(Virtual appointments for residents of Ontario and New Brunswick, In Person in Halton Hills, ON)
I offer counselling and psychotherapy from a systemic perspective that recognizes how our relationships with others and the systems we live in affect our relationship with ourselves, and how our relationship with ourselves affects every area of our lives. My clients are often seeking support for feelings of anxiety or general unease or dissatisfaction in life, work, and/or relationships and feel as though they are stuck in surviving. Many are looking to move from surviving to thriving, and we begin to recognize patterns that are impacting growth, and work to create new patterns towards change and balance.
Many of my clients are helping professionals including medical, allied/mental healthcare and wellness workers, and educators . I am able to offer a unique understanding of the complexity that comes with working in helping fields and can also offer processing of stress from frontline work and any other work related trauma exposure. More info on The Art of Heart Philosophy at www.theartofheart.ca
The process of counselling with creatitivy involves recognizing each person and each person's situation is unique.
A creative approach takes a variety of skills and brings them as an offering to help work through issues that feel important to you, not as something to fix, but to see where balance can be restored in your life, and where you can grow. We bring in clinical tools and theories along with movement, arts, talk, and play into the process in ways that can help allow the Self that is waiting to emerge enough room to do so.
Trauma
There are many types of trauma, and you don't need to 'have PTSD' to recognize that you've experienced a traumatic event that is causing distress. Trauma is any event that feels threatening to your sense of safety or the safety of someone else. It becomes PTSD when symptoms of distress persist and meet the diagnostic criteria enough to interfere with life. I work with both acute and complex trauma (see training and apprach page) with emphasis on attachment and betrayal trauma, medical trauma, traumatic grief, spiritual trauma, trauma from abuse of power, and traumatic experiences from systemic oppression.
Grief
Grief can be traumatic, but it is also a natural part of being human. We all experience the cycle of birth, life, death yet our culture has strayed away from recognizing grief as a normal part of the human experience. the 'art of heart approach' to grief work allows for understanding and natural processing of all types of loss, death related or otherwise.
I am trained in and work with integrative approaches that recognize that the body experiences and holds trauma, and nervous system responses to traumatic events can keep us stuck in the intensity of feeling emotions.
This means that often, verbal processing of trauma is not effective for everyone, but there are other ways to help. We strive to reduce the somatic intensity enough to process the feelings and the impact on the body, and move towards integration of the experience rather than pushing it into the past.
I work with attachment and relational theories, Integrative protocols for trauma processing, somatic and Internal Family Systems componants as well as creative outlets and acknowledgement of nature as helpful for finding balance after trauma.
Anxiety is recognized as being a natural nervous system response to real or perceived threat, which helps us survive. Sometimes we can get stuck in 'threat' mode, and we need help bringing our body back to a resting state where we feel safe.
I weave in a variety of methods to help recognize when and why this threat response happens, and offer suggestions from mindfulness, arts, somatic, CBT and DBT skills, and relational presence that recognizes anxiety and/or depression as normal reactions to stressors, life events, and even everday existance in the busy modern world.
Human development continues beyond our childhood years and we have ongoing milestones and learning curves that happen throughout adulthood all the way to end of life.
The 'midlife' is not the only crisis we face as adults, I offer support for the 'quarter life crisis', entering into parenthood, empty nest/launching, adult kids living at home, living with parents as a young adult, midlife, menopause, retirement and beyond. I also offer support, listening and understanding for coping with illness, caregiving for others, and end of life processing.
The experience of being gifed/2e does not end after leaving school. Gifted kids grow up to be gifted adults, and navigating higher edcuation, work/career and relationships, including parenting, can feel isolating, lonely, sometimes frustrating and sometimes exhilerating with a neurodivergent mind.
I offer psychoeducation and help navigating all of life's challenges from the position of neuro-affirming practice.
A neuro-affirming approach recognizes that people experience the world differently — and that these differences matter in therapy. Rather than asking people to adapt to rigid expectations, this work adapts to the person.
We use cookies to analyze website traffic and optimize your website experience. By accepting our use of cookies, your data will be aggregated with all other user data.