My goal as a counsellor is to help people recover an experience of freedom — a feeling of being fully alive and living out of your deepest hopes and values.

 

Most of us hit points in our lives where we feel stuck. For some of us that means being stuck in painful wounds from our past. For others it means being debilitated by feelings of relentless anxiety or the heavy weight of depression.

 

Some of us get caught in cycles of addiction or self-destructive patterns of behaviours. And for others, even though everything looks great on the outside, we feel trapped in jobs, or even lives, that have no meaning or purpose for us.

Unfortunately many of us suffer in silence. As Henry David Thoreau once observed: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” But it doesn’t need to be that way.

I believe counselling offers a unique and powerful opportunity to reflect on our lives and to once again become the captains of our own ship.

 

Starting counselling won’t magically pay your bills, make the difficult people in your life nicer, or undo the past. But through the work of going inward, we can gain a new understanding of our experience that can help us to navigate our challenges and chart a different course for our lives.

My first priority as a counsellor is to get to know you as a person, and not just your problems. I want you to feel seen and heard, and to have a sense of safety to share from the core of your experience. I also want to make sure that the counselling process is effective in meeting your goals.

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In my experience that means we will need to collaborate, working together to understand the nature and source of your challenges, to define realistic goals, and to figure out the best approach to supporting your process of healing and change.

Exercising your freedom is not just the goal, it’s also the way to get there!