1. Registered clinical counsellor and REB psychotherapist certified in providing, CBT, DBT, TF-CBT, MI, ACT, SFT, CFT.
2. Dually certified as a personality disorder (C-PD) treatment provider, and a Level II (CCTP-II) certified clinical trauma professional.
3. Twenty-five (25) years of university teaching in conjunction with clinical and developmental counselling experience.
4. Specialized knowledge and extensive practical experience working with emerging-young (17-28 yrs,) and adult cognitive, social, emotional, and interpersonal development.

About

Hello, a little about me…

I am a clinical counsellor (psychotherapist) and a university professor who holds academic degrees in criminology, sociology, counselling psychology, and I am completing my doctorate in developmental psychology.

When I named my practice MindWorX, I did so because I’ve always professionally identified as a teacher-counsellor; one who is invested in learning and working in a dual teaching and counselling role that specifically focuses on ‘how the mind works’. I integrate over two decades of formal post-secondary teaching into my clinical and developmental counselling approaches to provide a unique and distinct service experience that is especially important in a tumultuous social and political climate of extreme change and uncertainty. I focus on the importance of providing essential mental health and total well-being services for men, women, and families and I champion the approach of human centred therapy to develop tailored treatment goals while ensuring assessments and clinical interventions are evidence-based.

I offer individual and group counselling, well-being consulting, psychoeducation, supplemental learning, and outreach-community group work towards client self-management and care. I believe in working with people to help them identify their personal strengths, abilities, and resilience to facilitate the treatment of psychological difficulties and effectuate personal growth and development.

A Unique Approach to Counselling

My approach to clinical counselling (psychotherapy) is grounded in developmental psychopathology, a branch of psychology concerned with studying the origins, development and path of psychological problems over the life span.

To understand the complexities involved with human development, this approach maps the many diverse pathways individuals may take while experiencing or finding themselves in the process of developing psychological difficulties. This mapping of psychopathology pathways helps clients better visualize how their diverse symptomologies have over time come to shape the distress they are experiencing along with an understanding of the root problem.

Who Am I?

I’m an integrative clinician who employs cognitive and affective psychology as part of my combined approach to clinical and developmental counselling. This entails being a clinical practitioner whose:

• education and experiences underscore an integrative and interdisciplinary practice towards high-quality mental health and substance use outpatient care for men, women, and families;

• clinical interests and concentration focus on working with late adolescent and adult developmental psychopathologies. This area of counselling and therapy specialization focuses on the abnormal cognitive, emotional, and social psychological processes over a person’s life span that in turn leads to adult personality and identity developmental delays or difficulties. This may result in an underdeveloped, fragmented, or a shattered sense of self and may present from adverse childhood experiences;

• clinical approaches include integrated clinical and developmental counselling therapies to treat mental, emotional, and behavioural disorders such as anxiety, depression, trauma and stressor related disorder, in addition to substance use and addiction recovery.

What Clinical Counselling (Psychotherapy) Services Do I Provide?

• Depressive & Anxiety Disorders

• Trauma & Stressor Related Disorders

• Substance Use Disorder & Addiction Recovery

• Adult Personality & Identity Developmental Delay

What Developmental Counselling Services Do I Provide?

• Post-Secondary Academic Counselling

• Vocation-Career Planning and Development

• Career and Work-Life Balance Strategies

• The At-Risk Learner (learners who have difficulty or an inability to learn, commit, or acclimate to academic or professional expectations)

Professional Registrations

• British Columbia Association of Clinical Counsellors (BCACC) - Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC)

• Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA) - Certified Canadian Counsellor (CCC)

• Career Professionals of Canada - Career Development Practitioner (CDP)

MindWorX Mental Health Services Details

Anxiety Disorders: A condition wherein the person exhibits a very observable amount of excessive worry and feelings of fear, dread, and even uneasiness.

Personality Disorders: A mental health condition where people have a lifelong pattern of seeing themselves and reacting to others in ways that cause problems; this involves long-lasting, all-encompassing, disruptive patterns of thinking, behavior, mood and relating to others. These patterns cause a person significant distress and/or impair their ability to function. People with personality disorders often have a hard time understanding emotions and tolerating distress.

Trauma & Stressor Related Disorders: Exposure to a traumatic or stressful event that leaves a person feeling emotionally distressed.

Mood Disorders: Distressing emotional states of being over a long period of time – e.g., depression.

Substance Use Disorder & Addiction Recovery: A recoverable physiological and mental health disease brought on by the chronic use of alcohol or a substance that may cause an addiction reliance or dependency.

Adult Personality & Identity Developmental Delay: Maladaptive cognitive and emotional processes that interfere with consciously becoming aware of one’s sense of self. The processes involved affect identity formation in terms of healthy and typical development. Adult identity developmental delay is a term used to explain when a mature adolescent (a teenager who is at least 17 years old) or an adult has not been able to successfully achieve a psychologically stable and well-defined sense of who they are (a sense of self). This type of developmental issue is as a result of not meeting key developmental milestones that are typically required and achieved in late adolescence and early adulthood.

There are several manifestations to developmental delay such as experiencing noticeable difficulty making choices or deciding between competing wants, desires, or needs, not being able to plan and establish important goals, and feeling distress when attempting to form meaningful personal, professional, sexual, and romantic relationships. Together, these manifestations culminate as an identity crisis or crisis of the self. Symptoms include having difficulty understanding:

• social cues like body language, eye contact, and even prosody (the way a person stresses, intonates, and uses rhythm when speaking);

• how to initiate communication like starting or carrying on a conversation;

• what strategies to employ in order to cope with change, frustration, or anger;

• how to express or perceive emotions appropriately and correctly;

• how delayed learning causes a range of difficulty in focusing, reading, using reasoning and logic, and generally having noticeable problems with trusting one’s judgment and critical thinking skills. Some examples include being unable to effectively problem-solve, schedule, or plan short or long-term;

• the difficulty in both defining and aspiring to setting and meeting personal goals;

• the noticeable hesitancy or inability to form decisions regarding making short and long-term choices requiring commitment;

• the constant feeling or state of confusion concerning who they are resulting in difficulty with establishing sense of what their purpose is at any one time;

• the development of healthy relationships and how they are compromised due to a lack of self-understanding causing social isolation, and potentially including or leading to an unmanageable inability to emotionally regulate directly leading to emotional outbursts or withdrawal.

Taken as a whole, these difficulties may result in noticeable struggle with understanding one’s thoughts and feelings and in turn interfering with self-motivation; for example, when decision making is not in line with one’s own values, or an inability to set meaningful goals and finding a way to accomplish those goals.

The At-Risk Learner: These are learners who have difficulty or an inability to learn, commit, or acclimate to academic or professional expectations. The at-risk learner presents with persistent difficulties including being unable and unwilling to engage in complex academic and professional (vocation to occupation) related thinking and behaviour. In addition, they are often unable to acculturate and acclimate to the demands of post-secondary education or work (industry specific expectations and demands). Correspondingly, they experience psychological and emotional distress in the forms of acute and chronic stress, anxieties, and depression.

Pro Bono (Free) & Service Fees for Approved Clients

Pro Bono (Free) – The Modern Man Family Project (MMFP) and the Canadian Centre for Men and Families (CCMF) referred clients are provided with Pro Bono (free) counselling services. Please note there are a limited number of available appointments per week, and billing will be adjusted once booking registration is approved.

Service Fee – Standard fees apply for clients seeking counselling services beyond the number of pro bono (free) appointments available per week. On a case-by-case basis, clients may be eligible for sliding scale fees. Please contact MindWorX for more information.

Registered clinical counsellor and REB psychotherapist certified in providing, CBT, DBT, TF-CB... Read More