I work from the belief that each individual has the ability to grow, heal and change. Growth occurs when a safe and supportive environment is created in which to experiment with new awarenesses. By paying attention to one's experience, be it feelings, thoughts or sensations, one can learn more about the self and change unhelpful patterns. Counselling can help by offering a non-judgemental and safe place in which to explore these possibilities and increase resilience to life's challenges.
I use Somatic Experiencing as an important part of my practice, which involves understanding and supporting the body's drive to heal from difficult life experiences. I like to use a psychoeducational as well as a therapeutic approach to give people information about their body's physiology and natural responses to stress. With this knowledge we can work together to provide relief from troubling symptoms such as anxiety, pain, troubled sleep and difficulty with intimate relationships. We heal and grow from being in healthy relationship with others. The safety of a counselling relationship can provide a way to work through problems, transform trauma, make meaning of experiences, express feelings, create coping strategies, and develop as a person. Through slowing down and paying attention to experience, counselling can support people to learn the skills to understand and nurture the self. Inherent in healing is the potential to reach a deeper relationship with the self and with a larger sense of life energy outside the individual. My approach is one that treats each individual as whole and possessing many strengths and resources. I offer my knowledge, skills, and humour as we explore together what needs attention in your life. This may mean becoming aware of physical, spiritual, cognitive or emotional needs and experiences. It may mean practicing new ways of managing change and living more effectively. You may wish to seek counselling in order to work on small changes as well as large ones. Somatic Experiencing Somatic Experiencing is a gentle and profound way of healing trauma. It assumes that each person has powerful resources and the innate ability and drive to heal. Developed by Dr. Peter Levine, this naturalistic approach focuses on bodily sensations and experiences in order to resolve the unfinished business of trauma. Trauma is seen as a disorder of the nervous system: the body has learned patterns of coping with enormous stress that are not necessarily helpful in the long run. What does trauma look like? An individual may experience symptoms such as: - hyperarousal, or becoming over-alert to potential or perceived danger
- mood swings
- being easily overwhelmed
- isolation
- difficulty sleeping
- difficulty with relationships
- depression
- anxiety
- chronic pain and other syndromes
- dissociation, or feeling disconnected from one's body and environment
- immobility
- a feeling that things just don't make sense
Somatic Experiencing helps the nervous system to begin to self-regulate, or find its own pace of arousal and relaxation, through tracking one's physiological experience. This tracking of internal states allows uncompleted responses to threat to be completed and released from the body. This enables an individual's life energy and sense of well being to be experienced in a safe and contained way. Somatic Experiencing Practitioners have completed a three year training program that is based on working directly with the physiology of trauma. Extensive practice and consultation is paired with classroom learning and considerable reading in the area of trauma treatment. For more information about Somatic Experiencing and the work of Dr. Peter Levine, click here. | 
