Registered Clinical Counselling

Counselling is a space of understanding. It's where individuals seek clarity, find support, and work through the nuances of their feelings without judgment.

Counselling is a professional relationship that facilitates self-discovery and emotional well-being. At its core, it's about providing a confidential environment where one can openly express and process emotions, behaviours, and thoughts, leading to clearer self-awareness and personal growth.

There are many different paths that you and your counsellor may take towards the destination of self-understanding.

Some of the lenses that I most value and incorporate in my work are:

• Mindfulness: Grounded in the present moment, mindfulness in counselling emphasizes a gentle ‘awakeness’ to one's thoughts and feelings. It promotes the creation of a spacious pause between perception and reaction: this interval allows us freedom of choice. Mindfulness has the potential to both foster a sense of being anchored when we are feeling scattered and offer a sense of lightness when we are feeling bogged down. Mindfulness can be helpful for enabling individuals to engage with their lives more fully, joyfully, compassionately and intuitively.

• Somatics: Although we often think of emotions as a mental phenomenon, there is no emotion without an accompanying bodily experience. Our bodies can be thought of as the site of memory for emotions and past traumas. Whether we first become aware of a stuck emotion through its mental or physical manifestations, developing awareness of the body is a powerful tool for unravelling these unresolved experiences.

• Attachment: From our earliest moments, our attachments form the template for our understanding of the realities and possibilities of relationship and connection. In counselling, we may explore whether you have a predominant attachment style or whether you display different attachment patterns across different relationships and time periods of life. Understanding attachment theory can shed light on specific relationship dynamics and on recurring relational patterns, allowing more room for choice of secure and fulfilling connections in the future.

In session, we make room to honour and unpack the experience that is uniquely yours.

At the same time, we situate this experience in the context of family, community, and society. We also discuss how many aspects of our emotional journeys are shared, relatable, and essentially human. We can recognize our common humanity in the universality of the physiological response to stress, the states of the autonomic nervous system and their impact on mood, and the ways in which many of our concerns revolve around basic themes such as survival, belonging, identity and purpose.

When navigating the complexities of emotions and relationships, counselling can be a valuable part of your toolbox.

It not only helps us shape empowering and insightful narratives of our lives but also provides tools, strategies and practices to enhance emotional well-being and interpersonal connections.