My Professional Approach
I believe everyone is worthy of success, happiness and purpose.
Trust, respect, warmth and caring are characteristics that serve as the foundation of my counselling work. I approach counselling from an integrative lens (using techniques from different therapeutic modalities to best suit your needs) with a genuine regard for your perspective and experience.
I believe you are the driver in your vehicle for change and I view my role as a facilitator, to support and guide you in taking the steps you feel are necessary to make positive changes in your life. I take a strength-based approach. Collaboratively we will work together identifying your strengths and abilities to cope, change and live a more fulfilling and meaningful life.
I counsel individuals on a wide range of personal and interpersonal challenges. These services include, but are not limited to:
Individual Counselling
Individual counselling is a collaborative relationship between the counsellor and the client. In this relationship, the counsellor will help the client gain a better understanding of themself and the world around them. Together they will explore the client’s feelings and behaviours, relationships with others, choices and current struggles.
Trust, respect, warmth and caring are essential elements in my counselling work. I approach counselling with a genuine regard for each client’s perspective and experience.
Counselling will help you re-discover your strengths which in turn will allow you to cope more effectively with the challenges that you face. I draw from evidence-based therapies tailored to your therapeutic needs.
Family Counselling
Family systems counselling views the family as a self-regulating system held together by unspoken rules, the purpose of which are to maintain that system.
My role is to look for unhealthy relational structures (such as parent-child role reversals) and faulty patterns of communication (such as a limited capacity for negotiation). After problematic patterns have been identified, I will utilize and offer specific techniques to improve the relationship between the family members. The techniques used in family systems therapy vary depending on the specific problems at hand and the approach that I believe will be most beneficial.
Grief Counselling
Grief counselling is a form of counselling that aims to help individuals cope with grief and mourning. This can include the death of a loved one or major life changes, such as the loss of a job, pet, or relationship. Everyone experiences and expresses grief in their own way. There is no timeline for grief, and it does not have a predictable trajectory.
My approach is client-centred. My goal is to help the individual grieve and address their loss in a healthy manner, gradually accepting the loss, adjusting to life after the loss and coping with the changes.
Life Transitions Counselling
Transitions can be the most difficult experiences in our lives. Becoming a new parent, sending an adolescent off to college or university, a career change, separation, divorce, illness, an accident/injury, loss of a loved one, pet or job-loss, and ageing parents are examples of life transitions. These can cause us to feel pain, stress and overwhelmed with fear about how to adapt and move forward.
If you are struggling to work through a transition and find it affects your daily life, it is time to seek professional help.
My approach is to help you work through and understand what this life change means. I will ask questions to address the adjustment and help you move through the transition, while slowly developing a new ‘you’.
Goals of Therapy
Goals of therapy are set collaboratively and can include identification, understanding and development of:
- Inner strength, self-empowerment and resilience
- Self-awareness and improved self-esteem
- Coping strategies for stress, anxiety and depression
- Handling relationship challenges more effectively (personal, family, work, community)
- Coping with life changes, crisis, grief and loss
Benefits of Therapy
Therapy can help you gain a new understanding of what is troubling you. It can help you:
- Acquire new ways to cope
- Find solutions to your problems
- Develop new skills
- Change behaviour patterns.
- Contribute to an increased understanding of yourself and others
