My Journey into counselling​​​

 

My earliest experiences in the social service field came in 2009 when I volunteered at a support group for single parents, and in 2012 when I served as a Big Brother to students experiencing difficulties at home and in school. My journey as a professional counsellor began in 2014 while working with youth and young adults in a residential setting. During University, I worked as a park technician (landscaping), security guard, and then park warden. My interest in psychotherapy began while counselling youth as a part of a crisis and stabilization team. I worked with first responders, sat in on various kinds of counselling sessions, and gained experience working on teams designing behavioural care plans and building supportive relationships. My interest and passion for helping others cope with distress, navigate major life disruptions, and avoid harmful relationship patterns continued to grow. I learned how difficult and unique each person's struggle is, and how powerful a trustworthy and confidential connection can be. While completing my Master of Arts, I worked as an Educational Assistant supporting students with various mental health and behavioural issues. While doing so, I was again reminded of the unique story and needs of the individual, but also how a common foundation of unconditional acceptance and consistency can build trust and a pathway to getting out of our safe, but long-term stagnating, comfort zones.  All of my clients, coworkers, collaborators, family, and even brief relationships have influenced how I understand people and their meaningful connections to life and themselves. I enjoy knowing that I will continue to learn from everyone I engage with, and I hope to contribute to both new and old ways of understanding psychology and the practice of psychotherapy. 

​​​​​

My Approach​​

​

I support a diverse range of youth and adults, often with overlapping issues including stress, complex trauma, social and general anxiety, burnout, depression, and self-esteem. 

 

​​Client Centred: This is the foundation of my approach. Its creator, Carl Rogers, believed that there are a few conditions that therapists can strive for that contribute greatly to therapeutic success and a client's personal development. These include unconditional acceptance, displays of empathetic understanding, and congruence with oneself (genuineness, speaking from the core emotion, openness, authenticity) from both parties can lead to positive growth. For this to happen, I also want to be seen without a mask, so if I find it useful in the moment, I may include my experiences as pieces for us to reflect on.

​

Psychodynamic: This term includes modalities that track our past experiences to explain present-day survival strategies and the dynamic forces or drives that contribute to our dynamic minds. I favour attachment theorists like those of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. I also find knowledge from Carl Jung useful as his frameworks mesh well with other modalities, and I resonate with an understanding that we have an extremely wide and complicated array of aspects of ourselves. In therapy, we can learn to recognize which of these aspects we naturally lean towards, and which we may benefit from integrating.

​

Internal Family Systems: A modality that I find to be a combination of Jungian and Compassion Focused Therapy is Internal Family Systems Therapy, created by Richard Schwartz. Similar to Jung's view of how we contain archetypes (shared patterns of thought, behaviour), Schwartz offers that we have protector parts which become activated under specific situations and lead us to thoughts, emotions and behaviours that keep us safe, even at the expense of our long-term well-being. You might think of these parts as inherited from our childhood (attachment lens), a feature of our evolution (Jungian lens), or simply as an intuitive way to grasp how our brain functions in a prediction-response manner. Which is to say, we naturally filter or have a bias connected to the information that we take in so that we can quickly activate familiar protective reactions, not necessarily value-driven or long-term oriented reactions. 

​

Experiential: This means we pay attention to what emotions come up in session. We are not always deciphering the narrative in a cognitive, logical manner, but learning from the emotion as it arises. I am not interested in pulling you in a direction, I am more like a helpful sidekick who is curious about how you make sense of yourself as you recognize parts of yourself. ​I've found that a trustworthy relationship affords a willingness to explore uncertain depths, trains our ability to tolerate difficult emotions, and makes sense of what they mean, so our more logical and conscious self can have a greater effect on our reactive unconscious.

 

While I cannot take steps into the unknown for you, I can walk alongside you. My role is to be a trusted companion—holding the lantern as you navigate your inner landscape and discover firmer footing along the way.

​

I chose the name Pathways to Resilience because meaningful change rarely follows a single road. Together, we can create new pathways for understanding and growth using a common-sense, non-judgmental, and evidence-based approach.​​

​