Biography
I have worked in the field of addictions for the past 20 years and personally know how most addictions can have unintended and emotionally painful consequences. I understand the pain and frustration that family members and friends experience when one of their loved ones is struggling with addiction. Helping addicts, their partners, and their families heal from the effects of this disease is my passion.
I am trained to work with adults and have developed an expertise over time with substance addiction, sex and love addiction, codependency, abuse trauma, borderline personality disorder and grief counseling.
Individual and group counseling offers an individual the possibility of having a fair witness, a place to disclose their dark side as well as discover their strengths. This gives them the opportunity to learn to trust and to develop an attachment that perhaps they have never known before. I also help clients differentiate between healthy attachments and addiction, in order that they may discover how and when to set healthy boundaries.
I am bilingual and have lived in the Ottawa area for the past 20 years. I have both a college and university degree in Social Work, along with an International Certification as an Addiction Counselor (ICADC) with the Canadian Addiction Counselors Certification Federation. In 2009, I began the process of becoming a certified Sex Addiction Therapist with Dr. Patrick Carnes, the foremost leader in sexual addiction treatment. I am now a CSAT, a certified sex addiction therapist.
I worked full time for 10 years as an Addictions Therapist at the St-Anne Medical Center in Ottawa as part of a multidisciplinary team. In addition, I have been in private practice as a Sex Addiction therapist since 2009.
My approach is non-judgemental; I enjoy working with people from all walks of life. Other approaches I have found to be useful in my practice are: mindfulness; emotional focused therapy; 12 step recovery; dialectical behavior therapy and mostly using a combination of these if needed, along with what fits best with the individual.
I am able to provide receipts for insurance purposes. My therapeutic supervisor is Gerard Vardy, Registered Psychotherapist, Ottawa 613-282-5917.
I look forward to meeting with you and perhaps helping you on your journey.
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