Areas of Practice

• Individual, Couple, Family Counselling
• Addictions (substances, eating, work, internet/gaming, sex, etc.)
• Adult, Adolescents
• Anger Issues
• Anxiety
• Co-dependency
• Couple, Relationship, and Marriage Therapy
• Clergy issues
• Depression
• Family of origin issues
• Grief & loss
• Identity/ Self-Esteem
• Infidelity
• Pre-marital counselling
• Spiritual angst, abuse, obsession

Professional Memberships

• Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association
  
  
• CSAT (candidate)

Education and Training

• Master of Arts – Counselling & Spirituality, Saint Paul University/University of Ottawa.

• Master of Divinity- Toronto School of Theology/ University of Toronto.

Philosophy / Approach

I believe that as humans we have emotions for important reasons. Following the emotion on a particular issue will bring us to an important revelation. That is why I mainly follow the Emotion Focussed Therapy approach. I often employ metaphorical language and other various techniques from different schools of therapy in order to help the client reach their particular goals. The following descriptions of my views on psychotherapy may highlight what I mean.

For me psychotherapy/counselling consists of several things:

We are each of us broken in some way but inversely that means we also have areas that work well and are whole. Psychotherapy is like the art of the mosaicist who helps the client to take the broken pieces of what was to create a new beauty and cement it in place.

Psychotherapy is also the art of journeying with people in their self-discovery, of healing brokenness, but also of fostering acceptance of who we really are and what we can truly become.

It is the patient observance and listening by the psychotherapist that allows the client to acknowledge their own reality and know it is received by another. In so doing the alliance between the client and therapist is strengthened in trust and by incisive reflections and interventions the insights of the client are made clearer to them. The guidance of the therapist is earned by modelling a relationship with the client they might never have known as yet.

Going to see a psychotherapist is not about finding an all knowing guru atop of the mountain but rather it is akin to travelling with the mountain climbing guide who has helped other adventurers climb the different paths up the mountain. I accept in humility the sacredness of being offered this role by those who come to see me.

Food for thought: We would not even think twice of hiring a guide to help us climb a large mountain but what of the psychological or relational mountains or obstacles we feel are placed in our lives? It takes courage to rise to the challenge but it takes wisdom to ask for help.

I think a man and a woman should choose each other for life, for the simple reason that a long life with all its accidents is barely enough time for a man and a woman to understand each other and... To understand - is to love.
- William Butler Yeats