In working with adults, youth, and children, we see psychotherapy and counselling as an opportunity to experience collaboration and authentic connection to self, other, and the world, no matter how old you are. The practice is guided by the understanding that therapy must include your whole person which means we strive to creatively facilitate a supportive, respectful, and developmentally appropriate therapeutic relationship rooted in relational safety and acceptance while also promoting growth and change at your pace.
Some issues we can help with include:
- mental health concerns such as anxiety and depression
- neurodivergence, both innate and acquired, including ADHD and Tier 1 Autism
- stress and trauma including complex PTSD and vicarious or secondary trauma experienced by professionals
- chronic health issues including medical trauma
- identity development including individuals who identify as LGBTQI+
- perfectionism
- moral injury faced by first responders and front line professionals including police, military, paramedics, fire fighters, social workers, nurses, and physicians
- life and career/education transitions including adolescents & young adults transitioning from secondary school to university/college
- relational challenges
- workplace concerns
- education and career planning
- parent consultations
Our purpose is to assist you in living a more meaningful life in which you can more deeply experience and integrate your emotions, thoughts, body, values, and spirituality.
Currently Barbara is seeing adolescents and adults. Barbara integrates expressive modalities such as image making, writing, sand tray, and play into what is usually emotionally and/or body focused work. Barbara works collaboratively with her clients focusing on neurobiological functioning while blending person-centred, existential, and mindful self compassion approaches that puts the emphasis on establishing a safe therapeutic relationship to use as secure base. When individuals feel relationally safe, we are able to work experientially with more challenging emotional experiences to facilitate healing and growth.
Barbara is inspired by art of Kintsugi; Kintsugi means “golden joinery” and it is the Japanese practice of rejoining broken pieces of pottery with gold. The practice sees “breakage” and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to hide. Applied to psychotherapy, the idea is to work towards healing a concern without ignoring it.