One of my greatest influences, Gene Gendlin, stated the importance of clients experiencing “the spaciousness of the hour”. What this means to me is the importance of therapy being a time outside of the fast flow of life when people can slow down and attend to what is most essential about themselves and their lives. From there, we can begin developing a sense of what needs our attention and what we are working towards in therapy. I aim to be transparent about this process, sharing my thoughts and inviting feedback so that we can tailor therapy to be most helpful and check if we are on the right track. I strive to create a safe and trusting therapist-client relationship through which we work together to explore issues at a pace that feels right to you.

While some thoughts and feelings just need space to be heard in order to find their way toward resolution, others can feel repetitive and limiting. This is often due to past wounds, unmet needs, social expectations, and strategies used to cope with these experiences. I’ve found that identifying these patterns, understanding where they come from and acknowledging the pain, and shifting the strategies that are no longer helpful is often a major task in therapy. Through this process, I support people in developing a more honest and compassionate relationship with themselves, because I believe that is the foundation of meeting future difficulties with confidence.

In my practice, I emphasize making space to explore the things that don’t always show up in words, such as emotions, our nervous system, conflicted aspects of ourselves, unconscious habits, and deeper motivations, fears, and protections. To facilitate this, I draw on a number of approaches including Emotion-Focused Therapy, Relational Psychodynamic Therapy, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems, Mindful Self-Compassion, and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy. I also turn to other approaches and resources for specific skills (e.g., emotion regulation, communication, sleep hygiene, parenting) that I think would be helpful depending on the client I am working with.

While this all may sound intense, one thing I can say is that I hope to bring a lot of humour and lightheartedness to this process. Our lives are messy and flawed and we might as well laugh about it as we work toward things being better.