Brainspotting
Brainspotting Therapy™ (BSP) is a therapeutic process that uses specific points in the client’s visual field that are sometimes linked to physical sensations or strong emotions that arise when recaliing distressing or traumatic memories. BSP uses relevant eye positions, somatic awareness, focused mindfulness and the therapist’s attunement to process and release the stored traumas which underlie a wide range of emotional and physical problems. It is a brain-body based treatment which integrates well with other types of therapies.
Often brainspotting is used in conjunction with bilateral sound - music or nature sounds which move back and forth between right and left ears, to help engage the parasympathetic, or calming, part of the nervous system.
Brainspotting therapy was developed in 2003 by Dr David Grand, an EMDR therapist and relational analyst. There are now over 13,000 therapists trained over six continents, with about 85 trainers worldwide. In Canada, the number of brainspotting therapists is starting to grow.
Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP)
DDP can help children who have been hurt and/or neglected within their families in their early years. Children can be traumatized by these experiences and find it difficult to feel safe and secure within their new families. This is sometimes called developmental trauma.
Children in care and adopted children who are struggling with attachment difficulties often respond well using a method called Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP). This modality takes an attachment-focused, trauma informed and family centered approach. Parents are actively involved in DDP.
It is not unusual that the experience of being parented in the present reminds children of the way they were parented in the past. Even though they are no longer being hurt or neglected the children feel as though they are or think that they might in the future. This means that children struggle with normal, healthy parenting. The children are afraid of ‘parents’. They develop a range of ways to manage these high levels of fear.
This therapy can be beneficial for parents finding it hard to manage their child’s behaviour and/or to connect emotionally.
Emotionally Focussed Family Therapy (EFFT)
Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) extends the principles of Emotionally Focused Therapy to mend and fortify familial bonds. The core objective is to cultivate secure family patterns, where attachment, caregiving responses, and emotional bonds are effective. EFFT centralizes on stabilizing negative interaction patterns, restructuring parent-child interactions, and consolidating the felt security through new connection patterns.
Following attachment science, it guides families to experience swift progress as members become more responsive and engaged, uncovering and addressing previously unrecognized attachment-related emotions and needs, thus fostering individual growth and intergenerational relationship enhancement.
Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) is a practical, short-term form of psychotherapy. It helps people to develop skills and strategies for becoming and staying healthy. CBT focuses on the here-and-now—on the problems that come up in day-to-day life. CBT helps people to examine how they make sense of what is happening around them and how these perceptions affect the way they feel.
Clients learn to identify, question and change the thoughts, attitudes and beliefs related to the emotional and behavioural reactions that cause them difficulty. By monitoring and recording thoughts during upsetting situations, people learn that how they think can contribute to emotional problems such as depression and anxiety.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
With over 25 years experience, my speciality is with children, adolescents, adults and families.
My focus is helping clients in areas such as anxiety, depression, attachment issues, foster care, adoption, trauma including treatment of child sexual abuse, sexualized behaviours, bullying issues, grief and loss, separation, divorce issues, and LGBTQ+.
I am Registered with the College of Social Workers. Services are available in either English or French.