About Me

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My credentials include a MASTER'S DEGREE (EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY), and a professional membership as a REGISTERED HYPNOTHERAPIST with the CANADIAN HYPNOTHERAPY ASSOCIATION.  I have been teaching at the University of Regina for several years in the following areas:  Educational Psychology 821 (a graduate class in IQ testing), Educational Psychology 329 (theories of counselling for special education and classroom management), Educational Psychology 350 (adolescent psychology from an educational perspective), Psychology 102 (introductory psychology), Psychology 204 (research methods in psychology), Psychology 311 (adolescent psychology from a cultural perspective), Psychology 310 (child psychology).
I’ll give the skinny on the particular client-centred therapies for which I’m empirically proficient. When I say proficient, I’m expressing that I’ve delivered each of these therapies in both academic and professional practice.  Here is a dance-card description for each:
  • Reality Therapy (RT), now known as Choice Theory, was my first academic study and it served me well.  RT was my confidence ticket into guidance, my confidence ticket into private practice, and my confidence ticket to complete a Master’s degree in Educational Psychology.  During my past and present years as a professional high school guidance counsellor with Regina Public Schools, RT has always been my go-to model.  (Reality Therapy and Choice Theory are from the same hand-books written by William Glasser.)
Counsellor guidelines: Who are you? What do you want? What are you been doing about it? Is doing what you’re doing working for you?  (Of course it is not … because if it were working … YOU WOULDN’T BE HERE.)
  •  Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) was my first pragmatic system when I did contract work for other agencies. 
SFBT is characterized by the rather hypnotic Miracle Question (MQ).  You wake up one morning and YOUR PROBLEM IS GONE … How would you know?  Describe your imaginary problem-free day …. How would your life be if it were perfect? … And so when you wake up tomorrow morning behave exactly as if your world was perfect and everyone around you is responding according to your perfect world picture.
  • Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is another model I employed when contracting at another counselling agency,
  CBT is a behaviour therapy purportedly combined with simultaneous reflection and introspection.
 
All of the aforementioned therapies are considered behavioural therapies, action-oriented and monitored by the therapist/counsellor so to speak. Hypnotherapy, too, is action-oriented, but entirely client driven, and not necessarily monitored by the therapist.
My signature Hypnotherapy, typically, takes fewer sessions than the above mentioned "other" therapies.
 
Hypnotherapy is by far my favourite therapy.  Hypnotherapy is a trance-like therapy of client and counsellor suggested imagery, that creates positive experiences to be later re-enacted by the client.

To close, I am a Psychology writer having two particular themes:  Street busking with a guitar and harmonica, and street portrait busking with a pencil and sketch pad.
Check out my blog about busking with a social conscience:
http://psychologybuskingalawordswords.blogspot.com