Research shows that a large percentage of what make therapy effective is the relationship between the client and the psychologist. So, before you come and share personal information about yourself and your life with me, find out a little about me and see whether you think we would make a good team.
I’m a registered Psychologist (she/her) who has been working in the field since 2006. I have worked in the not-for-profit sector, government sector, and private practice.
I am currently working school hours and spend the rest of my time focussing on guiding my 2 spirited, energetic little humans to become confident, capable, emotionally intelligent people who actively strive to live a rich, full, meaningful life, however that may look for them. Though, in reality they are the ones constantly teaching me lessons about myself, parenting, and the society we live in.
To date my interest, and most of my work, has been working with adults to guide and support them through difficult experiences. However, I’m at the stage in my professional life where I’m really enjoying balancing this work with the coaching side of psychology, helping healthy people to thrive, facilitating people to be the best selves they can be, and helping them get the most satisfaction and enjoyment from their lives.
I have a special interest in coaching parents to parent from their values base rather than from an emotionally reactive space. My approach is to educate parents on emotion coaching and building respectful loving relationships so that children want to co-operate, alleviating the need for behaviour management. Furthermore, research shows healthy relationships and emotional intelligence are integral to the development of healthy successful individuals. There are two reasons this has become such an interest for me. The first is that most of the problems I see with my adult clients stem back in some way to emotional avoidance (something we learn in childhood), so I want to see a significant change in how we teach the new generation, at a societal level, how to appropriately deal with their emotions so that they don’t learn unhelpful ways of avoiding them. The second reason is that I’m currently experiencing the challenges of parenthood myself and I understand what it is like to be striving to be the best parent you can be while being triggered by the old hurts from our own childhood that get in the way of being the kind of parent you want to be.
As you may have noticed my practice is guided by research. When developing a treatment plan, I start with the treatment modalities that have the highest evidence base. However, everyone is different and thus their healing looks different and requires different styles. As such, I have training in a variety of therapeutic approaches so that we can work together to find what you best connect with and heal from. Some of the common frameworks I work within include but are not limited to: ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), Motivational Interviewing, CBT (Cognitive and Behavioural Therapy), Schema Therapy, Systematic desensitization therapy, Narrative Therapy, Solution focused Therapy, Positive Psychology, Art Therapy, Trauma Informed Yoga Therapy, and Emotion Freedom Technique (EFT or Tapping).
When I’m not at work you would typically find me hanging out in nature with the family, trying to capture those beautiful emotional moments with a camera, listening to music, and once the kids are asleep reading a book.
If you think you would like to journey with me than send me an email or give me a call.