Trauma Informed Therapy
Therapy is offered in-person (Peterborough) or through online video.
I strive to provide therapy within an anti-oppression framework that validates and engages each individual’s intersecting identities, as well as systems of power, and how these influence their experiences. This centres on the understanding that I am a descendent of white settlers living on land that was taken from Indigenous peoples. I do my hardest not to pathologize my clients and what they are experiencing.
My approach is informed by research related to the effects of trauma on the brain, nervous system, and body. I recognize that traumatic experiences influence our internal experiencing, and this often gets labelled as anxiety, depression, or personality/mood/emotional problems. Trauma may include acute events of violence, physical, sexual, or emotional abuse. Trauma may also be prolonged experiences of neglect, grief, drastic change, relocation, or systemic forms of violence and oppression related to gender, sexual, racial, or cultural identity. These experiences influence our ways of coping, navigating relationships, and how we keep ourselves safe.
I practice therapy that is client centred, primarily drawing from internal family systems, emotion-focused, mindfulness, cognitive, and dialectical behavioural therapies. Therapy is based on the client’s individual needs, and may include but is not limited to increasing emotion regulation, calming the nervous system, developing a deeper understanding of your inner experience, establishing new physical and emotional boundaries in relationships, and processing rather than re-experiencing trauma memories and sensations that can accompany them.
EMDR
Disordered Eating & Compulsive Exercise
Relationship Anxiety
One of the treatments I offer is EMDR therapy. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a structured therapy process that supports the client to briefly focus on the trauma memory while also experiencing bilateral stimulation (typically eye movements, or physical tapping), which is associated with a reduction in the vividness and emotion associated with the trauma memories. You can find more information about the EMDR process here: https://www.emdria.org/about-emdr-therapy/
I provide therapy for individuals struggling with body image, compulsive exercise, and disordered eating symptoms. Treatment is individualized based upon symptoms, strengths, and experiences of the client.
My approach recognizes that eating disorders are one of your systems way of seeking safety and connection (although it may not feel like that). While therapy may involve symptom management and support around establishing new patterns related to food, exercise, self-soothing, and emotion regulation, the deeper work involves exploring and processing the fears and beliefs that underpin the behaviours. By working through fear, we begin to release the parts of you that experience the drive towards these behaviours from taking on this role, and allowing these parts of your to function in ways that support you in moving towards a new relationship with your body. Together we co-create a treatment plan that works for you as an individual in the context that you live in.
My approach centers on the reality of anti-fat bias and body based discrimination that is embedded in all layers of Western culture, including our healthcare system.
Relationship anxiety/OCD is generally experienced as intrusive fear based thoughts focused on your partnership. For some, these thoughts may be all consuming. These thoughts may focus on whether the relationship is “right or wrong” for you, difficulties with attraction & connection, focusing on specific parts of your partner’s physical presentation or personality, or any other forms of pervasive doubt about the relationship. You may vacillate between intense feelings of security and strong feelings anxiety or even repulsion. These experiences may occur early in the relationship, or years into the relationship. These anxieties can often be made that much worse because we live in a culture (from a Western perspective) that tends to encourage the idea that if you are experiencing doubt you need to get out, which is not a fundamental truth. Often these symptoms relate to our ways of seeking connection, feeling safe, and all of the other tough tough that arises to protect us the moment we get really close to someone. I do work to support you in processing the historical experiences that may be preventing you from experiencing healthy and happy relationships.
Fees
Individuals:
Initial Intake Assessment - 80 minutes - $150
Therapy Session - 50 minutes - $150
Therapy Session - 80 minute - $225
Couples:
Initial Intake Assessment- 80 minutes - $200
Therapy Sessions - 50 minutes - $200
Therapy Sessions - 80 minutes - $300
All prices have the tax included.
I offer a student rate of $135/session for full time students, and I offer limited availability sessions at a reduced fee on a sliding scale for individuals who may not be able to afford the full fee, based on socioeconomic circumstances and barriers to financing.
Please contact me for further details regarding pricing, scheduling, or to arrange a free consultation.