Counselling Services on the Sunshine Coast and Online Across BC

Counselling grounded in safety, honesty, and a real working relationship

Brave Heart Counselling is a small practice serving the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, including Gibsons, Sechelt, Roberts Creek, Halfmoon Bay, Davis Bay, Madeira Park, Pender Harbour, Egmont, and the communities in between. Sessions are available in person, and by secure video for clients anywhere in BC. Counselling theory and practice largely stay the same no matter the context. My goals are always two-fold: to establish a safe shared space where you can be open and honest about what is happening, and to build a genuine therapeutic relationship. A therapeutic relationship is different from a friendship, a partnership, or a sibling relationship. As a therapist I am trying to see and understand the heart of the issue without a lot of context or distraction getting in the way. The more open and honest you are with me, the more useful I can be, because we are building a working relationship aimed at problem solving and personal exploration rather than repression, avoidance, or downplaying.

Choosing the right service

People often arrive with one clear concern and discover that other parts of life are connected to it. Anxiety shows up in a relationship. Grief changes how someone copes. A separation reshapes parenting. You do not need to sort all of that out before booking. Start with whichever service is closest to what you need right now, and we can adjust from there.

Individual Counselling

One-on-one work for adults and youth aged sixteen and up, covering anxiety, depression, trauma, grief, addiction, stress and burnout, and life transitions. Sessions are sixty minutes, and everything you say is confidential within the standard legal limits.

Couples Counselling

Work for partners navigating conflict, communication, affairs, parenting, money, and separation, including high conflict separation, co-parenting, parallel parenting, and parental alienation. In couples work both of you are my client, and neither of you is my ally against the other.

Youth Counselling

Support for teens and young people facing anxiety, low mood, school pressure, identity questions, and family change. This work is built on twenty-five years alongside young people as an educator before I became a counsellor.

Online Counselling

Secure video sessions for clients across BC, using the same platform I use for booking. All you need is a phone, tablet, or computer, which makes counselling reachable from smaller communities, from work, or from home.

What people bring to these sessions

• Anxiety, panic, rumination, and a nervous system that will not settle
• Depression, low motivation, and a flatness that has lasted too long
• Trauma, including single events, childhood adversity, and occupational trauma
• Grief and loss, whether recent or long carried
• Stress, burnout, and the exhaustion of holding everything together
• Addiction and a relationship with substances that has shifted
• Relationship strain, separation, divorce, and co-parenting conflict
• Life transitions, aging, loneliness, and questions of meaning and identity

Individual work compared with work involving more than one person

When I work with one person, that person is my client. For parents this means whatever your child says to me is confidential and I cannot disclose it without their written consent. When I work with a couple or a family, everyone in the room is my client, and nothing any of you says to me will be permanently kept from the others. That does not mean I automatically repeat everything. It means I am allowed to bring relevant information into the room, or encourage you to bring it yourself. Usually this comes down to timing, and I try to let the person disclosing choose the moment so that it happens on their terms.

How the work is done

I draw on evidence-based modalities first, including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Solution Focused Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Beyond that I work eclectically, with a strong influence from psychodynamic theory of the kind found in Carl Jung's work. These are not applied as a fixed sequence. Which approach is useful depends on what you are carrying, what you want to be different, and the pace at which the work can actually be engaged. When someone is searching for meaning, or has lost it through trauma or a major life event, I often use an existential and humanist lens. My background in the sciences means I will also talk about the interaction between psychology and physiology. Most people begin weekly or every second week, then move to once or twice a month as things settle. Research suggests most progress happens between sessions four and eight, so I usually suggest trying four sessions and then deciding together whether to continue, meet less often, or stop.

What a first session looks like

I start by explaining the limits of confidentiality so you know exactly what is private and what is not. Then I ask what brings you in and where you would like to start. I use open-ended questions for much of the first two sessions so we get a real sense of the situation rather than boxing it into a problem and solution framework. You do not need a referral, a diagnosis, or a tidy explanation of the problem before you book.

Counselling across the Sunshine Coast and British Columbia

Living on the Coast has its own texture. Ferry dependence, seasonal work, long winters, small community visibility, and limited access to specialized services all shape mental health here, and they are treated as part of the picture rather than background noise. For clients elsewhere in the province, secure video sessions remove the travel entirely. Whether we meet in person or online, the approach is the same: unhurried, collaborative counselling that makes room for both what is happening now and the wider context of your life.