My Approach
It is not required for clients to understand all of the acronyms therapists use - the acronyms are mostly helpful for other therapists who are looking to refer their clients to another practitioner. The only important acronym essential for clients to know is "RCC," which stands for Registered Clinical Counsellor, and is important when you check if your insurance covers sessions with me.
My Approach
For anyone who wants to know my style of therapy:
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At the core of my work, I follow a Rogerian or person-centered style of therapy
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When thinking about patterns, I like to consider how the past impacts the present
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I also find it helpful to map your inner world using the idea of parts of self, which is the IFS model
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When it's the right fit for a client with trauma, I use EMDR ​​​​
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I’m curious about your context (family upbringing, culture, friend groups, work/school environment, hobbies/interests).
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I believe every type of coping you have had up to this moment (no matter how seemingly destructive it has felt) has served a useful purpose for you, and we will spend time exploring this, understanding the purposes, and slowly moving towards adding new ways of coping into the mix. I work from, and view all people, from a strength-based lens. I believe we are all just trying our best to look after ourselves.
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I view healing and wellness as a process, not a destination, and I will often normalize the desire for it to be a destination when those feelings come up in sessions.
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It is normal and common that we find ourselves in therapy because our bodies are trying to tell us something through how we feel physically and most of us are not taught how to understand what our emotions are trying to tell us. I enjoy helping people understand their emotions better, in a way that is approachable.
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How I view healing
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This is a quote from a fellow therapist that describes how she views healing and I couldn’t have said it better myself so I’ll share what she says to give you an idea of what therapy with me will be like:
“When we have experiences that are overwhelming to us, and we don’t have someone there to help us integrate the experience, make sense of it, or help us know it is over, it’s almost like it becomes locked in a place within us, like we have this preserved pathway within us that tells us the story that the danger is still happening; and when something in our adult lives happens that is similar enough to the details of that original hurt then all of a sudden we find ourselves reacting, and those reactions don’t necessarily happen in our thinking or what we are saying but often it will show up first in our bodies. And suddenly we don’t feel like we are adults in that moment; we are kind of 'back there' - we feel in our bodies like we are in that young neural network.
Therapy is a space to explore what is stuck, and to no longer be alone with it, and have someone guide you out of it, to let your body know the past experience is over, to let those stuck emotions finish the cycle in the presence of a caring figure. Therapy is helping people find who they are beneath their suffering.
We are wounded in relationships and we heal in relationships.
That is the power of therapy and the power of your innate ability to heal."
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