Hello! I'm Laura
About Me
As a therapist and counsellor, my goal is to facilitate a therapeutic process in which clients are provided space to discover, play, grow, and heal. I believe children communicate and make meaning through play, creativity, imagination, and curiosity. By meeting children and youth in their natural language, I strive to create a safe space where they can explore emotions, strengthen emotional regulation, process significant events, deepen connection with caregivers, and develop greater confidence and lasting resilience.
We are living in challenging times, and modern life can create profound stress, uncertainty and disconnection for people of all ages. I am especially interested in working with depression, anxiety, grief, childhood trauma, burnout, compassion fatigue, creative blocks and life transitions.
I am currently completing my Masters of Counselling with City University in Victoria, B.C., while also training at the Pacific Gestalt Institute, where I hope to become a credentialed Gestalt therapist. I am deeply committed to lifelong learning and continue to expand my knowledge through ongoing training in psychotherapy, trauma, attachment, and child development. My long-term aspiration is to become a Registered Play Therapist and Trauma Specialist.
My clinical experience includes working in community mental health and residential addictions treatment, where I have supported individuals navigating trauma, anxiety, depression, grief, and substance use. In 2024, I completed the foundational counselling training through Citizens’ Counselling Centre of Greater Victoria, an experience that further strengthened my appreciation for the healing potential of this work.
Before becoming a counsellor, I followed a number of unexpected paths that continue to inform my practice today. Between 2008-2014, while completing a double undergraduate degree in Professional Writing and International Development at York University, I spent several summers in rural Ethiopia developing a youth summer camp alongside scholarship and financial aid programs for local students and families. I later became a certified Red Seal chef and had the opportunity to cook aboard ships with the Canadian Coast Guard. These experiences taught me the importance of creativity, adaptability, curiosity, and genuine human connection, qualities I continue to bring into the therapy room. My time in rural Ethiopia deepened my commitment to cultural humility and highlighted the importance of understanding how socioeconomic factors influence health and well-being.
Outside of my professional life, I find joy in cooking, learning the piano, practicing Portuguese, juggling, painting, and spending time in nature. I believe our interests, creativity, and capacity for play are not only sources of enjoyment, but also important ways of staying connected to ourselves and to one another.
My Philosophy
During my own therapeutic journey, I was guided through a process that was serious and profound while also surprisingly playful. I learned that therapy can be an enlivening and enriching endeavour, expanding our capacities to engage with the complexities of life and the richness of human experience. My hope is to carry forward the gift of therapy as I support others who are enduring hardship, seeking self-awareness, or perhaps in need of a compassionate space to just be. I view therapy as a creative encounter, where the therapist and client work together to discover new possibilities and ways of being.
As a humanistic therapist, I attend to the unique capacities, gifts and experiences of each individual I encounter. While my practice is grounded in Gestalt psychotherapy, I draw from an integrative approach. I am informed by psychodynamics, systems-theory, response-based-practice and narrative therapy; I am also culturally-sensitive and trauma-informed. As a certified Hatha Yoga teacher, I also incorporate mindfulness and nervous-system regulation into my practice. Ultimately I consider the therapeutic relationship to be the catalyst for personal transformation, as theory tends to fade into the background when true human contact is made. I strive to approach every client with cultural humility, curiosity and respect; I offer a space and therapeutic encounter that is inclusive to all human beings. I celebrate and welcome all genders, cultures, identities, family structures, abilities and backgrounds.