My Approach to Psychotherapy
I work with adults who find themselves asking large, often unsettling questions about life, identity, loss, and meaning. Some people come to therapy because something has broken down; others come because something has opened up. In both cases, my work helps people understand their experiences in a practical, compassionate, and realistic way.
My approach to psychotherapy is integrative and relational, with a strong emphasis on the present moment. I am particularly attuned to experiences that do not fit neatly into standard therapeutic categories—existential crises, encounters with mortality, spiritual or anomalous experiences, and periods of profound transition. Therapy, as I practice it, is a place where these experiences can be explored thoughtfully, without being reduced, pathologized, or romanticized.
Foundations of My Work
My foundational training is in Gestalt therapy, which shapes how I think about change, awareness, and relationship. Gestalt therapy emphasizes working in the here and now, paying close attention to what emerges between therapist and client, and supporting people in developing greater contact with themselves and their world.
Over time, my work has been increasingly informed by existential, Jungian, and spiritually integrated perspectives. These influences shape how I listen, how I frame questions, and how I understand meaning-making, particularly in moments of crisis or transformation. I do not impose interpretations or belief systems; instead, I aim to help clients clarify their own experience and find language for what matters to them.
Meaning, Mortality and Transformative Experiences
Much of the work I do centers on experiences that are not often addressed in standard psychotherapy training. These include questions about life purpose, living and dying, spiritually transformative and anomalous experiences, and periods of deep existential uncertainty.
As more people engage with psychedelic substances for mental health treatment or psycho-spiritual exploration, I also offer support for therapeutic preparation and integration. I take a harm-reduction approach to substance use and focus on helping clients make meaning of their experiences before and after psychedelic work, without providing or directing substance use itself.
In all of these areas, my role is not to interpret experience through a particular worldview, but to help clients reflect, integrate, and remain anchored in their lives and relationships.
Background, Education and Ongoing Study
I completed a five-year psychotherapy training in Gestalt therapy at the Gestalt Institute of Toronto, after a decade-long career in education, training, and coaching.
Alongside Gestalt, I have also trained in Jungian psychoanalysis, dreamwork across multiple traditions, Internal Family Systems, and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. I completed death doula training and hospice training alongside academic courses exploring death and dying from different cultural traditions and perspectives. I have completed EMDR basic training and completed a two-year certification process in spiritually integrated psychotherapy and participate in ongoing communities of practice that support this work.
In 2024, I began a second master’s degree through the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, where I am conducting ethnographic research into contemporary spirituality, spiritual experience, and spiritual practices. At the University of Amsterdam, I studied the cultural history of esotericism and rejected religion which provided the context for my current research.
All of this is held alongside—and integrated with—current, evidence-based practices in psychotherapy, neuroscience, and consciousness studies. Continued learning is an essential part of how I practice, not as an accumulation of techniques, but as a way of refining how I understand human experience.
Lived Experience
My life has unfolded in an eclectic and often unexpected way. I have lived and worked in four different countries and spent significant time in many others. I raised a multilingual child within an intercultural marriage and experienced firsthand the strains and transformations that accompany immigration, language acquisition, and cultural displacement.
These experiences have shaped my sensitivity to issues of identity, belonging, cross-cultural transition, relationships, and homesickness. They inform how I listen to clients whose lives unfold across cultural, social, or symbolic boundaries, and how I understand the ways context shapes personal experience.
Commitment to Inclusion
I am deeply committed to supporting human diversity in all its forms. I want clients to feel welcome to be who they are, love who they love, and bring forward any part of their experience without fear of judgment or being misunderstood.
I am continually engaged in reflecting on how power, privilege, and social positioning operate within therapeutic relationships, including my own. This includes an ongoing commitment to identifying and addressing biases as they arise, and to creating a therapeutic space that is attentive to difference, safety, and mutual respect.
If this way of working resonates with you, I welcome you to get in touch.