Complex trauma is the emotional and psychological damage caused by prolonged exposure to physical/sexual/psychological trauma. It could be during childhood or even as a adult.
As a child/adult, if you were exposed to emotional, sexual or physical abuse or if your needs (psychological, physical or social) were neglected as a child, you might have complex trauma. It can show up in various ways, for e.g. in moments of disassociation during emotional overwhelm, feelings of abandonment, not being able to focus well or challenges with relationships. It often cooccurs with anxiety, depression, substance use and other mental health challenges. And healing from complex trauma requires a relational space, a space wherein you can experience safety, as you work on the particular challenges that you face as you navigate the aftermath of chronic abuse or neglect.

Moving to a new country is a space of uncertainty, worry, excitement, and loss, all rolled into one. And I know that, because I've lived it. I moved to Canada a few years ago and experienced the strain of adjusting to a new climate, culture, and work environment. I also dealt with the loss of relationships I had nurtured and built in my home country, now reduced to a screen and a 12-hour time difference. What I experienced was also a loss of my old identity, alongside the pressure to build a new one in an environment where I didn't know the rules, the idioms, or the references. I also had to understand and lean into my identity as a person of color, and as a minority. I want to provide a space for others going through something similar, and support them in managing the integration of identities as immigrants and refugees.

Second-generation immigrants (children of immigrant parents) have to navigate a different set of challenges. This includes straddling two worlds that often differ in their values around autonomy and dependence, confusion around identity, and/or differing expectations of how romantic relationships are understood and engaged with. I hope to provide a space to acknowledge, understand, and reconcile these differences, so you can live a life that you choose and create.

Not being able to settle unless something is perfect? Do you constantly feel that you are dissatisfied when things are good enough?

Perfectionism is not the same as excellence. While a desire for growth and joy of being successful drive excellence, perfectionism is driven by feelings of shame, judgement, and fear of failure. Perfectionism does not have a space for making mistakes and learning from them!

Perfectionism is linked with anxiety, challenges with self-esteem and also gets in the way of living a life of fulfillment and joy. We can work towards understanding where your perfectionism is becoming a barrier for you, and changing it!

Boundaries are a way of knowing and exercising one’s needs and values. Often, I work with clients who believe boundaries are a good idea but do not know what to do about them! Sometimes they struggle with identifying what their boundaries are, and some others do not know how to express them. Or you might know them and express them but still feel that they are not honoured in relationships. My role as a therapist is to support you in uncomplicating this, and creating and building relationships that feel fulfilling and healthy and meet your needs.

Substances can range from alcohol and hard drugs to coffee. If you find yourself drinking through the night on weekends, and through the day on Sundays, or if the thing you look forward to on Monday mornings is going home to open a bottle of wine as you cook, alcohol might be a concern.

And if you're looking for a therapist and reading this page, you probably already know it's a concern, or maybe your partner, family, or friends have pointed it out.

I worked for a while in a program for individuals dealing with substance use issues, and I found myself asking one question over and over again: what lies underneath the drinking? What does it do for you? Your drinking or using is not random. It is not purposeless. And you can't simply stop, not easily, anyway. You know that already; you've probably tried a few times.

Together, we'll work to identify the story underneath your drinking or using. It might be trauma, anxiety, or not knowing how to manage your emotions. And together, we'll uncover those spaces and work toward healing them.

Another question worth asking: if you're not going to drink, or use, or engage in other coping behaviors, what are you going to do instead?Together, we'll answer that too.

Racial minorities face a myriad of challenges, and evidence shows that they report lower life satisfaction than non-racialized individuals. It's not just overt incidents of racism that take a toll, the heightened vigilance that results from these experiences also negatively impacts mental health. Comments on someone's accent or food can be forms of microaggression: subtle, yet unmistakably hostile, snubs. Therapy can help in processing these experiences, identifying strategies for navigating them, and building a sense of autonomy and empowerment within these deeply challenging spaces.

Life transitions can place huge demands on us, whether it's a relationship change like a breakup or divorce, a change in work, such as losing a promotion, being laid off, or retiring, or health-related changes due to illness or a new diagnosis. These transitions bring shifts in our routines, our friendships, and sometimes our whole lives. Therapy can provide a space to process the change, learn new skills to adapt to it, honor what or who you've lost, and slowly learn to walk through it.

I think of anxiety as a background hum on some days, and very loud chatter on others. As someone who has experienced and sought help for health anxiety, I know first hand how debilitating it is. I also know that it can be managed successfully! A preoccupation with everything that could go wrong (in mental health speak that’s catastrophic thinking), constantly thinking about the future does not let us be present to our today. It accompanies our relationships, our work and even our down time!

I also work with social anxiety, and the fear of judgement and criticism that comes up in social spaces? do you feel like you are going to make a fool of yourself when around others? do you feel the need to drink in social spaces? do you go over your social interactions with a fine-toothed comb? or do you desire relationships but find it hard to initiate or maintain them? This is some of the ways social anxiety can show up for us!

Anxiety is not an unnatural response, it is natural and adaptive, it helps us prepare for danger (or did when we live din the forests an were surrounded by wild animals!) - Some of us just have an extremely sensitive internal mechanism for sensing danger, and together we will try to understand, alter and regulate it!

Self-criticism is the disparaging, rude voice in our minds that tells us we’re stupid/useless/some other mean word. It is also at the root of many of our challenges in life, at work, in relationships. It keeps us from making decisions sometimes, and other times it pushes us to make decisions that may not be good or healthy for us. It also can lead us to stay in unhealthy relationships that cause us pain and hurt. Some of us were taught that self-criticism is some kind of a motivating device, to make ourselves do better, turns out its not. Self-criticism is different from self-evaluation, because it focusses on the negative, and is not unbiased. Self-criticism makes us feel dissatisfied, unhappy, and perpetuates our pain. Sometimes this is the voice of our parents, caregivers, teachers or a boss, my work as a therapist is to pay attention to the voice, but not to give in and do what it says, to learn to deal with it, quiet it, and live a life wherein we can talk to ourselves the way we do to the people we love in our lives.

Our attachment patterns, formed early in life, can have a significant impact on our relationships as adults. They shape the way we relate to, engage with, and love others. If you notice that you avoid expressing yourself in situations that might lead to disagreement, that pattern might be connected to your attachment style. Do you want a relationship but find yourself pushing people away as soon as they start to get close? Do you notice that you tend to choose a particular "type" of partner? Your attachment style may be at play. The good news is that we can learn to slowly develop healthier attachment styles, ones that help us feel loved and fulfilled in our relationships.

Andrew Solomon says, "You don't think in depression that you've put on a gray veil and are seeing the world through the haze of a bad mood. You think that the veil has been taken away, the veil of happiness, and that now you're seeing truly."

I found this idea deeply moving, because it captures so articulately the challenge of depression. If you've experienced depression, you know what it's like to feel that loss of purpose, the apparent pointlessness of things, and the helplessness of not knowing what to do. Therapy helps you identify, discuss, and dismantle these thoughts, honor, hear, and manage these emotions, and take actions that actually make a difference.