Therapy with me: it’s about feeling truly seen
With me, you’ll feel safe, supported, believed in, and deeply understood. But you’ll also be challenged, pushed toward growth, and encouraged to step into your strength. I’ll be right there beside you, not just as a therapist but as an active supporter. I’ll celebrate your wins, sit with you in your hard moments, and even share in the crying, swearing, and frustration when life gets messy.
Yes, we’ll navigate the tough, dark places, but we’ll also make space for laughter, lightness, and playfulness. Because healing doesn’t only happen by going through the darkness, it also happens in the light.
My background & experience
I bring both clinical training and lived understanding to my work. Through my own healing journey, I have come to know the pain, fear, and beauty of transformation, and that experience deeply shapes the presence I bring into the therapy room. Clients often describe me as warm, playful, intuitive, and real.
I often work with high-functioning adults who may appear composed on the outside while carrying quiet inner storms. Many of my clients are navigating relationship struggles, anxiety, perfectionism, shame, depression, ADHD, self-doubt, or the feeling of always being behind. These struggles are often rooted in complex trauma, including relational, intergenerational, cultural, or attachment wounds.
My approach is integrative, drawing from psychodynamic therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Gestalt, somatic work, CBT, and nervous-system-informed tools. I work with the mind, emotions, body, and meaning-making dimensions of healing. At the heart of my work is the belief that therapy is not only about symptom relief, it is about coming back into a more honest, compassionate, and alive relationship with yourself.
In therapy, we slow things down. We listen to the parts of you that feel wounded, protective, overwhelmed, numb, angry, ashamed, or afraid, not to judge or fix them, but to understand what they have been carrying and what they may need in order to heal. Together, we work toward greater emotional clarity, inner safety, self-trust, and a deeper capacity to live your life rather than simply survive it.
I hold a B.Sc. from the University of British Columbia with a research focus in neuroscience and epigenetics. Later studied masters of Human Development, Learning, and Culture at UBC, completed postgraduate training in psychodynamic therapy at the Toronto Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and received my IFS training through the IFS Institute.
My previous work in community mental health, UBC Hospital’s psychiatric unit, and crisis and suicide prevention has shaped my ability to stay grounded and attuned, even when clients are moving through painful, overwhelming, or uncertain places.
She is particularly interested in how therapy can support neuroplastic changes in the brain and nervous system, and even influence gene expression, reversing the impact of trauma through relational healing but also keep the wisdom, strength, and sensitivity that came from surviving it.
Outside of therapy, I enjoy nature, learning, good food, creative projects, thought-provoking films, the occasional sitcom binge, and time with my loved ones and two little fur babies.
My Philosophy of Therapy
From the moment we’re born, we begin walking a developmental path toward our highest potential. To grow along that path, we need three essential experiences: safety, meaning, and connection. When these needs go unmet—through trauma, neglect, inconsistent attachment, or internalized criticism—our emotional, psychological, cognitive, and existential development becomes disrupted.
But development doesn’t simply pause. Parts of us get stuck. Others go underground. Some become wounded. Over time, these disruptions give rise to existential pain, a quiet mourning for what we lost or never had, and a deep angst about how to live with the limitations of existence.
As children, we depend entirely on our caregivers to meet our needs. When that support is absent or inconsistent, we adapt—not out of choice, but survival. We might internalize a parent’s critical voice, abandon parts of ourselves they disapproved of, or develop protective behaviors to shield us from chaos, rejection, or pain. These patterns become embedded in how we see the world and ourselves. As adults, they continue—often unconsciously—sabotaging our ability to connect, feel safe, and live fully.
Therapy is the space where we begin to gently untangle these patterns.
Therapy is where we begin to gently unravel the patterns that shape our inner and outer worlds. We start by naming what we feel—shame, fear, guilt, envy, confusion—and learning how these emotions live in the body. We notice when and how they arise, and what situations, thoughts, or relationships tend to trigger them.
As we track these emotional and bodily responses, we begin to see the protective strategies we’ve developed—strategies that once helped us survive but now show up as familiar patterns in our relationships: distancing, people-pleasing, shutting down, controlling, over-explaining, anger, avoidance. These aren’t flaws; they’re deeply intelligent adaptations formed in response to earlier pain.
With time and care, we trace these patterns back to the younger, more vulnerable parts of us they were trying to protect—the parts carrying unmet needs, unprocessed grief, or buried fear. Therapy offers a space to meet those parts with curiosity and compassion, allowing what was once hidden to slowly come into the light and begin to heal.
Sometimes, feelings toward our early caregivers resurface in the therapy room. This isn’t a setback; it’s a sacred opportunity. When a client expresses those feelings and the therapist responds with care, consistency, and repair, a new kind of experience unfolds—one that can reach the original wound, but this time, within the safety of a healing relationship.
Therapy is rarely linear. It is circular, messy, and alive. Often, what we cannot yet name, we act out or feel in the presence of the therapist. Good therapy makes space for this to emerge, without rushing to fix or interpret. The therapist does not impose meaning but helps the client give voice to what was once unspeakable.
Therapy is not about fixing you.
It’s about returning to your developmental path—reclaiming the safety, connection, and meaning that were once out of reach. It’s about finding your way back to yourself.
And the work is not easy.
It’s brave, awkward, beautiful, boring, painful, fascinating, and deeply human.
It requires courage, curiosity, compassion, and commitment.
But it is, in the truest sense, a journey toward freedom.