About My Work
The clinical foundation of my counselling
and trauma-recovery work
Several modern healing systems, all backed by neuroscience and empirically-validated scientific studies, inform my work. My integration of these systems supports my clients’ personal evolution. One significant component includes me helping people develop increased awareness of responses in their body, as well as their mind and heart. Overall, people feel better and are increasingly able to tolerate and navigate life’s inevitable challenges.
*Mindful Self-Compassion: At times, most of us engage in critical/undermining inner dialogue. We can also ignore/distain our own pain. I help my clients learn to notice when that is happening, and instead, how to take specific steps into self-compassion. In order to heal and be well, we must be our own safe haven.
*Interpersonal Neurobiology: From infancy and throughout life, we affect the firing and wiring of each other’s brain and nervous system. Other people impact our patterns of self-support and how we are in all relationships.
I provide safe, supportive interactions that can help rewire the nervous system for more resilience: My clients become increasingly able to experience and stay with intense feelings, and return to relative calm. This also enhances vitality and ease in how they navigate relationships and life in general.
*Positive Psychology and Life Skills Coaching: We can learn how to better claim what is good and create more authentic happiness and life-satisfaction.
I help my clients become aware of their unique constellation of strengths and values: We have more success with less effort, in all realms of life, when we engage our strengths and express our values.
Overall satisfaction is broadened and deepened when we regularly experience gratitude. Gratitude enlivens. It opens us to positive possibilities. When the timing is right, I encourage clients to notice and savour what evokes a genuine experience of gratitude.
*Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Levels 1 & 2 address unresolved trauma and developmental wounding. As a topic is addressed during sessions, the weaving of sensations, movement impulses, emotions, images, and thoughts are mindfully explored and processed.
The first stage focuses on building relationship and self-support skills. People learn to stay more connected with their present-moment experience, even when things are difficult. They gain ability to regulate their nervous system– to self-compose after experiencing upset and to energize after feeling shut-down from helplessness or shame.
The next stage addresses trauma and developmental wounds. Over time, people’s nervous systems re-pattern: reminders of trauma that previously put their nervous system into overwhelm, no longer operate as triggers. They are more able to take in and recognize what is good. Outdated beliefs and behaviours are updated; people discover more effective ways of being with what crosses their path.
In the third phase, people acknowledge their brilliance and strength in surviving past trauma/wounds, and have compassion for what they have held. They are more aware of what their body/nervous system tells them and how to best respond. People feel progressively more alive and empowered. They expand their world. They are more content.
Is everything easy now? Is all pain erased?
No, life includes pain.
But, my clients do learn to meet life with enhanced inner-kindness and courage.
They consciously discover: “This is what is good and valuable about being me.”
This is personal evolution.
Ideally, it is a lifelong journey.
