My approach is grounded in humanistic and evidence-based psychotherapy. That means we don't follow a script or try to fit you into a predetermined model. We work collaboratively to understand your experiences, identify patterns, explore what matters to you, and find approaches that support meaningful change.

I don't have an agenda for who you should become. I have a perspective. You're in the driver's seat.

I'll be curious with you, and I'll be honest with you. Sometimes that means validating what you're experiencing. Sometimes it means gently challenging the way you're looking at something. Sometimes it means trying something practical and seeing what happens.

Therapy can be challenging. It can also be practical, motivating, creative, and even fun.

Most importantly, it should feel like a place where you can be honest.

The approaches I draw from are evidence-based and complementary, offering different ways of understanding thoughts, emotions, relationships, behaviour, and the systems around us. They share a collaborative and compassionate focus while giving us different ways to explore what you're experiencing and what might help.

Person-Centered & Humanistic Therapy

• You are more than your performance. A humanistic approach creates space to understand yourself, your experiences, and what matters to you without reducing you to a diagnosis, identity, role, or outcome. It emphasizes empathy, acceptance, authenticity, self-awareness, personal meaning, choice, and your capacity for growth.

Systems Theory

• Sport doesn't happen in a vacuum. Systems Theory helps us understand you within the larger systems you are part of, including family, relationships, coaches, teammates, culture, identity, community, sport environments, and other experiences.

• We can explore not only what is happening, but also what the world around you may have taught you about yourself, your performance, and what you are supposed to be.

Internal Family Systems (IFS)

• What if the different parts of you are trying to help, even when their strategies aren't working anymore? IFS understands the mind as made up of different “parts,” each with its own feelings, perspectives, and protective roles.

• In sport, we might get curious about the part of you that wants to win, the part that's afraid of failing, the part that pushes you to work harder, or the part that never feels good enough. Rather than trying to get rid of these parts, we can explore where they came from, what they are trying to do for you, and what they might need now.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

• How can you move toward what matters? ACT develops psychological flexibility by helping you make space for difficult thoughts and emotions while staying connected to your values and taking meaningful action.

• For an athlete, this might mean learning to respond differently to fear, self-doubt, pressure, or mistakes while continuing to move toward the person and performer you want to be.

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) - For Relationships

• EFT is an attachment-based approach to couples therapy that helps partners understand emotional patterns, identify underlying needs and vulnerabilities, and build more secure and connected relationships.

• For athletes, this can create space to explore how sport, stress, identity, injuries, transitions, or competing demands affect important relationships.

Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) - For Families

• EFFT is a family-based approach that focuses on strengthening relationships, improving emotional communication, and helping family members respond to one another with greater understanding and support.

• For athletes and young performers, family relationships can be deeply connected to sport. We can explore expectations, conflict, support, independence, communication, and the ways everyone is trying to navigate change.

Your performance is part of who you are, but it isn't all of who you are.

The mental side of performance includes confidence, focus, self-talk, emotional regulation, resilience, motivation, and managing pressure. But for many athletes, performance is also tied to identity, self-worth, relationships, and where they see themselves in the world.

Therapy gives you space to work on both. We can address what is happening in your performance while also exploring the person behind it, including your goals, values, identity, relationships, challenges, and the life you want beyond your sport. It can also give you space to explore the bigger questions:

• Who am I in and outside of my performance?

• What happens when I do or don't meet my own expectations?

• What do I want my life to look like?

• What might be holding me back?

The goal isn't to separate the athlete from the person. It's to support the whole person.

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy supports you in understanding yourself, working through distress, building greater choice and flexibility, and moving toward the life and relationships you want. Performance can be part of that work, but it is considered within the context of the whole person.

The College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO) regulates the profession in Ontario. Registered Psychotherapists are accountable to professional standards, ethical requirements, quality assurance, professional conduct requirements, and standards related to competence and scope of practice.

As a Registered Psychotherapist, I am accountable to CRPO's professional standards and practice requirements. This includes practising within my competence, protecting confidentiality, maintaining appropriate professional boundaries, engaging in ongoing professional development, and providing care that is safe, ethical, and appropriate to my client’s needs.

Mental Performance Consulting

Mental Performance Consulting supports athletes in developing skills and strategies that support optimal performance. This might include areas such as confidence, concentration, motivation, goal-setting, imagery, managing competitive pressure, routines, self-talk, and other mental skills.

Mental Performance Consulting focuses on helping athletes and performers develop the psychological skills that support confidence, focus, resilience, motivation, performance, and enjoyment. Professionals may pursue the Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC) designation, which recognizes education, mentored experience, examination, ethical standards, and ongoing professional development in the field. In Ontario, Mental Performance Consulting is not a regulated health profession. 

Mental Performance Coaching

Mental performance coaching is a broader term that can refer to coaching focused on mindset, goal-setting, motivation, confidence, habits, and performance. The goal of coaching is generally to help you identify goals, develop strategies, overcome obstacles, and take action toward a desired outcome.

Unlike psychotherapy and recognized professional designations such as CMPC, “mental performance coach” is not a regulated professional title in Ontario. The education, training, scope of practice, and professional standards of someone using this title can therefore vary considerably.

Athletes already know how to learn. You practice. You experiment. You get feedback. You adjust. You try again. You discover what works, what doesn't, and what you want to do differently next time.

Therapy can work in a similar way.

We can get curious about what you're experiencing, explore different perspectives and tools, notice what helps, and learn from what doesn't. You don't have to get therapy “right,” and you don't have to have everything figured out before you start.

You just need some willingness to be curious about yourself and see what might be possible.

Your job isn't to perform therapy perfectly. It's to show up and explore.