“Methods are many and principles are few. Methods always change but principles rarely do”

When it comes to how I approach different presenting concerns, it is important to know that I do not believe in a one size fits all approach for any concern. The principle that seems to matter most is creating a different therapy for each person (or family) that connects with the life they want to be living, their values, and their preferences.

I have found ways to include many different evidence supported therapy methods into the approaches I describe below, including but not limited to; clinical hypnosis, cognitive behavioural therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, EMDR, narrative therapy, and play therapy activities.

That being said, here are a few examples of things that many past clients have told me they found helpful. While the number of terms to describe presenting concerns seems to grow every year, I find that most seem to fit within one or more of these categories. Whenever needed, I am happy to offer the people I meet with concrete steps they can take to change any pattern they want to change.

Anxiety and OCD

When clients have been struggling with managing anxiety they often express appreciation for having a road map, sometimes with specific steps or stages, for the process of therapy. In many cases we will talk about the neuropsychological perspective (aka how the brain works and learns), and grow their awareness and confidence in decision making. Together we make a plan to gently re-train the anxiety, so that you can remain thoughtful and cautious without any brick walls between you and parts of life you want more of. The first step is often making a shift from viewing anxiety as a problem to viewing anxiety as normal and important, with the problem being difficulty managing worries. From there we can develop ways to interact with worries (e.g. naming and “talking” to worries), so that we can develop more effective habits for dealing with them.

School Attendance and Particpation

When clients are struggling with attending or participating school, I will often focus on helping them develop ways to manage (or "regulate") the self critical parts of their mind. our focus becomes developing a helpful self awareness, instead of paralyzing and overwhelming shame that fuels anger, refusal, or avoidance. When shame creates obstacles to participating in therapy (including coming to therapy sessions); I offer to show parents how to interact with they child in ways that helps the child learn to regulate the shame, and start helping themselves. Although I do not provide psychoeducational assessments, I do practice school/educational psychology and can offer strategies for working with learning and attention difficulties.

Self esteem and depression

It has been said struggling with anxiety means that the world seems too unpredictable, while struggling with depression means that the world seems too predictable. As the saying goes, "we often see what we look for", and if what we look for is evidence to confirm a negative story about ourselves we often see ourselves as helpful to rewrite it. While many of my clients have expressed appreciation for help learning to disconnect from unhelpful internal stories (what psychologist classify as "rumination"), the first step was usually expressing what was inside. They would often reflect on how much they needed validation and empathy for their inner pain. They have described permission to express their pain as something that allowed them to let their feelings grow again. what usually follows is a re-examination of the reflexive negative story they had been telling themselves. On more than a few occasions they have changed the story using drawing, painting, or toys as actors.

Family conflict and Disconnection

All of us have patterns in the way we interact. From my perspective the pattern is the problem, not one person.

For families I start by helping people define what they are ready to discuss, and what ways of communicating they would like me to help them do more and less. This is followed by helping them reconnect, identifying the things they still share that are often hidden by conflict, their hopes and goals, and mapping the pattern they find themselves in so that we can begin to interrupt it.

Clinical Hypnosis

Clinical hypnosis is a way of helping clients get into a hypnotic state, or “trance”, un purpose.

Trance is an everyday occurance where you become so focused and absorbed in something that you might lose track of time or don’t hear someone speaking to you. Examples include driving down the highway, pretend play for children, making something with your hands, playing an instrument, or watching a movie that you love.

When this happens our connection to the self monitoring, and often self critical, part of our mind decreases and our cognitive flexibility increases. The field of neuropsychology describes this phenomena as a decrease in activity of the “default mode network”. This change in state gives the person the option to learn different ways of automatically responding to situations.

Clinical hypnosis is a way of creating a trance intentionally rather than accidentally, followed by using specific words and timing (what we call “suggestions”) to help the person change automatic ways of reacting to specific situations. The most common example would be changing the automatic associations a person’s mind makes with aspects of their bedtime environment so that they can sleep easier.

the most important words to remember when it comes to clinical hypnosis are option and choice. Hypnosis cannot make a person go into trance, and the ideas or suggestions offered by the therapist during trance cannot make a person do anything that they would not choose to do when they are not in trance.