I can help you through personal transitions, pivotal times and challenging experiences in your life, including anything related to relationships, family, parenting, patterns of personality, anxiety, trauma, disconnection, addictions, stress, grief, and loss.
I am passionate about good relations, human development, awareness, connection to humanity and the natural world, and finding elegant ways through complex personal and relationship issues. I have an adventurous family with 3 boys and bring over 20 years of experience in clinical and therapeutic settings working directly with individuals, couples, families, and groups.
I hold a Bachelor of Science in Rehabilitation Medicine from UBC and a Masters in Counselling Psychology from Naropa University in Colorado. Therapeutic influences include somatic trauma therapies, nature and mindfulness practices, neuroscience, attachment, and experiential therapies. Over the last decade, I have been integrating many aspects of living and working with Indigenous culture, and along my journey, I have been deeply influenced by Buddhist psychology, nature-based practice, social action, and justice. I have professional certification in gestalt psychotherapy, EMDR, group facilitation, and equine psychotherapy. My early work as an occupational therapist in mental health provided expertise for working with the whole person across the spectrum of mental health/illness, as well as training and use of well-known evidence-based modalities such as CBT and DBT.
Psychotherapy is about being supported in the interior work of gaining clarity and balance, restoring honest dialogue, integrating and transforming some of the shadow or unconscious aspects of self, becoming more aligned with body and mind, and feeling more alive, creative, connected with all things, and present in your life.
I believe that people have the ability to become stronger, more open and capable than they think. Finding a good therapeutic alliance with a balance of kindness, directness, knowledge, and authentic contact can lead to new possibilities, flexibility, transformation, and greater intimacy and ease in your life.
I am thankful to live, work, and enjoy the beauty of the unceded traditional territory of the Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ First Nations, who have been caretakers of this land on the south end of Vancouver Island for thousands of years. I also honour the presence and teachings of the Tsilhqot’in and Dakelh-Dene people in the community and the surrounding lands where I am an adopted member of the Tl’etinqox T’in of the Tsilhqot’in Nation.
