MY APPROACH TO COUNSELLING and Therapy

If you decide that you'd like to meet for a counselling session, it is important for me to get a sense of all your strengths and difficulties. My approach is very collaborative and this means I don't just give advice or tell you what you need to do to make things better. It is important to know that participating in counselling does require you to share about who you are and to really work towards the changes you want to make. There are different services I offer depending on what you are looking for.

What’s important to remember is you are the expert on yourself! My role is to assist you in figuring out why things might be challenging and to recommend coping strategies that will help to decrease your stress levels day to day, and increase your ability to manage when things get tough! We will work through an initial assessment together so that I can develop a picture of what your life is like and why it might be hard for you to cope right now. We then work out a plan together to outline specific goals to work towards, that match what you want to achieve out of your therapy experience.

THERAPEUTIC MODALITIES

There are many different ways to get support and there are a lot of different professionals that offer different types of wellness services. As a Registered Social Worker Psychotherapist, I provide support using evidence-based therapy modalities, which means that the practices I will support you with have been researched and have been determined to be effective.

I pull from several different modalities to assist you in working towards your goals including Mindful Self-Compassion Practices, Guided Imagery and Visualization and Expressive Arts. I am happy to discuss these with you in more depth, but here is a very brief description of some of the key therapeutic modalities that influence my approach:

Your Body Matters…

Since our bodies play such a significant role in the way we experience stress and anxiety, I believe that it is important to incorporate frameworks that acknowledge this. Therefore, I use mindfulness, deep breathing and sensory-motor strategies to support you to identify the cues your body provides you. Overtime, you then become better able to recognize distress before it becomes overwhelming, and in turn, this enables you to regulate your stress levels more effectively throughout the day.

Your Story Matters…

I additionally use aspects of Narrative Therapy, which acknowledges that every person has a unique story. This approach helps you to recognize your own set of values, strengths, and knowledge that have evolved from your individual experiences and assists you in framing the way you view your life story. This understanding is then used to help you address the problems you face, in a way that will work for you, that builds on your own natural abilities.

Your Thoughts and Feelings Matter…

Another modality I use is Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT). This approach explores the connections between our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. It is often difficult to realize how our automatic negative thoughts and core beliefs about ourselves, effect our emotions throughout the day. CBT acknowledges these tendencies and the idea that how we feel about situations and circumstances, influences the way we act in them. CBT can assist you to identify these patterns and provides tools to adjust some of the thought patterns that act as road blocks to effective coping.