Tender Heart Psychotherapy

Welcome! I am a queer, gender fluid/queer, disabled, immigrant psychotherapist specializing in working with marginalized individuals.
Western society teaches us that challenges with emotional and mental well-being are rooted in individual difficulty with coping, functioning, or adaptability. As a result of this belief, we might attempt to tackle these issues using our willpower, intellect, and through behavioural changes. If these attempts fail to bring us the inner peace or lasting change we desire, we can begin to feel ashamed, alone, and stuck.

It is my belief that challenges with mental health, emotion, and relationships do not exist in a vacuum. These are more than personal failings at coping and functioning. Chronic stress, trauma, illness, relational challenges, systemic oppression, and the pressures of capitalism shape both our well-being and our attempts to get well. In welcoming this understanding, we can begin to uncover the deeper questions of your healing work.

My approach to psychotherapy is intuitive, deeply compassionate, and rooted in commitment to anti-oppression and social justice.  I value a highly collaborative approach: together, we can explore who and how you are in the world, and where you wish to go.  Working at the pace you set, we can strengthen your connection to self, and to the deep inner wisdom that will create the blueprint for your healing journey.

In my work I draw on evidence-based modalities, including relational, minfdulness, experiential, existential, and feminist approaches. I support clients with a wide range of challenges, including depression, anxiety, stress, life transitions, family conflict, low self-esteem, substance use, chronic illness and disability, traumatic brain injury, intimate partner violence, trauma, and sexuality issues. I welcome you to arrive in therapy as your authentic self. My practice is trauma-informed, sex and sex worker positive, and committed to the uplifting of the LGBTQ2S+ community.