PSYCHOTHERAPY
We develop an internal map of ourselves, others, and the world through early relationships. This map shapes how we interpret situations, relate to others, and experience ourselves. Over time, it becomes so familiar it feels like reality.
People often come to therapy because something feels persistently wrong. Not just situational stress, but a longstanding internal state. This may show up as anxiety, low self-worth, emotional overwhelm, numbness, or chronic self-criticism, often attributed to life circumstances.
Most change efforts focus on the surface with new strategies, insight, or coping skills. Yet the underlying experience remains. These patterns are not just cognitive, they are embodied survival responses formed when overwhelming experiences were not co-regulated.
Without consistent co-regulation, the system adapts through patterns like hypervigilance, shutdown, or over-control. Over time, these adaptations become rigid and feel like personality rather than learned responses.
Common underlying themes include:
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Closeness leads to hurt or abandonment
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My needs don’t matter
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Others can’t be relied on
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Asserting myself leads to rejection
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Love and connection feel unsafe
These are not simply thoughts to reframe, but nervous system patterns shaping experience in real time.
Therapy at this level is not about adding more insight, but increasing the capacity to stay with internal experience without defaulting to old survival responses. As this capacity grows, experience becomes more tolerable, reactions less automatic, and a greater sense of continuity emerges.
Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final
― Rainer Maria Rilke
ABOUT ME
What feels like a problem is often an adaptation that no longer fits.
Many of the patterns that bring people to therapy—anxiety, self-criticism, emotional overwhelm, or disconnection—are not random. They are ways the system learned to cope, often in the absence of consistent support.
My work is direct and process-focused. We don’t stay only at the level of insight or explanation. Instead, we pay attention to emotional shifts, protective responses, avoidance, and relational patterns as they emerge in real time.
The focus is not just on improving how you function, but on working with the patterns that organize your experience. Over time, this builds a greater capacity to stay with yourself, respond more flexibly, and relate to others from a more secure place.
I have a Master's Degree in Counselling from the University of Ottawa. I am a Registered Psychotherapist with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO).
FEE
Psychotherapy sessions are $190 per 50-minute session. Services are covered by most extended health plans. Please check directly with your provider to confirm whether Registered Psychotherapists are covered under your policy.
If you are an Ontario resident, you may be able to claim the cost of non-reimbursed psychotherapy services as a medical expense on your income tax return.
Direct billing is available for most insurance providers.
TREATMENT APPROACH
The NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) addresses Complex Trauma (C-PTSD), including attachment, relational and developmental trauma, by working with adaptive patterns that reflect unconscious patterns of disconnection that impact our identity, emotions, physiology, behavior and relationships. NARM integrates a body-centered and psychodynamic approach, within a context of interpersonal neurobiology, grounded in mindfulness and a phenomenological approach to addressing identity and consciousness of self. NARM offers a comprehensive theoretical and clinical model for the resolution of Adverse Childhood Experiences and C-PTSD. NARM offers a framework for post-traumatic growth by supporting increased resiliency, greater health outcomes, healthier relationships, personal growth and social change.
You may feel discouraged by the idea of changing patterns that have been with you for years. But change is possible. Thanks to neuroplasticity, the brain has the capacity to adapt, grow, and form new pathways throughout life.
There is a saying in neuroscience: “neurons that fire together wire together.” The more we practice new ways of relating to ourselves and others, the more those ways begin to feel natural. Over time, profound change can happen as we continue strengthening these new pathways.
This Too Shall Pass
CONTACT
Finding the right therapist is important, as a strong therapeutic relationship is essential for meaningful therapy. This process often takes research, patience, and intuition.
Your research and patience have brought you here. The next step is to check in with your intuition.
I encourage you to schedule a phone consultation if you are considering working with me. This gives us an opportunity to get a sense of whether we are the right fit for one another.