Narrative Therapy is a gentle and powerful therapeutic approach that helps individuals, couples, and families understand and recraft the stories and descriptions they carry with them about their experiences in life and themselves.  All human beings use language to develop understandings and stories about the events in our lives and our parts in them.  These stories can either enrich our lives and sense of meaning or can be the root of painful feelings about ourselves and the world.  Narrative therapy seeks to shift negative stories about ourselves through exploration of events from a non-blaming and non-pathological stance.  Narrative therapy allows us to start to separate ourselves from shame, powerlessness, guilt, hopelessness, and self blame that often result from the stories that we carry with us about ourselves and our world.  Narrative therapy can help us find our voice and reorient us to our strengths and a more positive view of self. 

Play-based Therapy is often combined with cognitive behavioural approaches that are designed to help children understand and process difficult emotions. Play is the natural processing forum for children and offers an effective platform for helping children to understand the events in their lives, how to identify emotions, understand them, and heal so that they can move forward in a healthy manner.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an integrative psychotherapy approach that has been used effectively to treat the symptoms of trauma in many individuals. EMDR uses bi-lateral stimulation and talk therapy to help individuals reduce physiologically and emotionally overwhelming symptoms associated with the traumatic event(s).  For more information about this treatment and its various applications visit EMDR Canada. EMDR should only be conducted by a trained EMDR practitioner.

Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) is a unique transformative psychotherapy approach created by Diana Fosha.  AEDP heals attachment trauma and the psychosomatic injuries that often accompany attachment trauma. This neuroscience informed approach seeks to help the brain rewire and repair the ability to develop healthy emotional attachment relationships. This is accomplished by actively using moment to moment tracking and emotional attunement in sessions with a trained AEDP therapist.  For more information about AEDP visit the AEDP Institute’s website.

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is a type of short term therapy created by Sue Johnson and Les Greenburg. This approach is used in couples and some family therapy to assist individuals to improve attachment and bonding in adult relationships. This type of therapy helps couples and family members create a more secure attachment bond which results in more resilient relationships and better communication. EFT consists of three stages of treatment: De-escalation, restructuring, and consolidation. EFT is very effective in assisting couples struggling with conflict, distress, and poor communication. It also has some evidence to support its use in families that are struggling with the effects of PTSD, addiction, depression, chronic illness, and other situations that have affected trust and communication.