Services

Individual Therapy

My approach is holistic, compassionate, and designed to help you start where you are - uncovering your strengths, gaining new insights, and honing the skills you desire to overcome life's challenges.

Working from an attachment perspective, I will help you gain a new understanding of your past, the roles caregivers played in your development and how this may be impacting your present struggles.

I will help you understand how your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours - while they may be unwanted now - all adapted over time and had a purpose; to get your needs met or to protect you from unsafe situations.

Additionally, I may teach you about your nervous system to help you understand what's happening in your body. I incorporate mind/body techniques to help you access deep or stuck feelings, reducing unwanted emotions and work through unrevealed trauma.

Together we'll find an approach that works best for you. The methods I offer are listed below:

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy has evolved to become an evidence-based psychotherapy approach that is used to treat many conditions.

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy is a modified type of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Its main goals are to teach people how to live in the moment, develop healthy ways to cope with stress, regulate their emotions, and improve their relationships with others.

During sessions DBT therapists will use a balance of acceptance and change techniques. Acceptance techniques focus on understanding yourself as a person and making sense of why you might do the things you do. Change techniques focus on replacing behaviours that harm you with behaviours that help you. This may mean your therapist will challenge your unhelpful thoughts and encourage you to find new ways of dealing with distress.

Mindfullness

Mindfulness is described as the practice of being present, in the moment, on purpose, without judgment, doing one thing at a time, and doing what works for you.

Why is mindfulness so important? Because it helps us cope with a variety of concerns including problems with mood, chronic pain, and attention. The research has shown that mindfulness facilitates emotion regulation because it helps us to remain in the present and focus on the facts alone. When we feel something intensely, there are often ineffective urges present, and mindfulness allows us to see potential (skilful) alternative options before we act.

Acceptance is a core aspect of mindfulness. Those who learn to accept their experiences and not just notice them are less reactive to stress and are less prone to mind-wandering. When we accept difficult situations, the situation will run its course and eventually go away. Acceptance helps us to stop ruminating on what is “wrong” and allows us to experience other feelings and thoughts. In this way, we get to see the entire picture.