About Elyse

My counselling style is very relationally oriented. I believe in collaborative exploration and working with my clients to find meaning and understanding together. I am informed by three main counselling approaches: attachment, somatic experiencing, and systems theory. So what does this mean?

 

Attachment theory is the exploration of how comfortable with ourselves and others we are, and how our significant relationships impact how we perceive ourselves. Somatic approaches to counselling explore how our emotions impact our bodies. Systems theory involves the recognition of how the world we live in impacts us, and how that can impact how we feel about ourselves and the world. These three elements usually inform how I think about counselling, and then I draw from a variety of techniques and strategies to help clients with their experiences, including things like CBT, DBT, and ACT. I am also enrolled in an EMDR training to help clients process traumatic experiences.

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Before launching my own practice, I counselled in a variety of settings, including at a university counselling centre and community agencies. These placements gave me experience working with people on a variety of concerns, including depression, anxiety, complex decision-making, parenting challenges, high expectations and standards from yourself or others, gender and identity questions, as well as major life transitions including leaving home, grief, loss, divorce, changes in health status, and newly discovered neurodivergence. I have worked with people from a variety of age groups, from emerging adulthood to people in their sixties and seventies.

 

Some of these counselling relationships were very brief, focused on solutions and strategies to help people address specific issues, and other counselling relationships were more long-term, focused on an ongoing exploration of past experiences and how they impact people’s present lives. All my training, including my graduate degree in Counselling Psychology and the multiple counselling placements I have had until now, emphasize the importance of trauma-informed practice, which I bring to all my sessions. On a personal note, I am also a working mother of two small children and bring my lived experience as a parent to my practice.

 

I have done focused research on adult experiences of neurodivergence, especially autism and ADHD. Explorations of those experiences, how they impact people’s mental health, and the intersection of additional identities, has been something I have had the pleasure to explore with many clients.  The impact of masking/camouflaging on mental health, autistic burnout, executive dysfunction and impact on self perception, and how to live a life that is more authentic and self-accepting are all important things to explore with an affirming counsellor. I bring a neurodiversity-affirming lens to my practice and help clients explore their own neurodivergence or to help them reflect on how they can support the neurodivergent people in their lives. I also have lived experience with neurodivergence that informs my practice.