My Approach to Therapy
For the most part, my approach is what works for you.
This is not an anything-goes approach, but rather that I want to focus on what is most important for you, in ways that are most helpful for you. As I often say to clients, “You drive the bus.” If something seems more or less helpful in a session, tell me about it. I am only here to help you and want to work with you to find the best way to help you get to the place where you want to be.
I have over 15 years of experience as a psychotherapist and have training in many modalities and tools:
- Experiential/body-centred psychotherapy (e.g. Focusing, NLP, etc.),
- Solution Focused Therapy (SFT),
- Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT),
- Mindfulness, breathing and relaxation practises and other body–emotion–mind approaches through over 20 years of yoga and meditation teaching,
- and many others.
The form of therapy that I tend to work the most overtly with is Solution-Focused Therapy (SFT). There are many reasons why I find it helpful, but a few of the key benefits of this approach are:
- It is a brief therapy that is about finding solutions within each session that can be applied now. Though there is a general idea in SFT that there should be “as many sessions as needed and not one more than necessary“, people often find that plans for solid solutions to experiment with for many life issues can be found in less than a half dozen sessions. It’s obviously different for everyone and every issue, but the point is that it doesn’t need to take a long time to start to make changes and practice new ways to move in a more positive direction.
- It is a positive-focused therapy that is about helping you get more of the things that help and make you thrive, rather than trying to identify, fix or emphasize “what’s wrong.”
- It is client-centred (like most modern psychotherapies) that has a strong emphasis on you, the client, directing the process as much as possible. As one of the founders of SFT, Insoo-Kim Berg, loved to say, the therapist helps the client by “leading from behind”… following, asking questions, being curious to learn about you and your concerns and offering assistance where needed.
My Training & Certification
Masters in Educational Psychology (M.Ed.)
Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU) & The Lifespace Institute (private psychotherapy school in Toronto)
- In addition to the more formal academic courses of the M.Ed. program, MSVU worked with The Lifespace Institute to provide the majority of the psychotherapy training.
- Lifespace taught a very comprehensive, body-centred psychotherapy approach to therapy that was an eclectic mix of Focusing, Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), Gestalt and many other humanistic and body-centred approaches.