welcome

Our mind, body, nervous system, neurology, our parts, and our attachments are manifestations of our unconscious mind interwoven like a beautiful quilt, invisibly but palpably blanketing our daily life.

This layered perspective is what I think of as The Art of Psychotherapy.

It is a psychodynamic approach to individual, couples, and group therapy, often supporting people through trauma, PTSD, grief, addiction, anxiety, depression, self-esteem, and relationship challenges.

It’s the practice of staying curious about how our individual threads of experience and our temperament are braided together.

Noticing our patterns, fears, aversions, attachments, fantasies, dreams, and projections.

This type of work is slow medicine, an act of love, sometimes painful, sometimes messy, sometimes insightful, sometimes liberating, and sometimes so incredibly obvious once it surfaces you may wonder how you didn’t see it before.

It is thoughtful, courageous work.

These threads have been twisted and knotted over years, sometimes decades, kneaded into us as implicit understandings and unconscious beliefs.

It takes patience and perseverance to loosen the knots.

Every minute we spend opening ourselves up with curiosity and honesty in a therapeutic space is meaningful, and can be healing.

One can gain compassion, understanding, and appreciation for one’s path, the experiences that brought you to this moment, the joyful moments and the challenging moments and everything in between.

A psychotherapeutic journey can illuminate just how intricately our unique tapestry has been woven over the years from every and all our experiences, and our relationships.

The beautiful, the sorrowful, the traumatizing, the infuriating, the repetitive, and the banal.

This is an invitation to sit, look, be curious, imagine, remember, wonder, question, and reflect upon your memories, interpretations, understandings, feelings, and relationships.

Together we explore how these experiences have impacted your daily life (thoughts, behaviours, perspectives, patterns, emotions, mood, self-care, working life) and how it all comes together to contribute to how you may be challenged, stressed, and/or suffering at this time, as you read this sentence, contemplating beginning a therapeutic journey.

Note: based in Toronto, offering therapy to individuals & couples virtually across Canada.

In session, I work to be experienced as attentive, curious, warm, patient, and inquisitive. I approach each session, and each client, with an open mind and offer my respect to us both, and to the process. 

Learn more about my approach here.

Curiosity creates space to wonder…

What am I feeling at this moment?
Why do I feel this way?
What’s happening in my body?
Why and how and when do I ignore my own needs? 
What is making me feel ashamed? Guilty?
Why did I react that way?
How have I ended up in this situation yet again?
How am I participating in this repetition?

Questions like these don’t always have answers, or at least not clear or immediate ones, or ones with words.

However, these types of questions create space for other parts of ourselves to speak, parts we might usually silence, ignore, or intentionally deny.

A therapeutic setting allows us more space to intimately consider the complexity of ourselves, our behaviours, repetitions, feelings, fantasies, and our existence.

Practicing this kind of curiosity allows us to feel more, imagine more, and harness bravery and resourcefulness to speak our truth.

It reminds us that we are strong and can show up for ourselves, and do challenging things.

It leads to the development of respect, dignity, and appreciation toward our selves and our journey.

This is a particular type of Self, one that is earned and behaves as a self-surrogate parent.

This Self learns how to hold us when we feel most alone, allows us to respect and love others more fully, to wake up to ourselves and show up in our lives with more capacity to get the most out of our relationships and our experiences, to take in all that life has to offer.

The art of living begins with curiosity.

*Note, individual and couples therapy is based in the west end of Toronto by High Park station, and offered virtually Canada-wide.