My journey began in a home where chaos was normal. Here, I learned that expressions of anger and shame were acts of love. Growing up in this environment, I learned to embrace anger; it kept me safe and protected - and I depended on it for survival.
At 13 years old, my anger was amplified after losing the only person whom I shared these childhood experiences with. From there, I unknowingly built a narrative about the world:
Life is unfair and unjust.
People are untrustworthy and dangerous.
I can count only on myself.
To get through life, a part of me held up a facade; one that would keep me away from confronting my reality. That he was gone, and I was alone.
I had built an armour that kept me safe.
But, like two sides of the same coin, the very thing that protects us can also hurt us the most.
I was detached from the world, others, and many times, with myself. It was isolating and exhausting. Often, the wash of loneliness that took over my body was paralyzing and scary.
I started to wonder if life was always going to be like this and I grew curious:
What was all of this armour for?
Who was I protecting?
Who am I without the armour?
Gently, I opened myself up to the curiosity and let myself take a piece of the armour off. Underneath was place that held all the pain of the child I had been. As I stayed with her, she slowly began to share her memories, fears, wishes, and pain she carried.
Piece by piece, the armour softened and the healing became an exploration of the wounded child within me. The more I heard her and learned to be with her, the more there was calmness and tranquility inside.
In unmasking and being with these vulnerable places inside, we are can build a new and different relationship with them. One that connects us internally, and in turn, changes how we are with others.
There is peace in reclaiming the parts of us we’ve had to disown and turn away from - it allows us to embody ourselves wholly.
The energy that once embodied my anger, now fuels my passion to help myself and others discover parts within and show up as a whole.
I believe that change and transformations are always possible. And, it starts with the relationship we are most familiar with: Our relationship with ourselves.
How we view and interact with ourselves matters.
In our work together, I help you reconnect to your true self - the one that lives underneath all the armour and patterns of being in the world that experience has taught us we need. Using an integrative, trauma informed approach that incorporates both mind and body-based psychotherapies, I help clients go beyond recovery from what was to discovery of what’s possible.
I am a Registered Psychotherapist with the College of Registered Psychotherapist of Ontario. In addition to my undergraduate and graduate experiences, I am continually building my knowledge in mental health treatments for both individuals and couples, and have completed training in EFT, EMDR, Ego State Therapy, Internal Family Systems Therapy, the Gottman Method Couples Therapy and Relational Life Therapy.
