Located on Commercial Drive in the heart of East Van, on the ancestral, traditional, unceded lands of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ peoples.
In person and online sessions available. E-mail: counsellinghome.ca@gmail.com
© 2024 Ishtar Beck & Associates Counselling
I offer a warm, caring, sensitive, and emotionally attuned environment for clients to feel seen and heard. This is a space of compassionate empathy in which I aim to truly and deeply understand where you are coming from. As a non-judgmental witness I provide stability and structure so that both adult and child clients can explore their inner landscape, transform, and grow.
In collaboration with clients, I aim to foster an increasing awareness of what has happened till now to bring you to this point; to normalize feelings and experiences, especially those relating to trauma; and to facilitate a connection to your inner knowing.
I believe the body is wise. I view the body as a potential road map, a portal for focusing within and finding healing. Using somatic methods, I facilitate a process in which the body can point each client to their unique ‘antidote’. Beyond emotional pain and physical sensations associated with the pain are significant unmet needs, which when discovered can be addressed and met. This truly miraculous process can be accessed in individual work as well as in family work with parents and children.
Bringing one’s own deep wisdom to conscious awareness is a process that can happen in counselling. I draw upon Focusing work and Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT). My work is trauma-informed and, as needed, can also be trauma-specific inspired by the work of Peter Levine and Pat Ogden. My background as an energy healer supports my work in counselling by acknowledging an energetic exchange between the individual and the environment and working to understand the dynamics of this exchange. Mindfulness tools come in handy here.
I offer grounding practices and ‘energy hygiene’, helping folks learn how to keep ourselves present, grounded, and mindful. I demonstrate emotional regulation and hold the emotional regulation space, for adults as well as for children in synergetic play therapy.
Family counselling can help raise healthy people by changing the course of the unhealthy intergenerational patterns that have trickled down to the current family life. When working with families, I foster conversations built on validation, emotional support, and collaborative problem-solving. I coach parents to pay attention to their children’s emotional cues and to name to the emotional experience. I believe that “you gotta name it to tame it.”
In family counselling, we also work on developing increasingly healthy boundaries along with lovingkindness in the home environment. Communication strategies are explored with the parents first. Later in the process, we may bring in the kid(s) for joint parent-child sessions with synergetic play therapy. In play therapy sessions I support parents in becoming the external emotional regulator for the child. This fosters a sense of secure attachment between children and parents.
I believe that even and especially in the uncomfortable parts of life, the challenges, and the chaos, we can learn to maintain healthy connections within ourselves and with our loved ones and community.
Welcome to my practice.
