Individual Counselling in Nanaimo

Support for anxiety, depression, trauma, compulsions, addiction, and the patterns beneath them

People seek therapy when life feels unmanaged: anxiety that won’t settle, depression that recurs, or a sense of being stuck in the same emotional loop. Whether you arrive with a clear goal or a felt sense that “something is off,” the work remains the same: attending to the suffering while investigating what gives rise to it.

Depth work sees symptoms as pointing toward the deeper movements shaping your life. It is grounded in the immediate, moving with a stability that allows for depth without creating overwhelm.

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What Brings People In

Distress often carries its own logic. I work with individuals navigating:

  • Anxiety and Chronic Worry: When the nervous system is stuck in high alert.

  • Depression and Numbness: When the vital parts of life feel muted or frozen.

  • Trauma and Overwhelming History: Past experiences that continue to disrupt the present.

  • Compulsions and Addictive Cycles: Addressing the behavior and the protective function it serves.

  • Repeating Patterns: When you find yourself in the same emotional impasse despite your best efforts.

Each of these struggles is a threshold—a place to find orientation when things no longer work.

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How the Work Unfolds

Therapy is structured and grounded. We don’t just talk about what is happening; we engage with how that experience is currently “live” in your body and your reactions.

Stabilizing the Foundation

Initial work focuses on regulation. We pay close attention to the nervous system so that symptoms can settle enough to allow for deeper, exacting work.

Mapping Patterns

Together, we look at how your history and emotional patterns shape your current experience. Seeing these dynamics clearly, not just as problems but as adaptations that once made sense in your past, is the first step toward responding with more choice.

Exploring Internal Dynamics

We notice the protective strategies you’ve had to rely on, and what they may be protecting. By staying close to both the somatic (body) and symbolic layers of experience, we see how they influence your current choices.

The Emergence of Meaning

At times, the work touches on dreams, images, or recurring themes that clarify the deeper meaning of what you are living through. We approach them as information about your history and inner life.

Depth work helps shift you from reacting to responding. It brings you back into contact with parts of yourself that have been muted by stress, fear, or repetition.

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Areas I Work With:

Anxiety + Panic

We attend to the patterns feeding hypervigilance, allowing distress to settle while understanding what the panic is pointing toward.

Depression + Low Mood

We work to restore distance from the mood, creating space to listen for what has gone quiet or frozen.

Trauma + Overwhelm

Safe, attuned containment that respects the limits of your nervous system while moving toward integration.

Compulsions + Addictions

We look at the behaviours and the internal dynamics, the unmet needs and protective strategies that keep the cycle in place.

Anger + Reactivity

Depth work looks at what anger is protecting, transforming reactivity into grounded strength.

Life Transitions + Identity Shifts

Changes in relationships, work, or identity are met directly, so what is ending can be faced rather than bypassed.

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My Approach

Relief in the present is essential, but it is rarely enough to sustain long-term change. My work integrates clinical stabilization with a depth-psychological understanding of the psyche.

I draw on:

  • a relational focus, especially where early experience still shapes the present
  • somatic and nervous system support to stabilize emotion and reduce overwhelm
  • evidence-based strategies (CBT-informed and trauma-informed) when clarity and structure are needed
  • depth work with meaning, image, and the forces shaping your life beneath the surface

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Beginning the Work

We start with an initial session to map what is most urgent. From there, we establish a rhythm that supports the stability needed to stay with difficult material.

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