How I Got Here…
If you are someone who reads about general experiences of trauma and finds it activating with where you are at in the processing of your experiences, please be advised the following post, given my life/work experience is focused within this field of trauma-based work, includes some reference to general experiences. All information provided is to give a sense of how I approach this work and skills/perspective gathered along the way…
Like most persons drawn to care-giving work, I have lived experience that developed a compassion in me for other people’s suffering. After navigating a loss of a parent as a pre-teen, and resulting pure OCD symptoms as a trauma response, I gained empathy for people struggling with controlling or managing distressing feelings and thoughts. After seeking therapy and coming out the other side with mindfulness based tools, I found I was adept at relating to others, and I wanted to work with people that may not get empathy or support as readily as others. I originally went the route of studying Criminology at SFU because I wanted to work with people who had committed felonies. While at school I took part in advocating for the development of a sexual assault support centre on campus, developed events for issues impacting student health/well-being, and provided workshops on campus to educate and reduce homophobia/transphobia on campus. I finished my undergraduate with a thesis exploring Indigenous perspectives on reconciliation as I was at that time working with programming related to residential schools.
Overlapping with school, I started working in supportive, harm reduction housing programs for folks experiencing chronic homelessness in the DTES of Vancouver. There is a lot of complex trauma leading up to homelessness, during it, and even once housed. From this experience, my trauma-informed perspective strengthened in terms of understanding how will alone is often not enough to make changes, and the complex ways shame, stigma, and inter-generational histories shape someone’s life. I then coordinated an outreach team of caseworkers while volunteering at a crisis line, and eventually came back to the GTA where I supported persons with HIV/AIDS in subsidized housing. Finally, I supported the needs of persons in the Downtown East of Toronto with complex mental health and substance use difficulties maintain their housing. It is while I did this last job that I completed my Masters of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University, with a focus on mental health counselling in my practicum.
I bring with me a perspective informed by the ways society, global, and community systems shape individual experiences. I have witnessed how resilient and yet fragile our bodies are, and how much more we are than just our conscious selves. We may not be able to have control over how other people heal, but we can do healing work on the legacies inherited from those before us. Most importantly, I have seen the inherent drive from the mind and body to mend. This drive includes misguided attempts to feel safe when our bodies become geared towards survival strategies we developed during times of trauma.
Despite all of these barriers, I approach therapy from the perspective that every person is whole, we just may not feel that way because of our burdens. Mental health counselling is a place to honour that part that wants better for ourselves.
