I apply a variety of counselling approaches and adapt the strategy to fit the needs of each of my clients. I've found the following approaches highly effective in my work with clients.

The trauma-informed approach focuses on engagement, empowerment, and collaboration. A trauma-informed approach reflects adherence to six key principles:

• Safety
• Trustworthiness and Transparency
• Peer support
• Collaboration and mutuality
• Empowerment, voice and choice
• Cultural, Historical, and Gender Issues

This perspective links recovery and resilience for those individuals that are impacted by trauma. 

This structured therapy encourages the patient to briefly focus on the trauma memory while simultaneously experiencing bilateral stimulation (typically eye movements), which reduces the vividness and emotion associated with the trauma memories.

BSP targets the right hemisphere, the limbic system, and the brain stem (midbrain).  It seems to bypass the “thinking” cortex of your brain and is thought to directly access the deep parts of your brain involved in emotional regulation. 

This approach recognizes biologically programmed shifts from fight-or-flight to shutdown when individuals feel trapped. This approach helps clients identify the movement from shutdown into fight-or-flight and helps them build bridges and possibilities to shift into social engagement. Social engagement helps clients gain a sense of safety and builds social supports into their daily lives that help them heal and recover.

The cognitive approach aims to improve mental health by addressing both thoughts and emotions. The focus is on challenging and changing unhelpful and unwanted thoughts and behaviours, improving emotional regulation, and the development of personal coping strategies that target solving current problems. The cognitive approach is a proven to assist clients in recovering from trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Narrative therapy is a form of counselling and therapy that focuses on the client’s life narratives. Stories can be a powerful negative or positive influence on the way people see themselves and their lives. I collaborate with clients to empower them to step away from problem-saturated or oppressive stories and begin to explore untold stories where their intentions, hopes, values, desires, and dreams have room to thrive.

The strength-based approach empowers you to see yourself at your best to appreciate your value. Learn to capitalize on your strengths rather than focus on negatives. Identify constraints that might be limiting your growth and draw upon your inner resilience to overcome them.

Client-Centred Therapy is a process of freeing a person and removing obstacles so that healthy growth and development can proceed, and the client can become independent and self-directed. The Client-Centred approach to therapy operates with the assumption that we are all positive, caring, and trustworthy. Fundmentally all the resources we need are within us.