Description
Online and phone psychotherapy to anyone over the age of 16 living in Ontario.
If you are looking for a place to make new meaning out of your experiences, reduce the impact of challenging issues in your life, build self-confidence, cope with change, or shift repetitive stuck patterns, then psychotherapy may be supportive for you. Psychotherapy is meant to support you to feel better and make positive changes in your life.
About Me
I completed my Bachelors of Social Work at McGill University and my Masters of Social Work at the University of Toronto. In addition to my training as a Social Worker, I have completed various trainings that inform my practice, which are listed below.
Outside of my private practice, I currently provide counselling with survivors of abuse/violence at a community agency in Toronto. In the past, I’ve worked at other community agencies with trauma survivors and youth in inpatient psychiatric programs.
Specializations:
Identity and Self-Esteem – I use a narrative approach to collaboratively examine the cumulative experiences that shape our identity. We often hold stuck concepts of ourselves as problematic or not good enough. Our minds may focus on thoughts, feelings, and stories that are saturated with issues and we often become defined by these things. I hope to support people to shift their perspective and thought processes to uncover preferred identities. A common goal of psychotherapy is enhanced self-esteem and a changed sense-of-self that is built on skills, values, commitments, and hopes.
Trauma, Violence, Abuse, and Survival – I use a trauma-informed approach while supporting survivors to live in the present moment, reduce overwhelm from thoughts of the past, and feel safe. If you have experienced trauma you may be living with normal but unwanted effects of trauma, which may include anxiety, depression, fear, shame, sleep issues, dissociation, and issues in relationships. I work with people to make new meaning from painful past experiences and move from victimhood to survivorship. I support people to identify not only the ways the trauma has impacted their life, but also how they actively responded to it. I have experience working with survivors of childhood abuse as well as survivors of violence/abuse that occurred in adulthood.
Difficult Emotions – Many emotions can have unwanted impacts in our lives, such as anxiety, sadness, shame, and anger. However, all emotions can provide us with information about our wants, needs, and values. I use an approach of curiosity and non-judgement to support you to better understand these emotions and change their presence in your life.
Life Conflict – Many people experience challenges related to life transitions, relationship issues, family conflict, and significant role changes. I have familiarity working with parents going through separation/divorce, youth struggling with family challenges, and individuals hoping to cultivate happy intimate relationships with others. If there is something big happening in your life, psychotherapy may be useful to reduce stress and move through change with acceptance.
Mindfulness, Acceptance, and Self-Compassion – We have many tools we can use as emotional resources to surf the waves of life. Using these tools may be supportive to meet your therapeutic goals. Practices can be integrated in sessions or can be delivered through activities, such as guided meditations.
Discrimination, Oppression, and Navigating Systems – I acknowledge that larger societal issues can impact our mental health, well-being, and identity. If these issues play an unwanted role in your life, you are welcome to bring them into our conversations. I use an anti-oppressive approach to understand how power, privilege, and oppression impact our lives.
My Approach:
My approach draws on and is informed by various frameworks, theories, and modalities, including those found below.
Narrative Therapy
Narrative Therapy is a collaborative, strengths-based approach that allows us to identify and change the stories we tell about ourselves in a way that improves our mental well-being. Our identities are complex, layered, and founded on stories that we tell about our cumulative experiences. The narratives we hold about ourselves influence the way we feel, think, and behave. The narratives we tell about ourselves may become filled with issues and problems. For example, your story may repeatedly describe you as a failure. As you focus on this story, you may start selecting and prioritizing life experiences that support and strengthen the narrative that casts you in a negative, failure light. All the while, you may also ignore other experiences and characteristics that could be used to construct a different story about yourself.
Narrative Therapy allows us to critically examine storylines in our lives that may be filled with problems and hardship; thoughts, feelings, and memories that are saturated with issues and become self-defining. Narrative Therapy is meant to support you in creating awareness of how you may be prioritizing certain narratives over others as well as providing you with the capacity to re-author your own life narrative and find new meaning of life experiences.
Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is based on the cognitive model: the way that we perceive a situation is more closely connected to our reactions than to the situation itself. Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviour are all interconnected; our thoughts influence our feelings, which influences our coping mechanisms (behaviour).
CBT is meant to help us change our unhelpful thinking patterns and behaviour, a well as identify when we are thinking factually vs. when we are making assumptions. The hope is that through using CBT techniques, we will learn to transform our negative thoughts into more realistic thoughts or positive thoughts.
Somatic Regulation
Our emotions and automatic responses are played out in the theatre of the body. We can see this in our heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, tension, and other physical sensations. We also might notice this by how “gut-wrenching” some emotions can be. Our nervous systems are shaped by experience and develop habitual response patterns. Awareness of our nervous systems can be an important first step in regulating our emotions.
Integrating somatic (bodily) awareness and regulation strategies means taking a “bottom-up” approach to working with strong sensations, whereas talk therapy provides a “top-down” approach. In our work together, we may deepen our understanding of the body’s nervous systems and develop strategies to emotionally regulate through physical awareness and practices.
Psychoeducation
Psychoeducation refers to the provision of evidence-based education, information, and resources. Some examples of psychoeducation include information on how trauma affects our bodies and brains, different attachment styles, understanding what emotions are, stress management strategies, how anxiety works, and what boundaries are. Oftentimes, this information supports us to better understand our experiences while other times the ideas don’t resonate for us. Either outcome is welcome and normal. Therapy is a collaborative process where the therapist and client together determine what ideas support a client’s journey to meet their goals.
Mindfulness and Self-Compassion
Mindfulness is an emotional resource that involves engaging in a moment-by-moment, non-judgmental awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and behaviours/impulses to act. Mindfulness allows us to identify our feelings, reduce the negative impact of difficult thoughts, understand ourselves better, enhance mental flexibility, and find moments of stillness. Mindfulness can be integrated formally and informally in therapy.
Self-Compassion is an emotional resource that involves providing ourselves with the same compassion to ourselves that we give to others during hard times. Self-compassion is a kind of acceptance. Acceptance usually refers to what is happening to us – accepting a feeling or thought – self-compassion is acceptance of the person to whom it’s happening – ourselves. It’s acceptance of ourselves while we are going through hard times. When we deny our feelings, minimize our experience, or criticize ourselves, we suffer even more. Self-compassion is one way that we may experience emotional relief. Self-compassion is a tool that can be drawn on in various therapeutic modalities and treatment approaches.
Intersectional Feminist and Anti-Oppressive Framework
A Feminist Framework is an overarching lens from which to understand ourselves and our society. Intersectional Feminism examines how various overlapping parts of our identities impact our experiences of discrimination, privilege, and our mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Anti-Oppression recognizes the oppression and privilege that exists in our society, attempts to minimize the effects of discrimination, and works to equalize the power imbalance. An Oppressive approach identifies how larger social issues impact our mental well-being and the therapeutic relationship.
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