My Story

My journey into the world of mental health began at an early age, as I attempted to navigate the terrain of an emotionally turbulent environment.

By the time I was in my teens, my emotional operating systems were so hard wired, they spoke in absolute, irrefutable truths.

Everyone leaves. You're on your own. People will hurt you. Don't trust. Don't be vulnerable. Just survive. 

Even if I'd had any inclination to question those beliefs, I would have found evidence everywhere - when you constantly shut people out, they do tend to walk away. But I didn't question, and so the pattern continued. 

Trauma is a great example of classical conditioning; when something hurts, we learn to be careful. When something really hurts, we learn to protect ourselves against it ever happening again. The impact is stronger, the learning is deeper, and the protective strategies are more rigid, broader reaching, and longer lasting.

I had learned well. I didn't trust. I wasn't vulnerable. I did survive.

It worked. 

And I was sick of surviving. 

Healing was a process of unlearning and relearning, of challenging old beliefs and uncovering new truths. And somewhere between delving into my own emotional history and coming out the other side (which you can read more about here), I fell in love with the process.

Fixing and healing became discovering and transcending.

Surviving became thriving.

And thriving - my own and others’ - became a calling.

My Why

Because when we feel better, we do better.

And when we do better, we make the world better.

My Philosophy

Ultimately, I believe that the journey to feeling better is the journey back into wholeness.

That suffering comes from disconnection - from others, from the world around us, and ultimately from ourselves; from our bodies, from our hearts, from the parts of ourselves that the world hasn’t treated kindly and from the tender aspects of our humanity that society may not always seem to value.

And that healing comes from reconnection. That healing is reclaiming - reclaiming our minds, our bodies, our hearts, and of the parts of us we were under the mistaken impression we needed to banish. Healing is restoring the wholeness that was there before experience took its toll.

And if the goal is wholeness, we need whole-person therapies. We need to integrate therapies that support the mental parts of our being with therapies that attend to the emotional and physical aspects of our being. Which is why I’m committed to an integrative, wholistic treatment model that brings together insight based practices with experiential therapies in order to being about wholistic transformation.

My Career

I was once told that healing was the journey from trauma to experience.

I view my career as a living embodiment of that journey. 

My personal experience with mental health inspired me to pursue a career in integrative mental health, completing post-graduate work in Psychotherapy and Naturopathic Medicine. I am registered with both the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario and the College of Naturopaths of Ontario.

I continue to expand my knowledge of trauma, neurology and consciousness in mental health treatment on an ongoing basis. In addition to my undergraduate and graduate degrees, I have training, certifications and/ or designations in EMDR, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Ego State Therapy, Dissociation, and Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy.

My Areas of Focus

Attachment and Developmental Trauma

PTSD and Complex PTSD

Dissociative Disorders