A structured, relational approach
An evidence-informed, relational approach to trauma therapy.
Assessment, collaboration, and personalized pacing, so the work builds safety before it asks anything hard of you.
Office @ LeMarchand Mansion in Wîhkwêntôwin, Edmonton
We clarify what’s happening, what keeps it going, and what kind of support actually fits.
Assessment → Plan → Begin
Methods Used
Evidence-informed therapy, paced to fit you.
Approach is selected collaboratively and revised as we learn what works for you. Most often that means one of four modalities, used on their own or in combination.
EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a structured method for processing distressing experiences without requiring you to explain everything in detail. It can help reduce the intensity of difficult memories while keeping the work paced and contained.
AEDP
Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy is an attachment-informed approach focused on emotion, safety, and healing through a steady therapeutic relationship. It can be especially helpful when trust, closeness, or self-worth have been affected by earlier experiences.
Somatic Experiencing
A body-based approach that works with nervous system patterns linked to stress, shutdown, and overwhelm. It helps you notice and shift responses that often feel automatic.
Accelerated Resolution Therapy
A structured, imagery-based approach that reduces distress linked to difficult memories and symptom triggers. It can offer a more contained way to work with material that feels hard to approach directly.
Thelma, therapy dog
In the Room
There is usually a dog in the room.
Thelma is an 8-year-old Boston Terrier. She works alongside me, and she is not a technique. She is a second nervous system in the room, settled and largely unimpressed by whatever is happening, and bodies read that faster than they read reassurance.
Research points to what people tend to report anyway. Many settle faster with a dog present, and find it easier to stay with difficult material through a session. The evidence is early rather than settled, so Thelma is part of the room rather than part of the treatment plan.
Therapy asks a great deal of a person and offers almost nothing physical back. Thelma is the exception. She can lean against your leg and stay there without needing anything in return. Where contact has been complicated, contact that asks for nothing is often the first kind that is tolerable.
She is optional, always. Meet her, ignore her, or ask that she stay home, and nothing else about the session changes. She works on the same terms. She stays when she wants to, and leaves when she doesn’t.
If you have allergies, a fear of dogs, or any reason at all not to want her there, say so at consult.