My Approach
Rather than fitting you into theory, I let theory, evidence, and therapeutic approaches serve the person in front of me.
I want to understand what it is like to be you and how your experience makes sense within the life you have lived. That means becoming curious about what has shaped the ways you think, feel, relate, protect yourself, and move through the world before deciding what something means or what needs to change.
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Two people can experience anxiety, grief, shame, anger, or relationship difficulties for very different reasons. I want us to become curious about what something means in your life.
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Before asking you to change a feeling, behaviour, or pattern, I am interested in understanding what it may be responding to and what it may once have helped you do.
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Therapy is not something I simply apply to you. There should be room to disagree with me, tell me something does not fit, slow the work down, or ask for something different.
What I Pay Attention To
We are always in relationship: with our bodies, other people, ourselves, and the meanings and values through which we understand our lives.
These dimensions are not separate. They continually shape and influence one another, and each offers another way of becoming curious about your experience.
How do you relate to your body and the physical world around you?
We may explore your relationship with your body, health, sexuality, pleasure, safety, body image, physical change or limitation, and the ways your body responds to what you experience. This can also include noticing tension, activation, numbness, shutdown, or other bodily responses when words do not tell the whole story.
How do you relate to yourself and who you understand yourself to be?
We may explore how you respond to your emotions, needs, mistakes, desires, contradictions, and different parts of yourself, as well as the stories you have come to believe about who you are. We can become curious about self-criticism, shame, protection, identity, and the parts of you that may feel difficult or conflicting without assuming that they developed without reason.
How do you relate to other people and to belonging?
We may explore how you experience closeness, trust, vulnerability, conflict, rejection, family, friendship, intimacy, community, and belonging. We can also pay attention to how culture, racism, migration and immigration experiences, minority stress, social expectations, and other conditions have shaped how safe or possible connection has felt.
How do you relate to meaning, values, and the life you are living?
We may explore what matters to you, what gives your life meaning, the values you want to live by, and how you relate to choice, responsibility, uncertainty, loss, limitation, hope, and possibility. This can also mean making room for questions about how you want to live alongside circumstances you did not choose or cannot simply change.
Understanding how you relate across these different parts of life can help us make sense of recurring patterns, understand what they may be responding to, and create more room for choice in how you want to live.
In Session
The work can take different forms depending on what you bring in and what seems useful in the moment.
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Stay with an emotion or moment long enough to understand what is happening.
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Explore why something that no longer helps may once have protected or supported you.
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Notice tension, activation, numbness, shutdown, or other responses when words are not telling the whole story.
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Especially when different needs, fears, or impulses seem to pull you in different directions.
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Including how you reach for closeness, withdraw, protect yourself, trust, need, or respond to being seen.
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Use strategies, behavioural experiments, exposure, mindfulness, or other tools when action is more useful than further reflection.
Some sessions may be more emotional or reflective. Others may be practical and focused. The work can move between understanding and action depending on what you need.
Acceptance + Change
Some things can change. Some need to be understood. Some need to be grieved. Some need to be accepted. And some ask us to find a different way of living alongside what cannot simply be undone.
Acceptance does not mean pretending something is okay or giving up on change. Sometimes it means being more honest about what is here so that we can distinguish between what may be possible to change and what asks us to find another way of living with it.
The Therapeutic Relationship
I tend to be warm, engaged, collaborative, exploratory, and gently challenging. I am not interested in sitting at a distance and simply observing you.
I may share something I am noticing, ask what is happening emotionally or physically, invite us to stay with a moment a little longer, or help us step back and make sense of a larger pattern.
At other times, what may be most useful is simply having another person stay with you in something that has felt difficult to carry alone.
The Therapeutic Ideas That Inform My Work
You do not need to know which kind of therapy you need before coming in.
I draw from different perspectives depending on you, what is happening, and what we are trying to understand or work toward.
These approaches encourage me to begin with your lived experience rather than immediately interpreting it.
I may become curious about what something is actually like for you and how it relates to identity, meaning, freedom, responsibility, uncertainty, loss, limitation, and possibility.
Parts-informed and body-based approaches help me stay curious about conflicting needs, protective responses, bodily sensations, activation, shutdown, and the ways experiences may be carried physically as well as emotionally.
Mindfulness supports awareness and choice, while ACT, CBT, ERP, and DBT-informed strategies can offer practical ways of working with anxiety, avoidance, behaviour, and emotion regulation.
Experiential approaches influence how I work with emotion and the present moment.
Rather than only talking about a feeling from a distance, I may help us slow down and notice what is happening while paying attention to safety and support.
These perspectives encourage me to pay attention to the stories we come to believe about ourselves and how relationships, culture, family, identity, racism, migration, immigration context, power, discrimination, and social expectations may have helped shape them.
When behaviours carry risk, I approach them with curiosity, autonomy, and attention to safety rather than assuming abstinence or complete elimination must be the goal.
We can look together at what a behaviour is doing for you, what risks may be present, and what changes feel realistic and meaningful.
These approaches are not separate lanes. I may draw from more than one within the same session, depending on what you bring in and what seems useful in the work.