My Approach to Therapy

I am a strong believer that our childhood and early past are the blueprints to how our lives are structured now.

While we may not be able to do much to change the past, understanding it better can help us figure out how to alter our current circumstances and even help predict our futures.

The above paragraph essentially sums up my approach to therapy. My educational background is in family therapy. I am also trained in attachment theory. What that means is I think we are heavily influenced by our families and how we were treated in our childhood.

How we choose our partners

We tend to form intimate relationships based on the kind of relationships our parents had. We learn our communication patterns from them, we learn about beliefs and values observing their actions, and we learn about love seeing how they loved and respected each other and us. Sometimes with the best of intentions to do the opposite, we end up in dysfunctional relationships similar to our parents. We never do this on purpose; sometimes we end up in it because it feels familiar. Or we choose a partner based on how we feel we deserve to be treated.

About love

That last comment brings me to explain how attachment theory fits into my practice. Our capacity to love and be loved comes from how we were raised by our parents or significant caregivers. Our self-worth comes, to a large extent, from how loveable we feel.

If we were raised by attentive and loving parents who were always there for us and met our physical and emotional needs, we grow up believing we are worth being cared about and loved. On the other hand if you were raised by abusive or neglectful parents, you might grow up feeling your needs are insignificant or less important than other's. You may then end up choosing a partner who treats you and your needs similarly.

How I can help my clients

What I do with my clients in therapy is help them identify their past experience. Then they can see what kind of relationship they are in now and understand why they are facing the challenges they are facing. Once that is recognized, we can work together on altering the patterns and changing negative feelings of self worth.

Working with parents and caregivers

When it comes to working with parents, my approach follows similar lines. Some parenting I believe may be instinctual, but a lot of it is learned behaviour. We tend to parent the way we were parented. For some this is great, for others – not so much.

You may want to do things completely differently than your parents. While that may be admirable, it can also be extremely difficult because you have no knowledge to draw from. For example, you may decide you don't want to hit your children the way you were hit during childhood, but how do you find an effective form of discipline that fits with your values? Or, what if you did not feel loved or cared for growing up? How do you parent your children in such a way that they never experience this feeling of rejection or abandonment?

I work with parents and caregivers to identify their triggers and understand why they act and say the things they do. Once we understand and work through the underlying issues, it is much easier to figure out a different course of action.

I'm here to help. For more information or to schedule a counselling appointment, please feel free to call or email me anytime.