Relationship COUNSELLING
Attachment based, somatic relational therapy grounded in mind-body neuroscience.
Welcome! We’re Serenne and Lauren. We’re Registered Clinical Counsellors who support people in healing relational attachment ruptures and building healthy, loving relationships. We offer both couples therapy and individual therapy in virtual online counselling sessions.
Couples Therapy
Are you looking for guidance in rebuilding connection, trust and intimacy with your partner, resolving conflict, and developing healthier communication patterns?
We can support.
We help couples build securely attached relationships. At the heart of secure attachment lies the relational principles and skills of mutuality (has to be good for me and you), emotional attunement, and loving communication.
Although the context and topics that couples struggle about differ widely, core issues are almost always related to dynamics of insecure attachment that arise in the relationship, usually under times of stress or conflict. You may notice that either you, your partner or both of you may:
Have recurring arguments that don’t get resolved and lead to disconnect or hurt.
Express hurt or frustration through criticism or withdrawal rather than talking about core needs.
Don’t feel heard or validated in conversations when you two have differences of opinion.
Have difficulty defining and setting boundaries with each other.
Want to feel safe being vulnerable with each other, but sometimes or often feel misunderstood, hurt, rejected or unloved.
We support both partners to grow relationally by teaching the perspectives, tools and skills needed to have a securely attached bond. Our approach is tailored to each couple’s unique needs and goals.
Our sessions are experiential, meaning that we go beyond talk therapy to working with rewiring patterns in real time in session. Couples talk to us as they would in a talk therapy session, but we also ask partners to turn towards each other in session and have conversations like they would in their real lives. Our philosophy is “don’t just tell us what’s happening, show us.”
We then coach partners to try new “secure-attachment” moves with each other that promote safety, connection and understanding. This might look like trying new ways of speaking to each other, new ways of offering support (co-regulation), or trying couples practices together outside of session.
This style supports meaningful change faster as couples have a felt new experience of relating. Clients often tell us they feel more heard, understood and connected with this experiential approach faster than traditional talk therapy.
We use Attachment Therapy, Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT), Developmental Therapy, Emotion Focused Therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Somatic Relational Therapy, and neuroscience-based coaching strategies in couples work. To learn more about couples counselling sessions, start here.
Individual therapy
Do you experience anxiety, depression, intense self criticism, rumination or intrusive thoughts, chronic shame or guilt? Do you have difficulty regulating or understanding your emotions?
You may have unhealed trauma. We can help.
Maybe your thoughts and feelings feel chaotic, fragmented, or you feel numb. You’re constantly stressed and exhausted by your inner world. Perhaps you’ve been to practitioner after practitioner but they try to address your symptoms without understanding your full lived history and what you’ve been through.
Too often those of us who have developmental, relational or complex trauma don’t get adequate support to heal because symptoms get pathologized instead of understood. But symptoms are signals. They point towards what needs care - unprocessed emotional pain and wounded, young parts of ourselves that didn’t get to develop but stay trapped in fear, shame, or disconnect.
At the heart of this work, we provide a safe attachment relationship - a compassionate, non-judgemental space that is emotionally and psychologically reparative to early attachment wounds (relationships where you did not feel fully safe, loved or connected). It’s a relationship we build together, in which you are safe to express, safe to feel, safe to explore, and safe to turn inwards towards yourself and do the work to heal.
We offer individual sessions that focus on caring for the whole of you - your mind, your body and nervous system, your emotions and feelings, and your lived history, particularly your earliest relationships. We:
Explore both past and present factors impacting your wellbeing.
Process emotions and connect to core needs.
Process trauma and survival energies stuck in the body.
Explore early attachment experiences and heal attachment injuries within the therapeutic relationship.
Offer insight and guidance in caring for your current relationships and navigating how you want to show up in those relationships (boundary setting, expressing feelings skillfully, balancing needs).
Offer mindfulness based mind-body practices that strengthen resilience, stability and well being.
We integrate Attachment Based Therapy, Internal Family Systems Therapy, (IFS), Somatic Therapy, Trauma-informed Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Mindful Self Compassion in our work. To learn more about individual counselling sessions, start here.
If you’d like to discuss how we can be of support to you, please reach out. We would love to connect!