Humans need love and are wired for connection. We will contort ourselves into impressive shapes to make sure we stay connected. Over time these shapes can become fixed, leaving us feeling off balance and uncomfortable. Relational psychotherapy pays attention to the ways you are seeking and/or limiting connection. It makes use of the relationship between you and the therapist as a creative laboratory to discover these patterns and explore new ways of relating.

There is so much that can’t be expressed in words. Our bodies are constantly transmitting information in ways that are often lost. Embodied psychotherapy honours this, inviting us to tune into and include the wisdom of the body. It invites avenues for healing that start with the body, where perhaps a new posture or movement can shift our thoughts and feelings.

Trauma is not a rational process, but it does have its own physical and emotional logic. Trauma-focussed psychotherapy brings in tools to understand and work with the symptoms of trauma as they are stored in your body and mind. Going at your own pace, we can reclaim feelings of safety and connection. This sense of safety can act as a home base, making it possible to revisit difficult experiences as many times as is needed for them to transform.

Traditional psychotherapy is concerned with ending individual, psychological causes of suffering. Buddhism goes beyond this, articulating a more universal understanding of suffering. It offers a rich tapestry of teachings and practices that can help us take a backwards step, see our place in the world, and access more choice over how we relate to our pain.

Liberatory psychotherapy understands that individual expressions of suffering are bound up with familial, societal, and global suffering. Therapy can be one place where we untangle how we are enacting internalized oppression. It can also be a site of resistance, establishing a nonviolent way of relating within ourselves, and trusting that change to radiate outwards.

Gender is both a social technology we all use to move through the world, and a deeply personal expression of self. When your gender feels unaligned, it can cause distance from yourself and from others. There is no one correct way to resolve this. Shifting identities may feel threatening, going against a lifetime’s worth of conditioning. In therapy, we can take time to explore and clarify your identity as it unfolds, find new ways of being, and work through all the feelings that emerge in the process.

I also am happy to offer trans and non-binary people non-pathologizing access to therapy for other mental health issues. I believe that access to psychological healing is as important for trans people as access to gender-related medical care. Transness is so often fixated upon. As a trans practitioner, I can honour your identity and the way it colours your experience, without letting it overshadow other concerns. I am affirming and knowledgable about diverse gender experiences, sexualities, kinks, and relationship styles.

Trauma happens any time we live through an experience that exceeds our ability to cope and process in the moment. It can be a one time event, like surviving sexual violence, or an accumulation of experience, like growing up in a home where your needs and personhood were not respected. 

These difficult experiences can leave a lasting impact in strange and distressing ways. You might feel constantly on edge, fixated on the experience, difficulty staying in the moment, and a persistent sense of shame. It might feel like there’s a virus in your operating system that you don't know how to get rid of. There can be profound grief in the reality that a certain way of being has been lost, or was never found to begin with.

Therapy can’t change what happened, but it can help make sense of your experiences, re-establish a sense of safety, and bring kindness to the way you relate to yourself. This process of reconnection to yourself, your body, and to the world can ultimately yield more flexibility and resilience. 

It is through love that we heal and grow, and yet it offers no place of safety. Seeking and practicing love can evoke fears and fantasies in equal measure, demanding vulnerability and risk. In this process, it is common to feel off balance. Perhaps you often overextend, losing yourself in a relationship, or perhaps you withdraw, cutting off connection when the risk feels too great.

Therapy can help shed light on the dynamics you are navigating, gain clarity on the practice of love, and offer tools for maintaining connection without breaching respect for yourself or the other.

We are living in difficult times. Climate change, horrible injustices, economic uncertainty, and political failures have become shadows that we have to somehow live our every day lives with. You might find yourself experiencing an existential or spiritual crisis, feeling powerless, enraged, and overwhelmed. 

Therapy can offer space to hold these complex feelings that may be too upsetting or unwelcome to express elsewhere. By exploring your values and settling into wisdom about effective action, we can navigate finding meaning amidst a world on fire.

Emotions are a fundamental tool human bodies use to quickly gather information and motivate action. But when life becomes too much to handle, emotions like sadness, fear, and anger can become fixed patterns of depression, anxiety, and aggression. 

Therapy can offer practical tools to cope with difficult feelings so you can find relief. Beyond coping, we can also work with your emotions to discover what information they are trying to express. Often unpleasant emotions hold wisdom about unmet needs or crossed boundaries. Exploring small steps to honour that wisdom can restore flexibility into your emotional system.