Yes!

VIRTUAL SESSIONS:

For couples and individuals living in the following provinces:

• British Columbia

• Yukon

• Nunavut

• Northwest Territories

• Saskatchewan

• Manitoba

• Newfoundland and Labrador

IN-PERSON SESSIONS:

For couples and individuals in Victoria, BC.

The office is located within the DataTech Centre (1095 McKenzie Ave Suite 300, Victoria, BC V8P 2L5).

Counselling for Individuals: $135 for a 50 minute session. $180 for a 75 minute session.

Counselling for Couples/Relationships: $160 for a 50 minute session. $240 a 75 minute session.

$280 for a 90 minute session.

Clients will be charged the full session fee for missed appointments or appointments cancelled less than 48 hours. If you arrive late for your appointment you are entitled to the remainder of your appointment time.

I charge a late cancellation fee because the appointment time is reserved for you, and it can be difficult to fill the space on short notice. However, if I am able to fill your appointment time, you will not be charged for a late cancellation.

You can either pay by credit card or e-transfer to kevin [at] coelevationcounselling [dot] ca

Yes! A free consultation is confidential, and obligation-free. I am happy to answer any questions you have, and I may have a few questions of my own!

Typical topics we might cover:

• You’re reaching out - why here, why now?

• More about my approach.

• What you can expect in working with me.

• What your expectations are of counselling.

• What you hope to get out of counselling.

• Informed consent and confidentiality.

Unfortunately, I’m not able to offer direct billing at this time. After you attend and pay for our session, I will issue you an invoice that you can provide to your insurance company for reimbursement. I cannot issue receipts for sessions that were not attended.

I understand that financial barriers can be one more way in which valuable services can be out of reach many folks. Unfortunately, mental healthcare is not currently covered by the Medical Service Plan, so to make counselling accessible, there are number of options to reduce the cost to you.

Extended Health Benefits: Extended health will likely cover a certain number of counselling sessions. Please check with your insurance provider to see if they cover services rendered by a Registered Clinical Counsellor or a Canadian Certified Counsellor.

First Nations Health Authority (FNHA): I am registered as a mental health provider so I can offer reduced-rate counselling services to Indigenous clients.

Crime Victim Assistance Program (CVAP): I am registered as a mental health provider to offer reduced-rate counselling services to victims of crime.

Insurance Corporation of BC (ICBC): I am registered as a mental health provider to offer reduced-rate counselling services to individuals who have eligible claims with ICBC.

Yes! To increase the accessibility of counselling, I offer a limited number of sliding scale spots available for individuals with financial need. Please contact me for more information.

Note: I currently have a waitlist for sliding scale spots.

All counselling sessions will take place over Zoom, a platform which allows for face-to-face video and voice calls. Zoom is an application available for desktop, laptop, and mobile devices. Zoom calls are encrypted to ensure confidentiality and the platform is PIPEDA and PHIPA compliant. If you’d like to know more about how Zoom keeps your information private you can read about it here.

Licensure:

Although there is movement towards regulation in the next few years, because counselling is unregulated in BC as of May 2023, you want to make sure the counsellor you are seeking has professional liability insurance and is a member in good standing with one of the ethical governing bodies such as BCACC or CCPA. These organizations require counsellors to engage in ongoing professional development activities to maintain an active license in good standing. You can recognize counsellors with these organizations if they have RCC or CCC designations.

This is a good question! Here are some helpful questions to determine fit:

• What are your areas of expertise?

• What kind of therapy do you practice?

• Do you have experience working with people in similar situations as me? How did that go?

In a counselling relationship, it should be the norm that you feel comfortable, feel respected, feel heard, feel understood, feel validated, and feel empowered.

• Your counsellor should be making a sincere effort to understand you and communicate that understanding in a respectful manner - without being critical or judgmental.

• The counsellor seems dependable and reliable - on time and follows through with their words and actions.

• The counsellor is flexible and tailors their approach to your needs.

• The counsellor asks for, and implements, regular feedback to make sure they are meeting your needs.

• You’re learning new things and recognizing growth.

Making lasting change is not easy, so you might not always feel confident or competent along the journey that counselling offers – that’s normal as you develop new skills and new ways of thinking and being. However over time, you should see your confidence and competence grow.

This was an excellent question. With the caveat that every session varies depending on the needs of the client(s) at the time, I will try my best to answer this in broad terms.

MINDFULNESS: Research demonstrates the usefulness of being in touch with the sensations we feel in our physical body. We are not just a mind from the neck up, but a body. In fact, 80 percent of our visceral connections go from our body to our brain, and only 20 percent go from our brain to our body. This underscores the importance of becoming aware of the even the subtlest of sensations we feel concurrent with our emotional experience. Thus, as you share something in therapy, you will be experiencing an emotion, and it can be helpful to draw awareness to how your body feels as you feel that emotion, as you say that thing.

NARRATIVE: When I hear how you speak about yourself, about others, and the world, I get curious about the story that you are telling yourself, and the beliefs, values, and behaviours that reinforce that story. I acknowledge that the personal is political, and that the problems you may be experiencing are not strictly located within yourself - there is a context surrounding and reinforcing the stories you tell yourself. I will get curious about when your problem first arose; what life was like when it wasn't present; and listen for instances when the problem isn't present for you, pointing you towards your inner resources.

EMOTION-FOCUSED: Certain "core emotions" are motivating, hence e-motion; so having access to those emotions are key to support motivation and reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety. As an integrated approach, I listen for the emotions underneath the content of what you're saying - how you're processing your reality. We explore the trigger that causes the emotion, the initial meaning (e.g., pain, danger!), the associated bodily sensations, the broad meaning you make of it or the beliefs you hold about the emotion, and what action you may feel compelled to take after feeling the emotion. We may think back to an earlier time when you had a similar feeling, and, using your imagination, connect emotionally as your present-day self with the younger version of you, bringing all your resources that you've gained since that day to support your younger self to be given what it didn't get then.

INTERNAL FAMILY SYSTEM: Just like our family has a profound impact on us, and each person impacts the system as a whole, so to do we have an inner family of Parts: Managers, the parts that keep us in line and the parts of ourselves our neighbours see; Firefighters - impulsive parts that do everything in their power to take away our pain, hidden away by managers; and Exiles - those young, frozen-in-time parts of us that are so overwhelming that we've pushed aside (e.g. if we don't allow ourselves to be angry, there may be a young exiled part holding anger) and without them around, we aren't fully authentically our Selves. In session, I will often model and encourage this language: "there is a part of me who..." and engage in role play, taking on the persona of each part at a time and creating a conversation between the two Parts. This embodiment has a way of connecting us to the felt sense of each part, within which there is wisdom. I'll support you to see that there are no bad parts - they all have a purpose and a "positive intention" that we can discover. By developing our awareness of our parts (rather than getting stuck in vagueness and broad generalizations), we are better able to assess what's going on for us and orient to what we feel and what we need to have greater inner peace and harmony in our relationships.

SCHEMA THERAPY: An offshoot of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), schema therapy understands our moment-by-moment experience as corresponding to 5 domains comprising 18 schemas. By learning to recognize your habitual schemas, we can challenge them and develop new, more positive ways of thinking and behaving.

EMOTIONALLY-FOCUSED THERAPY: In EFT couples therapy, I will get curious about what's happening within a person (thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, beliefs, assumptions) and what is occurring between a couple (when one person does something, what does the other person do? What emotional signals are being sent, how are they being received? What is the dance of pursuit/withdrawal? What does each person say or do and does that create closeness or distance?), and with each partner feeling safe enough, I will encourage the partners to say what is happening for them and what their fears and longings are in relationship. I will also explore with one partner what it's like to receive what the other is saying.

GOTTMAN METHOD: Alongside EFT, I employ the Gottmans' valuable research-informed knowledge-base to normalize relationship challenges and navigating them with care and skill. I will introduce educational pieces and help partners practice skills such as:

• Identifying the Four Horsemen

• Engage with "bids for connection"

• Educate on research that says that we pick a set of problems and 69% of them are perpetual problems we learn to manage - differences in personality, lifestyle, etc.

• Highlight the importance of building skills and prioritizing the health of your relationship through intentional bonding experiences.

• Highlight the importance of timely repair after an argument,

• Highlight the importance of shifting any "negativity-bias" that might exist (e.g. difficulty giving partner the benefit of the doubt).

• Highlight the importance of creating Shared Meanings – Rituals, Goals, etc.

• Practice key relationship skills: 1) Gentle Start-up; 2) Accept Influence; 3) Compromise; 4) De-escalation; 5) Repair During Conflict; and 6) Physiological Soothing of Self and Partner

Ultimately, I tailor my therapeutic approach to the unique needs and goals of each person. I work collaboratively with each person to create a individualized treatment plan that incorporates the most effective therapeutic techniques for their needs.

whjy i do what i do.

Each individual's or couples' needs are different at different stages of therapy, so what follows is not contextualized - this is the map, but the organic counselling process is the far richer and nuanced territory.

Whether working with couples or individuals, I also tend to see if you are open to me being transparent at times about why I'm doing what I'm doing. Taking care not to disrupt the emerging emotional experience or the flow of the session, I believe that transparency and understanding the reasoning behind a certain approach can be helpful knowledge outside of the counselling room.

With that caveat, here's a broad overview of what you can expect when working with me in a typical couple session:

Broadly:

• We're going to get to know it and slow it down.

• We're going to get to know each person's experience more.

• We're going to explore what's scary or unsettling when you're caught in the cycle.

• And we're going to help you exit the cycle and create a new dance of closeness and connection.

• We'll celebrate successes throughout the process - moments where you felt connected to your own experience and to the experience of your partner, and to each other.

• SESSIONS 1,2: The first session or two tends to be administrative pieces such as informed consent and confidentiality, agreements on e-mailing and transparency, rapport building, setting goals (both the couple goals where the couple is a team, and individualized goals that serve to shift each person's part in their presenting concerns). We may also cover fundamental educational pieces including attachment styles, emotional window of tolerance, emotion regulation strategies, and more.

• SESSIONS 3,4: An individual session with each partner gathers more individual family history, coping strategies, attachment strategies, and more, as it relates to the challenges faced in the relationship.

• SESSIONS 5: Understanding the cycle that gets you stuck.

• SESSIONS 7+: Present-moment work where we work with the cycle and take steps to understand what's going on within each person and between each person that is perpetuating the cycle; we soften the cycle; and we work together so that you and your partner can feel safe and comfortable to speak to each other in a way that leaves you both feeling heard, understood, and on the same team.

• We will assess by session 12 the strength of your emotional bond, and continue to soften the edges that keep you stuck.

Here's a broad overview of what you can expect when working with me in a typical individual session:

BEGINNING:

• I employ Feedback Informed Therapy to help us keep in mind your wellbeing week after week.

• Whichever is your preference, I may summarize previous material or return to something we touched on previously, or we may take your lead on a pressing issue.

• We may jointly decide to begin or conclude the session with a 5 minute meditation to connect to your inner experience, and exploring what came up for you.

MIDDLE:

• Throughout the process, I may use any number of approaches to get at the deeper issues both within yourself and between you and others.

  • To help you connect more deeply with your own experience of living, we'll identify feelings and needs: what we want, what we long for, and what we yearn for.

  • To help you connect with what others may think or feel, I may ask you to imagine the situation from their perspective given all you know about their life history.

  • Emotion-focused: Slowing the process of a specific event and identifying the trigger event that gave rise to the emotion, labelling the emotion, identifying what sensations arise in the body, the meaning you make if the emotional experience, and the action tendency the emotion holds.

  • Relational: In relationships, we can see ourselves as others see us. Thus, I may at times check in about your perceptions of our relationship and how you see yourself in our relationship, and we may explore your feelings and experiences of Self and of your relationships.

  • Using the Change Triangle to move from Defenses, through Anxiety, to Core Emotion.

  • Exploring the "positive intentions" of different aspects of your experience (every thought, emotion, urge, and body sensation has a purpose).

  • Slowing down the process of a specific event to understand how underlying beliefs, attachment style, expectations, responses to an emotional experience.

  • Exploring how you feel about what you're feeling.

  • Exploring expectations of Self and the real or imagined expectations of Others.

  • We become Pattern Detectives:

    • Identifying trends: e.g. I regularly get anxious when I'm at work.

    • Examining habitual thought processes, habitual emotional reactions, habitual coping strategies.

    • Identifying what may have influenced these habitual ways of being and doing.

    • Identifying the relationships between patterned events, thoughts, emotions, behaviours.

    • Identifying our "model of self," "model of others," "model of relationships."

    • Identifying assumptions, beliefs, and values that support the status quo, and support a different way of doing things. E.g. "My career is my most important piece of my identity," and what that belief does for our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours.

  • I may take us down your particular thought process to understand what it means for you at a deeper level. E.g., "What does it mean for you if what you are thinking becomes reality?"

END:

• Session summary - a reflection on what occurred in session.

• I employ Feedback Informed Therapy to do a temperature check of our relationship, to assess whether you feel heard and understood and are talking about what you want to talk about, and to find out if there is anything we need to do to make therapy more effective.

The frequency and number of sessions will vary for everyone. However, to maintain momentum towards your goals, I request that we schedule ahead of time weekly sessions for the first month, then re-evaluate based on where you think you are in progressing towards your therapeutic goals.

From the outset of therapy, we will establish what progress looks like, and I will invite regular feedback and check-ins during treatment will ensure we are moving forward in a way that works for you and leaves you feeling satisfied. In the first session, and periodically throughout treatment, we will also establish what concluding therapy looks like. Setting a clear end date helps to keep therapy on track and focused.

If you’ve ever been to a counselling session and come away exhausted, this is normal. It doesn’t happen every session, but when it does, it can wipe us out, just like a good workout - or any mentally, emotionally, and physically taxing activity for that matter. Thus, it’s important to rest and recuperate after therapy. How will you take care of yourself after a session?