CLINICAL SUPERVISION & CONSULTATION
The work of counselling can be quite amorphous and isolating given the specific contours of our profession. I often think of the stories and myths of medieval alchemists who worked in secrecy away from their peers and who’s notes on their work: insights, struggles, successes, and failures, went unread and unshared with fellow alchemists, creating this sense of mysticism and awe.
And as fun and poetic those thoughts are, we are not practicing alchemy. The need for having professional support and connection in this field is important not just for our own mental health and stability, but for the quality and refinement of our work and skill sets. Having a space that allows you to process specific client issues, receive feedback and insight, and reflect on your own thoughts and feelings is invaluable as well as best practice.
If you are interested in pursuing a supervisory relationship, like with potential clients, I offer a free 20 minute consultation to assess fit. Please reach out to me via email
MY STYLE OF SUPERVISION
I am a RCC-ACS (Approved Clinical Supervisor) through the BCACC and have post graduate training in supervision. I ascribe mainly to the Integrated Developmental Model of supervision to help support supervisees. That is, I try to encompass the roles of teacher, counsellor, and consultant in my work with supervisees, being responsive to what role is most appropriate to the conversation at hand.
I’ve been somewhat jaded from various supervisory experiences in which mental health educators have Judo-flipped back direct questions into a form of unwanted self-reflection-pseudo-counselling that misread my need for guidance, mentorship, consultation, and tangible information. In supervision sessions, I try my best to create space for emotional processing in addition to theory, education, feedback, mico-skill assessment, shared experiences, and direct answers to direct questions.
While I don’t claim to be an expert in all areas of mental health/ counselling, I do have expertise and experience to share in tandem with helping you develop your own style and abilities. Specifically, if you’ve ever felt a strong affinity to somatic-based therapies due to their biological underpinnings and their emphasis in current trauma research, but have had difficulty in session actually doing this work and putting these theories into practice, you are not alone! I have found supervision one of the best sources for bridging these theories into practice. Again, we are not practicing alchemy.
EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND & EXPERIENCE
I started my education in the hard sciences with the eventual goal of becoming a biologist, however, my interests in both the theory and practice of psychology eventually drew me to the counselling field, starting in clinical research and assessment before focusing on counselling specifically. I graduated from my Masters of Counselling program in 2014 from Simon Fraser University and since then have had a variety of experiences within the mental health field: working in residential treatment and psychological research and assessment before becoming Clinical Coordinator and then Director at the Vancouver Crisis Centre. Throughout my tenure at the Crisis Centre I worked in a supervisory capacity offering clinical supervision to volunteers and staff members. It was in tandem with these experiences that I began private practice in 2019 and started offering direct clinical counselling supervision in 2022 through East Vancouver Counselling.
While I would consider myself a generalist in terms of a therapist with a broad range of experiences, my current practice and caseload mainly focus on relationship issues with a large portion of my clients being male-identified and having a history of relational traumas. My theoretical orientation draws mainly from experiential and somatic therapies and I am heavily influenced by attachment theory and current understandings of trauma and the nervous system. I am committed to ongoing professional improvement and engage in some form of continuing education yearly as well as regular personal supervision, therapy, and professional reading.
PRACTICUM SUPERVISION
I currently supervise graduate student interns through East Vancouver Counselling. If you are completing your graduate degree and would like to know more about East Vancouver Counselling as a practicum site and me as a potential supervisor, please reach out to East Vancouver Counselling directly.