Individual Psychotherapy

There are many different approaches to therapy, and I draw upon whichever methods are most appropriate for your specific concerns. This may include techniques adapted from cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT), Adlerian psychology, Jungian archetypal work, and existential philosophy. Often, rather than any specific theory or intervention, the power of therapy comes from establishing a safe and trusting relationship in which we can examine ourselves freely, away from the pressures and expectations of the outside world.

That said, my work is primarily framed through the lens of Narrative Therapy. This approach places emphasis on the stories we tell ourselves about our lives, and questions how those stories might be influenced by our society and culture. Or how those stories have been internalized without our full awareness. When we start to read between the lines, we can pick out our strengths and use those as starting points with which to write the next chapter ourselves.

In most cases our first meeting will be more of an interview than normal: we will co-investigate your goals, relational needs, and sense of what or where the problem is. Then we will come up with and agree upon a game-plan to tackle it. This might include:

• Mindfulness tools to help calm your nervous system and improve focus in a matter of seconds.
• Values clarification to identify what’s the most important to you.
• Skill-building to improve your capacity to handle your particular challenges.
• Understanding emotions as valuable sources of information rather than flaws.
• Deconstruction of any preconceived ideas, assumptions, and worldviews that are no longer serving you.
• Space to talk in a way that offers new perspectives and strengthens your self-reflective abilities.

If one of us decides after the first meeting (or at any point in the future!) that we are not the right fit for each other, I will be happy to provide you with a list of trusted referrals.

From my past experience it typically takes six to eight sessions for clients to achieve significant and long-lasting results. Of course, I hope you will see practical results much sooner, and it is my goal to work collaboratively with you as we discover which approaches are most helpful for you.