My Approach

A collaborative, body-based, and socially aware approach to psychotherapy.

I don't believe there is one therapeutic approach that works for everyone.

My work is grounded in the belief that you are the expert on your own life and that meaningful therapy happens through collaboration. 

I trust in your body’s innate wisdom and capacity to heal from difficult life experiences. I see my role as that of a collaborator, helping you to work through areas of pain and stuckness. I believe that you hold the skills and knowledge you need to move forward in your life and toward the things that matter most to you. I am here to support you along the way.

My approach is trauma-informed, somatically oriented, relational, intersectional, and anti-oppressive.

I draw particularly from Somatic Experiencing® (SE) and Somatic Inner Relationship Focusing (SIRF), integrating these approaches with my broader social work training and experience.

Intersectional Feminism & Anti-Oppressive Practice

Intersectional feminism and anti-oppressive practice form the broader framework through which I understand mental health and healing.

I don't believe that everything we struggle with can—or should—be understood as an individual problem. We are shaped by our histories, relationships, communities, cultures, institutions, and social norms, and these influences can be reflected in our struggles as well as our strengths.

I am interested in the whole person and the whole context: your history, your body, your relationships, your values, your communities, and the systems you navigate.

Sometimes what looks like an individual difficulty makes more sense when we understand the context in which it developed. This perspective helps me approach therapy with curiosity rather than judgment, compassion rather than pathology, and respect for your autonomy and self-determination.

Trauma-Informed Care

Your responses make sense in context.

I approach therapy with the understanding that many of the things we struggle with developed for good reasons.

Anxiety, hypervigilance, people-pleasing, perfectionism, emotional shutdown, avoidance, or difficulty trusting others may once have been important ways of adapting to your circumstances.

Rather than asking "What's wrong with me?", we can become curious about:

What happened?
What did you need then?
What did you learn to do to protect yourself?
Is that strategy still serving you now?

Trauma-informed care means paying attention to safety, consent, pacing, choice, and capacity. We don't have to rush toward difficult material.

You decide what you share and when.

Somatic Therapy

Your body is part of the conversation.

Our experiences aren't held only in our thoughts and memories. Stress, trauma, grief, and other difficult experiences can also affect our bodies, emotions, relationships, and nervous systems.

Somatic therapy brings attention to these embodied experiences. Rather than focusing only on the story of what happened, we may become curious about what is happening right now—perhaps a tightening in your chest, a sense of heaviness, a change in your breathing, an impulse to move away, or even a feeling of numbness.

There is no particular sensation you are supposed to find. The goal isn't to force your body to behave differently, but to develop a more curious and compassionate relationship with your embodied experience and explore whether greater flexibility, choice, and ease become possible.

Two somatic approaches that deeply inform my work are Somatic Experiencing® and Somatic Inner Relationship Focusing.

Somatic Experiencing®

Working with the nervous system and the body's responses to stress and trauma.

Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a body-oriented approach developed by Peter Levine that focuses on how the nervous system responds to stress and overwhelming experiences.

In SE, we gently track sensations, impulses, emotions, and changes in activation in the present moment. Rather than requiring you to relive or repeatedly describe traumatic experiences, we work gradually and within your capacity.

We might notice what happens in your body when you talk about something difficult, explore a sense of tension or activation, or pay attention to moments when your body begins to feel more settled or supported.

SE is particularly relevant to my work with trauma, chronic stress, anxiety, emotional overwhelm, and experiences of feeling stuck in patterns of activation or shutdown.

Somatic Inner Relationship Focusing

Developing a more compassionate relationship with your inner experience.

Somatic Inner Relationship Focusing (SIRF) builds on the tradition of Focusing developed by Eugene Gendlin and Inner Relationship Focusing developed by Ann Weiser Cornell and Barbara McGavin.

SIRF invites us to gently turn toward our inner experience with curiosity and compassion.

You may notice that different parts of you seem to want different things: one part desperately wants change while another is afraid of what change could mean; one pushes you to keep going while another feels exhausted.

Rather than trying to get rid of these experiences, we approach them with interest and respect. We may pay attention to the felt sense of an experience—how something feels in your body before you have fully put it into words—and allow understanding to emerge from there.

The intention is not to "fix" or eliminate parts of yourself, but to develop a different relationship with your inner experience—one characterized by curiosity, compassion, and greater self-trust.

SIRF can be particularly meaningful when you're experiencing inner conflict, self-criticism, difficult relationship patterns, identity questions, or a sense of being stuck between competing needs.

How These Approaches Come Together

You don't have to choose between talking and body-based therapy.

In practice, I don't rigidly separate these approaches.

We might spend part of a session talking about something happening in your life, then slow down and notice what happens in your body as you talk about it. We might explore an inner conflict, shift our attention toward what helps you feel grounded, or simply make space for you to talk.

There is no requirement that every session be somatic.

I use these approaches as invitations rather than prescriptions. Together, we can discover what feels useful and meaningful for you.

A Relational Approach

Therapy happens in relationship.

I believe the relationship between therapist and client is the most important part of the work.

I aim to offer a relationship that is warm, genuine, collaborative, and respectful of your autonomy. I bring my humanity, curiosity, experience, and perspective while remaining attentive to the power and responsibility that comes with being in a therapist role.

I also want you to feel able to tell me when something doesn't feel right. If I've misunderstood you, made an assumption, or missed something important, I want us to be able to talk about it. These moments can become opportunities to understand one another better and strengthen our therapeutic relationship.

Your Pace Matters

We don't have to rush healing.

Especially when working with trauma, I believe that how we work together matters as much as what we talk about.

We will pay attention to your capacity and pace rather than assuming that more intensity means more progress.

Sometimes meaningful therapeutic work means moving toward something difficult. Sometimes it means stepping back. Sometimes it means recognizing that you don't want to go somewhere—and respecting that.

I will invite rather than push.

You are always allowed to pause, change direction, or say no.

What This Might Look Like in a Session

Depending on what you're bringing to therapy, our sessions might include:

Talking and reflection
Making sense of what's happening in your life, relationships, emotions, and thoughts.

Building body awareness
Noticing sensations, movement, tension, activation, settling, or other bodily responses.

Somatic Experiencing
Gently exploring nervous-system responses to stress, trauma, and overwhelming experiences.

Somatic Inner Relationship Focusing
Developing a compassionate relationship with different aspects of your inner experience and the felt sense of what you're going through.

Values and meaning
Exploring what matters to you and what kind of life you want to move toward.

Practical support
Developing strategies that can help you navigate challenges between sessions.

The balance will be different for every person.

Ultimately, I want therapy to help you have more choice.

My hope isn't to turn you into a perfectly regulated, endlessly resilient version of yourself.

Life will continue to include difficult experiences. Instead, I hope our work can support you in developing a greater sense of choice, connection, self-trust, and possibility in how you meet those experiences.

You don't have to become someone different to heal.

Together, we can become curious about the ways you've learned to survive, honour the wisdom in those adaptations, and explore what might become possible when you have more room to choose how you want to live.