Meet Tania!

My name is Tania (she/her). My journey towards becoming a counsellor has been anything but linear. My dream as early as adolescence was to be a counsellor, but college was a great challenge for me at the time. and I ended up training in a different domain and spending several years in advertising. When I found myself burnt out, I realized that the corporate world had distanced me from having deeper connections with people. I knew I had to recreate the way I was living, personally and professionally. This led me to train in various holistic healing modalities, which, in retrospect, was a quest for my own personal healing. Here, I felt more aligned with my values and the way I wanted to work with people. I started my holistic healing practice in North Vancouver, BC in 2005, and I enjoyed it for over a decade.

I went back to university at the age of 36 when I reached a lull in my practice and wanted to change the way I offered support; I knew I had to advance my knowledge on how to help people overcome psychological wounding and to find new ways towards empowerment and making positive, meaningful changes in their lives. My mantra is IT'S NEVER TOO LATE. I believe this. It’s never too late to shift direction, seek growth, change or redefine your life, and I bring this philosophy with me into the counselling room.

I earned my Master’s degree in Counselling Psychology from Simon Fraser University. As part of my degree completion I engaged in research in Rwanda, focusing on how ex-prisoners make meaning of their lives after they reconcile with those they’ve harmed, and rejoin their communities. My work in the community is centred on responding to and helping people overcome the impacts of relationship/childhood abuse and violence.

Specialties

Drawing from my professional and academic experience, my focus as a counsellor is to help you develop a deeper understanding of the things you are hoping to change or overcome, hone skills and tools for facing life’s challenges that work best for YOU, provide a non-judgemental space to be heard, and to process, together, the concerns that you decide to bring forward into our counselling session. My counselling experience has predominantly centred on overcoming relationship, family, and intergenerational trauma, working with adults who have experienced childhood abuse or neglect, rebuilding self-esteem and developing healthy boundaries with self and others.

Approach

I believe healing happens when we learn how to meaningfully re-integrate past wounds into present life without having to re-experience the past; in other words, no need to scratch old wounds, but let’s observe the scars from a safe distance and see what they are telling us. Healing/positive change also includes learning how to make healthier choices for yourself, understanding your own needs better, and creating healthier relationships with yourself and others. I have tools and strategies for getting there and we choose together how to explore these goals.