Ethics & Related Legal Issues - with a special interest in constructing and teaching a new procedure for seeking consent (relational, staged informed consent); designing efficient documentation practices to maximize client privacy; and exploring the harm and prevention of dual relationships, particularly those in counsellor training programs.

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Family Violence - assessment & treatment  (includes victims, witnesses, and perpetrators) - I have worked in women's shelters, offered many psychoeducational and process-based groups for those who lives have been impacted by family violence, and I was an outreach coordinator for many years.

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Multicultural Counselling - with an interest in Arab and Muslim issues and studying ways to adapt Western therapeutic approaches to be more culturally sensitive.  

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Professional Development - design and offer training programs to enable staff to offer high quality care.

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 Online Learning  - with a strong focus on building a sense of community online and managing discussions forums that keep students engaged in the online process.

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Trauma Psychology - creation of a theoretical treatment model; special interest in the assessment and treatment of DID, complex PTSD, self-harm behaviours, medical trauma, and the impact of working with trauma (e.g. vicarious traumatization, compassion fatigue).

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Clinical & Counselling Psychology (NOTE: The following are the areas I specialize in when helping clients)

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• emotional regulation issues (e.g., experience intense emotions that may result in you hurting yourself, loved ones, and/or others),

• stress - in life & conflict  (e.g., family and/or work conflict; illness & pain, including phantom pain; job loss; car accidents; fire loss; grief pain; betrayal; family violence; care-giving duties; burnout/exhaustion; lack of assertiveness; conflict management),

• personal development (e.g., address "Who am I?" in a variety of ways; premarital assessments for church & couple growth. I welcome therapists/healers who want to expand their self-awareness by learning about their countertransference triggers and how to be "more present" with clients),

• performance issues (e.g., giving a presentation, writing an exam [e.g., EPPP], enhancing a sport performance),

• phobias & fears (e.g., dentist anxiety, blood & needle fears, fear of flying & driving), and

• mental health concerns  (e.g., PTSD, borderline trait issues and personality issues, OCD, bi-polar, DID & NOS, dissociation, chronic suicidal thoughts/urges). *For those wanting to reduce an active addiction to chemicals or alcohol, I am able to serve as a secondary therapist.

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My Therapeutic Approaches

(to offer to clients, as well as to provide training and/or guidance)

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• Preferred Treatment Modalities:  Psychodynamic and ego-state therapies with a focus on emotional regulation and attachment repair - Transactional Analysis including integrating Personality Adaptation Personality into our work (as I am a trainer for this very useful personality measure), Structural Dissociation with and without using EMDR; Gestalt/processed based therapies integrating creative expressive arts; Group counselling with an emphasis on process work (for all ages); EMDR; Neurological approaches to promote nervous system regulation (e.g., Somatic Experiencing & attachment-based EMDR work including emotionally focused therapy - I completed a 4 day externship -Sue Johnson's work).

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• Additional treatment areas of high competency: Child and play-based therapies, Narrative therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), crisis and single session therapy, Adlerian-based positive discipline (classroom management & parenting strategies), Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), Dialectic Behavioural Therapy(DBT), and Solution-Focused Therapies (SFT).

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​For a brief description of the above approaches described, please go to the Counselling page - see question #3