What is Individual Counselling?
Standard counselling often focuses on “Cognitive Behavioural Therapy” (CBT), which requires your thinking brain to be fully active. However, when you are triggered, anxious, or suffering from trauma, your brain goes into survival mode (fight, flight, or freeze), and your thinking brain goes offline. Our Individual Counselling is unique. We use a trauma-specific, bottom-up approach. We focus on calming your survival instincts and regulating your nervous system first. Only then can we access the thinking brain to create lasting change.
Do you remember the last time you felt triggered, evoked, poked by a past event in the present day? Chances are, your body went into survival mode and you felt the need to fight, freeze, or flee rather than think, review, and reflect. In order to engage in traditional talk therapy, known as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), we need to access our thinking brains. However, extensive research has shown that when we are triggered, our thinking brains go offline.
Therapies that only focus on thoughts or emotions, fail to address the ways in which trauma is stored in the body. The deeper healing work then goes untouched and the root cause unexplored. You may walk out of a session thinking, ‘that just didn’t work for me’. Using a trauma-specific approach, I work with the whole person to help calm the survival and emotional part of the brain first, so we can then access the thinking brain … and create lasting, change. How you ask…EMDR.
My areas of expertise include:
- Trauma
- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- Anxiety
- Depression
The Process: What Occurs in a Session?
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Safety & Stabilization: We do not dive straight into painful memories. We start by building resources to help you feel safe in your body.
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Root Cause Exploration: Rather than just managing symptoms, we look for the “root cause”—often a story or memory stored in the body.
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Integration: We use modalities like EMDR and Expressive Arts to process these root causes. This ensures that you don’t just “talk about” the problem, but actually change how your brain and body react to it.
Who is this for?
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Adults feeling “stuck” in traditional talk therapy.
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Individuals dealing with PTSD, Anxiety, Depression, or Grief.
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Anyone who feels their physical body reacting (racing heart, panic) to emotional stress.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. While we use creative tools, we tailor the session to you. If you prefer more structure, we adapt to that.
We are Registered Social Workers (RSW) who specialize in clinical counselling. We focus on therapeutic processing and holistic healing rather than diagnosis or medication management.
Yes, most extended health benefit plans cover services provided by Registered Social Workers (MSW, RSW). Please check your specific policy.