There’s something going on that you’re not satisfied with and you’re looking for some support and solutions. My team and I have many years of experience assisting people with anxiety, depression, substance use issues, trauma, and relationships.
What unites us is a strong social justice ethic, an interest in contemplative practices including meditation, and putting the person and their knowledge at the center of our work. We collaborate with you to find resources from within yourself and your communities to go in the direction you’re looking for.
Our approach is collaborative, strengths-based, and respectful. We tend to not position ourselves as “experts,” but rather to work with the person’s own expertise and competencies and work as an ally for them in turning their lives in a desired direction.
Humans live their lives through stories. We are told stories about ourselves from our families or origin and culture, and with enough repetition, we often tell these stories to ourselves and they can calcify into a problem identity. One of my primary influences in this work is Narrative Therapy – Alice Morgan (2000) provides a helpful summary:
Narrative therapy seeks to be a respectful, non-blaming approach to counselling and community work, which centres people as the experts in their own lives. It views problems as separate from people and assumes people have many skills, competencies, beliefs, values, commitments and abilities that will assist them to reduce the influence of problems in their lives.
My other primary approach is Secular Buddhism – drawing on the therapeutic elements of Buddhism in a non-theistic, non-dogmatic manner, to assist people in liberating themselves from human suffering. Meditation can be part of your treatment plan if you wish, and there is more detail on that in the Meditation section.
Therapy sessions generally last for 1.5 hours. Included in my fees are therapeutic letters between sessions, a rare and often valuable service. Please inquire with me about the fee structure.
Because of my association’s ethical code, I’m not able to solicit testimonials from therapy clients for ethical reasons, however, I can say that satisfaction with our services has been high and the changes our clients make are profound.
Brian Dean Williams & Associates 