MACKNESS COUNSELLING LTD.
Remote Counselling Services
Canada & the UK
AREAS OF PRACTICE & MY APPROACH
Compassionate, Relational, Thoughtful, Curious, & Ethical
AREAS OF PRACTICE
LGBT friendly, including detransitioners, desisters, re-identifiers, and post-trans folks.
Identity exploration.
Gender dysphoria (sex and/or gender roles and expectations).
Body dysmorphia.
Existential concerns: meaning & purpose, death anxiety, chronic & terminal illnesses, grief & loss, death & dying.
Emotional well-being: identifying emotional triggers and patterns in living that are causing difficulties; working together to create and implement meaningful change.
Life transitions: changes in family structure, educational changes, career change, retirement.
Concurrent disorders: mental health and addictions.
Mental health: depression, anxiety, trauma, including developmental and complex trauma.
Addictions: alcohol and substance use.
MY APPROACH
I am known for being kind and perceptive.
I will work with you to increase your self-compassion and self-knowledge, and broaden your awareness.
I will support you to develop skills that promote psychological flexibility.
I work to demystify the therapeutic process and support self-efficacy, bodily autonomy, and personal agency.
It is clinically important to slow down and take time to explore details around your thoughts, feelings/emotions, behaviours, and relational contexts.
I will support you to identify and explore repeated, and sometimes unnoticed or out-of-awareness, patterns in your assumptions, beliefs, thinking, feelings, behaviour, and relationships.
I work with a focus on the present and a view to the future; however, sometimes there are events from the past that continue to colour the present in unhelpful ways (via memories, thoughts, emotions, sensations, behaviours & patterns) and these events will require attention.
I am primarily non-directive in my work, though I will say something if I think you are making a mistake.
Depending on the issue being addressed in our work, I may recommend commitments for you to make in-between session, such as a written or active exercise.
THERAPEUTIC MODELS & INTERVENTIONS
Biopsychosocial approach.
ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy).
Existential Therapy.
Exploratory Therapy.
Attachment-informed.
Mindfulness practices and body awareness.
DBT (Dialectical Behavioural Therapy).
Developmental understanding of identity formation.