Counselling Approaches

Trauma-Informed Therapy is specifically designed to address the deep-seated effects of trauma that can affect your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health. It is based on the understanding that traumatic experiences can profoundly shape how we see the world and interact with it.

At the heart of this approach is the recognition that many of our emotional and behavioral responses today are actually responses to past trauma. By connecting these dots, we can start to heal.

In trauma-informed therapy, our primary aim is not to make you relive your painful experiences, but to help you process these memories in a way that's healthier and more constructive.

We focus on giving you the tools and insights needed to manage the emotions and memories that trauma can bring. Through this process, we work together to reinterpret your traumatic experiences, turning them from sources of pain into foundations for strength and resilience. This therapy helps you rewrite your personal story, transforming a challenging past into a steppingstone towards a more empowered and growth-oriented future.

This approach focuses on helping you understand how attachment theory—a concept that explains the importance of our early relationships—can be used to improve your personal connections today. As social workers, we guide you through exploring your own patterns in relationships and provide practical strategies to help you build stronger, more resilient bonds with the people you care about.

We emphasize the crucial role that your early relationships, particularly with primary caregivers, play in your emotional and relational development. These first connections are foundational, influencing how well you can form trusting and meaningful relationships in your adult life.

If early experiences with caregivers were unstable or if care was inconsistent, you might have faced challenges like feelings of separation or trauma. These issues can make it difficult to trust and feel secure with others later on.

Attachment-Based Therapy helps by revisiting these early relationships to understand their impact and by empowering you to create supportive and trustworthy bonds now. The goal is to help you develop secure attachments that enhance your wellbeing and improve your relationships, giving you a more supportive and fulfilling social environment.

Polyvagal Theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, focuses on the relationship between the nervous system and our emotional responses. It explains how the vagus nerve, the longest cranial nerve, influences our ability to regulate stress and engage socially. By understanding and working with this theory, we can better address trauma and promote safety and connection, helping individuals move from states of fight, flight, or freeze to feelings of calm and social engagement.

A Psychodynamic approach helps us understand why you act and react in certain ways today by looking closely at your life's journey, starting from childhood. It's based on the idea that experiences from our early years, especially the relationships we form, have a lasting impact on how we behave and relate to others as adults.

In our sessions, we begin by pinpointing the key patterns and challenges you're experiencing. From there, we explore your life story—focusing on your childhood and the important connections you made during those formative years.

By linking your past experiences to your current behaviors, Psychodynamic Therapy provides a unique perspective that helps you see your situation more clearly. This understanding not only sheds light on where your feelings and behaviors come from but also opens the door to deep, lasting personal growth.

The ultimate aim of this therapy is to give you the clarity needed to make positive changes in your life. Understanding and addressing your past equips you better for handling what comes next, guiding you toward a more fulfilling future.

Schema therapy is a holistic approach that helps you understand and change deep-rooted patterns or "schemas" that influence your thoughts, emotions, and your everyday behaviours. These schemas are often formed in childhood based on your experiences and can affect how you relate to yourself and others throughout your life.

In schema therapy, we identify these schemas and work to understand their origins and impacts. Through various techniques, including cognitive, behavioural, and experiential methods, we can challenge and modify these schemas. This process helps break negative cycles and develop healthier ways of thinking and coping. The goal is to heal emotional wounds, change unhelpful patterns, and foster more fulfilling and balanced relationships and life experiences.

Learn More about Schema Therapy

This concept is based on the understanding that none of us exist in isolation—we are all part of a larger whole. Just as we are individual systems, we are also components of broader systems like our families, social circles, workplaces, and communities, all of which impact how we think and behave.

According to this approach, our actions and thoughts are influenced by a network of interconnected factors: the people close to us, the societal norms we follow, our economic status, and even our immediate surroundings like our homes. All these elements work together, shaping our behavior and perspectives.

As social workers applying systems theory, we look at how these vast networks affect you. Our goal is to pinpoint where and how these systems might be failing to support you properly. By identifying these breakdowns, we can work together to address them, helping to create a more supportive environment that fosters healthier behaviours and interactions.