You are not broken.
You adapted to keep yourself safe when you were younger. I help you recognize protective patterns that are preventing. you from growing.
I'm a Counselling Therapist offering services for individuals and couples. My main modalities are Internal Families Systems and Relational Life Therapy.
Do you sense your limitless potential?
Do you want true authentic connections?
Do you not want to be afraid of all of your thoughts and emotions?
Do you want to stop bypassing and shoving feelings under the rug?
If you answer yes to some of these questions, this is the place for you.
Services
Individual Therapy
In individual therapy we explore how you are presently, and how this is shaped by your past. I use IFS (Internal Family Systems) as my primary modality.
Couples Therapy
In couples therapy we get to understand how and why we relate to our partner the way we are. When we have insight into that, it is possible to change that. I use RLT (Relational Life Therapy) as my modality with couples.
Available in person in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and online.
My Approach
My approach is non-pathologizing, meaning I do not believe that our internal struggle is based on a mental disorder, but rather on inner protective roles of parts that needed to keep us safe when we were younger. As Terry Real says: adaptive then, maladaptive now. So when we can get to know our inner parts that, say, are anxious or depressed or addictive or lashing out, we can ask them how they are trying to protect us, and befriend them. We can learn that these parts have good intentions, therefore deserve our appreciation and curiosity. When parts feel listened to and appreciated, they can relax back. They then no longer have to amp up their intensity because we are just annoyed at them, and they feel heard.
We can ask them what vulnerable and wounded parts they are shielding us from and get to know what hurt us in the past.
As a couples therapist, I focus on the inner wounds and the protective system, and how your two systems interact with each other. We often are with partners to help us heal our unfinished business! We look at your stances teach you to notice your nervous system state and how to self-regulate. We introduce how to repair from ruptures to get back to harmony.
I am running a weekly group for women. In this group, we create a safe container to explore how we feel and react in social situations. We make what we usually just feel implicitly and make it explicit.
