About Me
I believe the most important factor in any kind of counselling is how comfortable you feel with your therapist, and their qualifications. It's very important to shop around, and I welcome you to look me up on LinkedIn for my full past work and education experience, but I'm happy to give you a bit of a sense of who I am here!
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I grew up in Melbourne, close to Yarmouth, and have always been a proud Nova Scotian, Acadian, and member of the LGBTQ+ community. I moved to Ontario in 2000, where I first began what would become my life's work...first as a volounteer for crisis lines, then as a youth support worker in a number of youth shelters and group homes in Guelph and Toronto. For six years I worked with youth on Probation teaching life skills.
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Then, in 2015 I graduated from Wilfrid Laurier University with my Master of Social Work degree, becoming a Registered Social Worker and coming back home to settle down. In the years since I have worked with adolescents through to seniors, individuals, families and groups about a wide range of mental health and life stresses.
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Through it all, the common thread has been ongoing learning to share the best evidence-based approaches I can find, to get through life's stresses and find more peace, joy and hope. Join my furry co-therapists and I, so we can hopefully work together to get you back on track!
Why You Should Choose Me
Maybe You Shouldn't!
Because therapy can be a deeply personal relationship, I strongly believe you should choose your therapist carefully, after shopping around! And please be sceptical of anyone who promises solutions or quick solutions!
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I believe it is important to choose a Counsellor who has, and continues to study and develop skills which have been researched and demonstrated to prove effectiveness in treating what they claim to treat.
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That being said, I also believe we're not seeing the whole picture when we try to answer complicated issues and heartbreaks with a handful of homework sheets, breathing strategies or diagnoses. As a professionally trained social worker, I'm trained to consider how a lot of different parts of life (like culture, age, gender, and so much more) combine to form and maintain a lot of life's troubles. Solutions then tend to involve a lot of different parts of life, ideally leading to long-term benefit.
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You can find me listed on the College of Social Workers Practitioner list, where you can start your "shopping around" with other Social Workers:
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For those particularly interested in formal assessments and diagnoses, check out the listings for Psychologists in Nova Scotia here:
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Psychology Today also has an excellent listing of local therapists:
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Find Counselling, Therapists, Psychologists - Psychology Today Canada
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And finally, free mental health & addictions support for those with a provincial health card can be accessed here:
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