Cedar Bay Assessment and Therapy Ltd. is based in Nanaimo, British Columbia. We respectfully acknowledge that we live, work, play, and create on the ancestral, traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw, Quw’utsun and Tla’Amin Nations.
Barbara strives to walk with her clients, taking a strengths-based, anti-oppression perspective not just in her psychotherapy work, but also when she conducts psychological and psychoeducational assessments, provides clinical consultation and supervision, and teaches. All of her work comes from a trauma and neurobiologically informed, integrated attachment perspective. She uses AEDP, play, expressive, and sand tray therapies with youth, and invites her adults clients to play, when appropriate, as a means to holistically and creatively utilize multiple channels of emotional and somatic experiences more deeply. She also incorporates ecotherapy principles and opportunities into her work when she can.
Barbara provides clinical consultation and supervision to counsellors, incorporating expressive modalities, including sand tray, into Bernard’s supervision model. Barbara was amongst the first in B.C. to earn the Approved Clinical Supervisor designation from the B.C. Association of Clinical Counsellors.
In terms of research, Barbara was awarded the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association award for her master’s thesis as well as several awards for her work in the career development field. She also received a Killam Award for teaching at UBC having been nominated by her previous students. She has co-authored several peer reviewed articles and book chapters.
Barbara believes play and creativity is essential for wellbeing so she kayaks whenever she can. She also knits, paints, nunofelts. Her latest passion is learning how design, construct, and plant water gardens, having recently created one outside her office window for her clients to enjoy with her.
Joanne conducts assessments and psychotherapy with children, youth, and adults using an integrated approach that is neurobiologically and attachment based that incorporates play therapy, humanistic-existential, and EMDR modalities based on her individual clients needs.
She received her Ph.D. in Counselling Psychology from The University of British Columbia, and she is also an award winning researcher, having written her dissertation on The Lived Experience of Recovery from Sexual Abuse for Young Adult Women. She recently completed level one of Animal Assisted Therapy and completed training in Bruce Perry’s Neurosequential Model.
Joanne uses the Reflective Supervision model when providing clinical consultation and supervision. Reflective Supervision consists of process work often using journalling and other forms of self-reflection.
Joanne believes that play is vital for self care, creativity, and wellbeing so she swims, bakes, quilts, and is learning to felt.