What are your qualifications and training?

My title is:

• Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario.

My education:

• Masters of Arts in Counselling Psychology from Yorkville University
• Bachelor of Science in Honours Biology with a minor in the Classical Studies from the University of Waterloo

I've counselled at the Community Counselling Centre of London and the Trauma Healing Centre of London. I've also supported youth and adults as a Crisis Responder with Crisis Text Line.

What is your approach to therapy?

I'm trained in Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), a therapy firmly grounded in current neuroscience, trauma theory, and in how to use emotions for positive transformation. I am a Level I AEDP Therapist. I have training in Somatic Experiencing, an approach to healing trauma that recognizes that our experiences are not just stored in our mind but in our body.

Why do you do this?

Trauma begets trauma. I've learned this professionally and personally. Everyone is born with emotional needs, yet you have no control over whether your home, community, culture or society will meet those needs. You don't have a say in your inheritance of intergenerational trauma, which impacts racialized communities disproportionately.

I believe we all have an equal right to mental health and no one should have to suffer alone. I counsel to support people like you who are taking the brave step of being vulnerable and attending to your emotional needs. Who want to live with love, openness and compassion and know your mental health is essential in making a positive difference. Who accept responsibility for how your emotional health impacts people in your personal and professional life and are doing your part in ending the cycle of trauma.

Emotionally healthy people not only experience the benefits of being connected to themselves, their lives, and their loved ones. They create emotionally healthy homes, communities, workplaces and societies. And anyone who wants to be a part of that deserves a collaborator in their healing.

What is experiential therapy?

In experiential therapy, we don't just talk about your problems, strengths and solutions. Together, we create the opportunity for you to feel, deepen, release, and ultimately make positive use of the emotions that are distressing you with support.

The root of what brings many people into therapy is being afraid to feel what we feel. When you had to handle overwhelming emotions alone, you learned not to go back to that vulnerable place of experiencing sensations and feelings outside of our cognitive control.

In experiential therapy, I prioritize establishing your felt sense that you have warm, accepting, dependable support in me and that you're not alone. I'll gently guide you into your emotions by focusing on the physical sensations that come along with each emotion. I'll invite you to slow down and stay with your experience instead of talking past it. Together, we'll increase your capacity to feel and deal with your emotions so you don't have to rely on old patterns of avoiding them.

You may wonder: why the emphasis on experiencing emotions and your emotional capacity?

Because your emotional capacity is directly related to your self-esteem, courage, self-compassion, conflict management, connectedness, and clarity of thought. Through getting to know your emotions, you get to know yourself and your deepest needs that deserve to be met. You have more control over how you express yourself. You feel more alive and your relationships benefit when you can validate and constructively deal with your emotions.

What is a trauma-informed therapist?

As a trauma-informed therapist, I understand you can't rationalize your struggles away. Healing depression or anxiety with roots in trauma isn't about convincing yourself to be hopeful or expect good outcomes because trauma has primed you to look out for what will go wrong.

I understand, informed by the work of therapists like Gabor Mate, Peter Levine, Bessel van der Kolk, and Judith Herman, that trauma is embedded in the body, away from your conscious mind. When you went through experiences that made you feel unsafe physically, emotionally and psychologically, you instinctively engaged your survival instincts of fight, flight, freeze or fawn (pleasing others to avoid danger). These experiences can be major life events or they can be embedded regularly in your earliest relationships with your caregivers. And if you couldn't protect yourself or someone didn't come to protect you, present situations that resemble those past experiences cue your sense on a physiological, unconscious level that you're still in danger.

I recognize how your trauma continues to impact your sense of physical, emotional and relational safety, and prioritize them in therapy. I respect whatever amount of trust you bring into the room. I value your choice in what you share and the pace of therapy.

Will I have to think about my childhood and past?

The short answer is, yes. That said, your pace is the right pace. There is nothing to be gained in pushing you to talk about something you don’t want to talk about (in fact, it can be re-traumatizing), so I don’t do that.

Your past is important because you learn who you are through your interactions with other people. You didn’t form your identity in a vacuum. You learned whether you are attractive, smart, likable, strange, athletic, kind, nerdy, sensitive, or worthy of love based on how other people responded and reacted to you.

And which interactions formed your first ideas of who you are? Yup, you guessed it, the ones in childhood (they're called formative years for a reason). As a child, you adapted to your surroundings and caregivers to survive. And you internalized messages about what is ok and not ok to do with your emotions like:

"Being angry is bad because I’m supposed to be grateful."

"Crying in front of others only makes the situation worse."

"Being proud of myself is useless 'cause I'll just invite criticism."

And these beliefs can remain ingrained long after they have ceased to be useful to you.

I won’t reduce you to your history. But understanding how your relational history shapes your assumptions, reactions and fears will equip you with the ability to create relationships that give you energy and joy rather than sap you dry.

How is talking to you any different from talking to my grandma? She’s a great listener, too.

Don’t stop talking to Grandma! Each person who supports you in your well-being is a vital part of your journey.

Unlike Grandma (unless she's trained in psychology) I understand how you heal. I’m not a passive listener: I am an active participant who is co-creating a healing experience for you. This means I'll direct you to slow down. If you breeze past the part of your story that makes you tear or tense up, I might interrupt you and draw your focus back to the part of our conversation that had a feeling that went along with it so that you can mine the relief, healing, and growth that comes with support in experiencing your emotions.

Also, you don’t have to hold anything back out of concern for me. It's my job to take care of me, not yours.

How do I know if you’re the right therapist for me?

Trust your gut. If your gut says, “This woman gets me,” go with your gut. If it says, “I have no clue what planet she’s from, but it’s not mine,” go with your gut. There is no therapist who works well with everyone, and you deserve a therapist who you trust and feel connected to.

I work with your emotions. I don't prescribe worksheets or come to therapy with an agenda for you. Instead, I work with your experience that is emergent in the session to expand your capacity to feel and deal with difficult emotions.

I'm not a parrot that will simply mirror you. I am emotionally engaged and responsive so you sense my involved, enthusiastic and caring support, not a neutral blank figure. I use a blend of letting you lead and directing our time together.

What are five things you can tell me about you?

• I'm a first-gen Canadian with a Singaporean-Chinese-Malaysian background.
• I grew up in Coquitlam, B.C. near Vancouver and originally came to Ontario for my undergrad. I've built a life here in London, ON with my partner and have a sense of home on both the east and west coast. But I do miss the sushi.
• Did I always know I wanted to be a counsellor? Nope! I always knew I wanted to help others but I didn't know how. Finding my vocation took me through the insurance industry and a Big 4 accounting firm. It wasn't a conventional career path, but those experiences shaped me through the lessons I learned and the people I met. I wouldn't have it any other way.
• I like potatoes. They're versatile, dependable, take many forms and make me very happy.
• One of my favourite affirmations: "Perfection and power are overrated. I think you are very wise to choose happiness and love." And yes, that one's from Uncle Iroh.