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Principles
of therapy that guide me
Prescribing
psychotropic drugs
Education
and professional
affiliations
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My
journey from family practice to psychotherapy has been a natural,
yet significant, step for me as a doctor. As all family doctors
do, I provided a lot of supportive counseling to my patients and
their families. Mental health and physical health are so intricately
connected and I grew to believe that this part of my practice was
as important, if not more so, than the aspect of medicine which
dealt with physical symptoms.
Over
time, I became more and more aware of needing specialized tools
and training to deal with the mind-body connection in order to help
my family practice patients. In 1995, I began a formal intensive
two-year training program in transformational psychotherapy
at Lifespace Institute in Toronto. The central tenet of this program
is the use of mindfulness (the awareness of body sensations
and impulses) focusing (which is thinking in a symbolic way
to heal emotionally while maintaining mindfulness – see the
web site www.focusing.com)
as avenues to guide the patient through difficulties.
I left my family practice, but not the invaluable lessons learned
over 25 years of being first line of defense to my patients, and
opened my offices in Collingwood/Creemore, as a physician specializing
in psychotherapy.
After my first year of practice in Collingwood, it became increasingly
clear to me that early childhood traumas were key to understanding
and treating my patients. I began to learn more about trauma and
how to treat it, and embarked on studies of new ways of treating
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) using Eye Movement
Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), hypnosis, Trauma Incident
Reduction (TIR) and Sensorimotor Processing.
From
this I began my journey into understanding the concept of dissociation
- a key concept to understand when treating people traumatized
in childhood.
In order to better understand dissociation, I studied in the US
and then attended the training at Mount Sinai Hospital offered by
the International Society for the Study of Dissociation.
At the same time, I received training in hypnosis in order
to make best use of this most valuable tool of psychotherapy.
Over the winter of 2003/04, I took training in Sensorimotor Therapy
for trauma at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto
taught by the creator Pat Ogden from Boulder Colorado. This therapy
taught me how to help facilitate the inner wisdom of the body to
help people, who are suffering from the symptoms of Post-Traumatic
Stress Disorder, to connect their body senses, impulses and feelings
in order to heal from their past traumas so that the pain would
not continue to be triggered when thinking about the trauma of the
past.
Although I can and do prescribe psychotropic
drugs, I always do this in coordination with your family doctor
and prefer that your family doctor or psychiatrist prescribe, and
I focus on providing the psychotherapy. The interaction between
me and your family doctor will strengthen your treatment and allow
me to provide consultation and supervision of your issues if you
and your doctor wish me to do this.
You may wonder why I have chosen to show you a photo of me with
an easel that is clearly not a medical form. One of my life passions
is painting and drawing. There is great satisfaction, and great
challenge, in facing a clean slate and connecting with the subject
at hand - a landscape, a man, a woman, a child - and there is a
great reward in capturing a complex character in a few, simple and
sensitive lines. It amazes me that the intricacies of life can,
with some courage, be reduced to simple colour, simple form.
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PRINCIPLES
OF THERAPY THAT GUIDE ME:
• Knowledge that each person has an inherent capacity to grow.
My job is to encourage self-exploration and to facilitate your process.
• Acceptance and compassion for where you are at; to help you
observe yourself and model the same acceptance and compassion to
all aspects of self; to help you learn to appreciate what each part
of self is doing for the whole. I attempt to not overtake your agenda
with mine and to pace the therapy so that you are not re-traumatized.
• Facilitation of communication between parts of self is essential
especially those unwanted and discarded parts - fostering that communication
is part of the therapist job. Developing flexible but clear boundaries
with those around us is essential to healthy relationships
• Using the principle of the unity of the mind-body-spirit
to facilitate your healing/change process.
• Working to embellish and develop mindfulness which is the
awareness of your own present internal state is an essential part
of any psychotherapy.
Since all experience comes in through the body senses - learning
to access the wisdom of the body is a key component of any effective
therapy
EDUCATION:
Bachelor of Arts in psychology
- 1963 Queen’s University, Kingston
Medical Degree (MD) 1967 Queen’s University, Kingston
Certificant of the College of Family Practice (CCFP) 1975 - 2006
CAFC
(Acupuncture Foundation of Canada) certified 1991
Addiction Research Foundation studies, 1991-92
Eating Disorders course at TGH Toronto 1995
Trained with the American Society for the Study of Clinical Hypnosis
(ASCH) between 1998-2000
Lifespace Institute training 1995-1997 in Toronto, Ontario
Certified by the Canadian Society for the Study of Clinical Hypnosis
(CSCH) 2003
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing):
Level I and level II tracings in 1998
Schema focused Therapy for Borderline Personality Disorder with
Dr. Jeffrey Young.
Psychotherapy for Dissociative Disorders,
Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto under the Auspices of the International
Society for the Study of Dissociation (ISSD) 2002-2003
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy for Trauma by the founder, Pat Ogden
of Boulder Colorado, and Deidre Faye, from Boston, Mass 2003-2004
On-going supervision by supervisors in Canada and the USA with expertise
in Dissociative disorders, trauma, sexual addiction, EMDR, Sensorimotor
therapy and the Developmental Needs Strategy (DMNS).
•
a full CV available
PROFESSIONAL
AFFILIATIONS:
•
General Practice Psychotherapy Association (GPPA)
• College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO)
• Canadian Society for the Study of Clinical Association (CSCH)
• International Society for the study of Dissociation (ISSD)
• Eye
Movement Desensitizing and Reprocessing Association of Canada (EMDRAC)
• Ontario Medical Association (OMA)
• Courtesy staff at Sunnybrook & Women’s College Health
Sciences Center
• Courtesy Staff at General & Marine Hospital, Collingwood,
ON
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