Talk Therapy

I value building a relationship with my clients based on respect, empathy, comfort and safety.  There will be space for talking, expressing and also for silence.  I will be a witness to your life and what you bring into the counselling space. I will listen carefully, get curious and ask useful questions to help you uncover your own inner wisdom, strengths, interests, skills, limitations, worries, fears, beliefs, biases, and struggles. I believe that you are the expert in your life and that you have the inner wisdom to navigate your experiences. In other words, you are your own medicine.

 

As needed, I might offer some psychoeducation and teach you how the brain, body and nervous system function to help you understand yourself from a biological/physiological perspective.  I might talk about attachment and how earlier life experiences and relationships impact our present behaviour.  I might talk about how we are amazing human creatures that adapt to our situations as a means of survival only to then discover that the automatic coping skills we needed to adapt to past situations no longer serve us well.

 

Supportive counselling with me involves establishing a trusting relationship so that you feel safe to unpack what is going on in your external and internal worlds and explore what is happening in your relationships and other domains of your life.  Studies show that the relationship with a therapist matters a great deal in therapy and accounts for its effectiveness.  I take a holistic mind-heart-body-social-spiritual-environmental approach - thoughts, emotions and behaviours are all interconnected and occuring in a context.  I will give you the chance to express your feelings, share your concerns, and talk about your life experiences.  We can talk about the past and present and imagine the future.  We can talk about needs, desires, dreams, goals, etc.

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Depending on your needs, we might focus on cognitive behavioural therapy approaches (CBT) which involves an investigation into your thinking patterns or Mindfulness which involves activities to help you slow down and be in the present moment, noticing without judgement. We can discuss emotions: emotional vocabulary, their purpose and how you experience them.  I may help you find practices that increase your self-compassion and self-acceptance.  We will discover what you need most and collaborate on therapeutic goals.  I tend to integrate and draw from a variety of theory, techniques and therapeutic approaches in order to best suit the person I am supporting.  There is no "one size fits all" approach in therapy!