Practice Philosophy
The natural world offers us many teachings about healing and change. Mosses and ferns show us how a fractal reflects the whole, and how thriving as a whole supports the thriving of an individual part. This, too, is true of psychotherapy. Though our difficulties can seem overwhelming and impossible to tackle, insights and change in one area of our lives can often impact other parts in meaningful and significant ways.
Indeed, our emotions, thought and behavioural patterns, and the in-the-moment experiences of our physical bodies are all useful channels of information that tell us about our needs, what matters to us, and who we are in relationship to ourselves and others in our lives. We will work together to cultivate an ever deepening capacity for self-awareness as we work to understand these various aspects of your experiences. While awareness and insight are invaluable, they alone do not necessarily lead to change. With this in mind, I will work with you to find a useful balance between support and challenge, acceptance and change. Therapeutic Approach |
My therapeutic approach is shaped by my professional training, my clinical experience, and my own lived experiences of trauma and healing. I have come to learn that our present-day struggles can often be understood as adaptations to difficult environments that we have had to navigate. This can include childhood interpersonal trauma, developmental injuries, and experiences of violence, oppression, and othering. With this lens, I explore with people how their strategies have functioned to serve them, and how they could be reconfigured to better support their well-being today.
I have worked in various professional settings over the past 11years, as a Counsellor and Trauma Therapist in community mental health agencies such as Family Service Toronto, the Barbra Schlifer Clinic, and the Cedar Centre (Newmarket, ON). More recently, I have been working within a post-secondary education institution where I provided individual and group psychotherapy to university students. I practice from a trauma-informed, diversity-affirming, and strength-based approach and incorporate the following modalities into my work:
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