Clinical and Consultative Services
A collaborative one-on-one process to explore emotional distress, identity, relationships, and life challenges while making connections between personal struggles and the broader systems that shape them.
Individual therapy involves more than active listening - it is a process of personal reflection that will both support you to feel safe to explore and unpack painful experiences in your life, and it will also challenge you in areas where you feel stuck, and where you may be engaging in harmful patterns of behaviour (to yourself and others). With a focus on parts work, individual therapy will invite you to become curious about all the parts of your psyche, both conscious and unconscious, that are working behind the scenes motivating your behaviour, your thoughts and your feelings.
People come to individual therapy for many reasons, all of which are valid and welcome. I have particular experience helping clients make sense of their gender and sexuality, including working through their experience of homophobia and transphobia. I also work with clients seeking to understand their patterns of attachment in relationships with others, as well as working through difficult childhoods and family dynamics. Many clients struggle with depression, anxiety, and existential questions of meaning and identity. A therapy teacher of mine once taught that therapy isn’t about feeling better, it’s about getting better at feeling, and this has profoundly shaped the way I practice therapy ever since.
A structured therapeutic process with a focus on repairing attachment wounds, improving communication, and helping family members reconnect with greater safety and trust. I am trained in Attachment-Based Family Therapy (ABFT), an evidence based family therapy modality and I was trained directly by one of the founders of ABFT Dr. Suzanne Levy. The ABFT model grows out of the Structural Family Therapy tradition, but is informed by more contemporary systemic approaches, such as Emotionally-Focused Therapy.
If you are hoping to repair your relationship with a family member, or you are caught in a cycle of mistreatment and misunderstanding within your family, then family therapy is a great option. Many precipitating events bring people into family therapy, a few include:
An acute family conflict
Longstanding patterns of conflict within the family that have gone unaddressed
Estrangement from one’s family, or wanting to reconnect with an estranged family member
Struggles in the family system when one family member has come out and they are not accepted or understood
Abuse within a family system
Parents of teenagers needing support with acting out behaviour, self-harming behaviour, suicidal teens
Wanting a closer relationship with your parents/child (at any age)
Following the ABFT model, I will build a strong alliance with each family member that comes to therapy. I will meet with family members individually, as well as lead joint family sessions, that will lead you down a path of healing and reconciliation.
A reflective supervision space for therapists seeking support in individual and family therapy, attachment-based practice, relational dynamics, and the ethical complexities of power, identity, and oppression in clinical work. If you are a new therapist just starting out, or if you have been practicing for some time, I can help you deepen your practice in very tangible ways.
For those practicing individual therapy I draw on a supervision style influenced by Internal Family Systems. Together we will become curious about what parts of you show up in the therapy space with your clients, and how they make contact with the parts that the client brings to therapy. The focus of supervision will not only be on the content of the sessions, and intervention techniques, but importantly (or, perhaps, more importantly) on what is coming up for you as you sit with your clients.
As a family therapy supervisor I am trained in Attachment-Based Family therapy, which is a modality that grows out of attachment theory and helps families repair relational ruptures between parents and children (at every age). I will use this framework to help you identify where you are feeling stuck, and help you develop a therapy plan, with clear steps to support the families you are working with.
Supervision should feel useful, and should push you to confront your blindspots as a therapist. I look forward to supporting your professional development.
“It is a joy to be hidden, and a disaster not to be found”
~Winnicott
A therapy teacher of mine once taught that we don’t go to therapy to feel better, we go to therapy to get better at feeling. This ethos changed the way I thought about therapy as a client, and informs the way I practice it as a therapist. Therapy, at it’s core, is about cultivating curiosity and intimacy, with ourselves and with others. This isn’t easy. I work from an attachment and trauma informed lens, meaning that I will be deeply curious about what has happened to you in your life, and from that place I will offer you support.
My career began in publicly funded children’s mental health agencies, where I practiced as an individual and family therapist for fourteen years. Since transitioning to private practice, I have been working with individuals, young people and their parents, and adult children and their parents. I support clients as they navigate depression, anxiety, trauma, relational conflict, questions of identity, and other sources of distress. I specialize in supporting clients around sexuality and gender identity, and I have run support groups for parents learning about their children’s gender identity.
I look forward to meeting you.
Rumi, the poet, said it best:
Come, come, whoever you are. Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vow a thousand times.
Come, yet again, come, come.