What I help people work through.
Five core focus areas. Most clients come for one and stay for the way the others quietly thread through. Online sessions, with walk-and-talk by request.
Grief and Bereavement
Grief is not a process you finish. It changes shape, gets quieter, gets loud again on anniversaries and ordinary Tuesdays. The work is to make room for it rather than fight it, and to slowly find your footing in a life that includes the loss.
Clients come for recent loss (weeks or months), older loss that has resurfaced, anticipatory grief during a long illness, complicated bereavement, and the kind of grief that does not always get named (job loss, identity, ability, relationship).
- Recent and anticipatory loss
- Complicated and disenfranchised grief
- Long-shadow loss that resurfaces
- Pet loss, miscarriage, identity loss
Depression and Anxiety
Depression flattens motivation and pulls the colour out of things. Anxiety speeds the body up until rest feels impossible. We work with what is happening in the present moment, build coping skills you can actually use, and slow the loop down enough to think.
Gestalt-informed therapy meets the present moment rather than arguing with it. The aim is not to suppress the depression or the anxiety, it is to understand what they are protecting and to give those needs other paths.
- Cognitive and somatic coping skills
- Present-moment Gestalt work
- Sleep and energy support
- Medication-friendly (works alongside your GP or psychiatrist)
Trauma and Post-Traumatic Growth
Trauma work does not require re-telling the story in graphic detail. It requires building the safety, pacing, and body awareness that lets your nervous system actually finish the response it could not finish at the time.
Post-traumatic growth is real and it is not the same as "getting over it." It is the slow, surprising rebuilding of meaning and capacity that follows when trauma is processed rather than buried.
- Single-event and complex trauma
- Body-aware regulation work
- Paced exposure when and if appropriate
- Coordinated with EMDR practitioners when needed
Conflict, Boundaries, and Anger
My credentials include Conflict Resolution and Mediation training, which shows up in the room when clients are stuck in repeated conflict patterns at work or at home. We name the dance, find the move that breaks it, and rehearse the conversation before you have it for real.
Anger work is not anger suppression. It is figuring out what your anger is protecting and giving that need a path that does not cost you your relationships.
- Family and partner conflict patterns
- Workplace boundary work
- Anger regulation
- Parent-teen dynamics
Teens and Young Adults
My Child and Youth Work credential predates my RP, and it shows up in how I work with people in transition: identity, relationships, family pressure, sexuality, faith, the big decisions that arrive too fast.
A safe room is the precondition for everything else. Sessions are confidential within the limits of the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario, and parents are looped in only with the client's consent (and never about content unless safety is at stake).
- Teens age 13 and up
- University and college transition
- Identity, sexuality, faith
- Family system support when invited
Worth a quick call, no commitment.
Therapy works when the fit feels right. The first call lets us both check that before booking a session.