A compassionate straight shooter.
I speak like I'm talking to a friend, I've been a Registered Social Worker for thirteen years, and I still think it's a privilege to sit with people in their hardest moments. Here's the long way I came to this work, and what it's actually like to do it with me.
Thirteen years, and a career most therapists haven't had.
- The first career
Numbers, projects, and people
Before social work there was accounting, human resources, and project management. Good work, but the part I kept gravitating to was the people: mentoring, coaching, figuring out what makes each person tick. Social work was the career that let me do that everywhere.
- 2013 · Registered
The frontline years
I became a Registered Social Worker and spent years where the work is hardest: two years in child protection, six in healthcare. I learned how broken systems can be, and how much people keep trying and caring anyway.
- 2019 onward
Counselling, then leading the counsellors
I moved into behavioural health counselling, and within nine months I was also leading the mental health team. Coaching clinicians, holding the big picture without losing the frontline view, and still doing the counselling that felt most like me.
- The bigwig chapter
Executive Director, Social Work Association of Alberta
I led the provincial association supporting Alberta's ten thousand social workers: advocacy with government, building bridges with the regulator, creating professional development, and supervising MSW students. I completed my Master of Social Work along the way, because apparently one full-time challenge wasn't enough.
- Now
Full-time private practice, on purpose
I stepped away from the leadership track for one reason: counselling is where my heart has always been. This is the practice I intend to be doing for a very long time. I can't imagine not doing this work.
Easy to talk to. Hard to stay stuck around.
You can literally say anything
Sex, intensity, the thing you've never said out loud. I don't rattle, I don't judge, and I've almost certainly heard it before.
“I don't know” is a full answer
You don't have to arrive with the right words or a tidy explanation. Figuring out what's going on is the work, and we do it together.
I'll interrupt, kindly
If a session starts circling, I step in and keep it on track, so you leave with something instead of wondering where the hour went.
I think about you between sessions
If something clicks for me on a Tuesday, you'll hear about it on Thursday. You're not a fifty-minute file to me.
Wins get celebrated, hard weeks don't get fixed
I'll cheer every small win with you. And when it's just an awful week, I won't rush you toward silver linings. Sometimes sad is the right response.
Frankie and Luka may appear
My cockapoo and my cat consider your session their business. Pajamas welcome, coffee encouraged. Therapy with an actual human, at home.
I keep the practice focused, on purpose.
Going deep with the people I am genuinely best suited to support matters more to me than being available for everything.
Couples deep in the same loop
Partners who can both describe the pattern and cannot get out of it from the inside. Decades in or newly navigating a transition, at the last straw or quietly drifting.
People carrying something about sex they have never said
Desire mismatch, pressure, pain, or a question about what is normal. This is a specialty, not a topic I tolerate when it comes up.
Anyone whose patterns keep circling back
You have talked about it before, possibly for years, and it still runs the show. Usually the missing piece was someone tying the dots together.
People who feel everything at full volume
Including those who have been dropped by previous therapists or told they are too much. I do not rattle, and I do not consider intensity a burden.
I don't just do this work. I've needed it.
I've carried anxiety since I was small, and I've been fortunate to have two great therapists across my life, both of whom nudged me toward doing this work myself. What they gave me was compassion without judgement. What I was still missing, for years, was someone tying the dots together: explaining why my patterns made sense given where they came from. Once I had that, things shifted.
I've also been on the other couch. I married at twenty-two, and by my mid-twenties I was sitting in couples therapy with a brand-new therapist who had no idea what to do with us. I lived the anxious-attachment chaos I now help people untangle, and I know firsthand the difference an experienced therapist makes when a conversation gets intense.
That's why I don't just hand out coping tools. Tools are part of the picture, but people don't come to therapy wanting to cope with their life. They want a life that feels fuller. When I found IFS and EFT, it felt like coming home, and it's the depth I try to offer everyone I work with.
Once I understood that my patterns were normal given how I grew up, I could finally make the shifts. That's the moment I want for every person I work with.
A few things that are true about me.
You will meet a real person in session, so here is a little of what fills the rest of my week.
- WeekendsHiking whenever the weather allows
- Currently readingFinally working through Game of Thrones
- Also readingFive therapy books on the go, permanently
- Always yes toMexican food
- In the roomFrankie the cockapoo and Luka the cat
People do not come to therapy wanting to cope with their life. They want a life that feels fuller.
How I practise, in six commitments.
Depth and technique
You need both. Coping strategies give you something to do on a hard Tuesday, and understanding why the pattern exists is what makes those strategies finally hold.
Directness, delivered kindly
I will tell you what I am noticing, interrupt when a session circles, and stay warm the entire time. Those are not in tension.
You are the authority on you
I map what I see and invite you to correct me. Being told you are wrong about your own experience is not therapy.
Nothing is too much to say
Sex, rage, shame, the thought you have never spoken aloud. If it is real for you, it belongs in the room.
Real validation, not reassurance
Being understood without someone rushing to fix or soften you is rarer than it should be, and it changes what becomes possible.
Learning, permanently
Training every year, on purpose. The people I sit with deserve a therapist who has not stopped being curious.
A lifelong learner, probably to a fault.
Couples & attachment
- Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy, Levels 1 & 2 · Sue Johnson & Leanne Campbell, 2023 to 2024
- Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy certificate course · 2026
- Intensive Couples Therapy: Couples in Crisis · Elizabeth Earnshaw, 2025
- Applying EFT with couples, individuals, and families · Leanne Campbell & George Faller, 2026
Parts work & IFS
- Internal Family Systems Therapy Immersion · Dr. Frank Anderson, 2025
- Complete IFS Therapy Immersion · Frank Anderson & Richard Schwartz, 2025
- Treating complex trauma with IFS · Frank Anderson, 2025
- Integrating IFS & EMDR for trauma · 2026
Sexuality & intimacy
- Integrative Sex and Couples certification training · Dr. Tammy Nelson, 2025
- Sex therapy certification program · 2026
- Integrating sex therapy for couples: EFT, attachment & somatic strategies · Rebecca Howard, 2025
- Sexuality and intimacy training · Stanford Health Care, 2026
Emotional intensity & trauma
- Certified in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (C-DBT) · Lane Pederson, 2021
- DBT certification training · Katelyn Baxter-Musser, 2025
- Complex trauma certification, Levels 1 & 2 · Janina Fisher, 2026
- Certified Clinical Trauma Professional, Levels I & II · 2022 to 2026
A selected list. The full one is longer than this page, and it grows every year, on purpose.
Come as you are. Leave with something.
The consult is twenty minutes, free, by video. Bring your questions, your doubts, or your “I don't even know where to start.” That's a perfectly good place to start.
Book your free 20-minute consult