in a more aligned, restorative way.
Our insecurities, anxieties, and difficult emotions may be ways that our ‘child selves’ are trying to communicate to us. When we can truly listen and tend to them, this is where the healing process begins.
When working with the effects of unresolved or unprocessed trauma, I integrate talk therapy with trauma processing techniques such as somatic (body-based) therapeutic approaches and Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR).
This means that:
Those that are experiencing the present effects of past traumas and adversities can be guided through trauma processing therapies to deeply process and release trapped emotions and memories in the body.
Rather than a “top-down” approach to counselling (which involves ‘talking through’ issues to access and transform the unconscious through conscious thought), the trauma processing approaches I offer are “bottom-up”: working directly with the body, nervous system, and unconscious so that the adverse past experiences that have left an imprint on our visceral selves can release their hold over us — both consciously and unconsciously.
Trauma processing therapies address the root of the issue, in a paced and intentional way (and always only at a pace the client is comfortable with). They facilitate the rewiring of neural pathways and releasing of emotional charge from memories in the safety of the therapeutic environment. When such rewiring and releasing occurs, it allows us to then live a life where we can feel a sense of safety, agency, and clarity in our minds and bodies, as well as experience more connective relationships with ourselves and others.
Everyone has a story that shapes the person they become. In our sessions, I will take the time to deeply listen and understand the layers of your story. My understanding of you and your story will be shaped by who you are within your unique contexts: your identities, your relationships, your formative experiences and events in your life, your family, the cultures that have impacted you, and larger societal systems.
Together, we will explore the parts of your story that may have once felt too difficult, shameful, or heavy to look at. Rest assured that this time, you won’t be alone. My aim is to walk alongside you in exploring and redefining your story. I will tailor my approach in therapy to your individual needs so you can move forward in your life with in the ways that work best for you, and author the next chapters of your story with greater ease, clarity, connectedness, and meaning.