About Nicholas
There was a time when parenting felt really hard.
I remember feeling worn down, sad, and unsure of myself. I loved my children deeply, but there were times when I felt disconnected from them and didn't know what to do. I worried I was getting it wrong. I wondered if I was enough. Where was my parental intuition?
I eventually began to see that what I was calling “difficult behaviour” or “challenging situations” was often communication. There was usually something underneath it—fear, overwhelm, hurt - a need that wasn't finding its way into words.
My children weren't problems to solve. And I didn't need to become a better, more perfect parent.
They needed to be seen, heard and validated. I needed support, too.
I was bringing my own history into our family: undiagnosed ADHD and depression, childhood trauma, and a lot of self-doubt and not very much self-compassion. I was often depleted and reactive. I was trying to create calm while struggling to find much of it in myself.
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I became more grounded. I could slow down. I could listen instead of immediately trying to fix things. I could stay present when things felt uncomfortable. I started to understand what was mine to carry and what wasn't. Self-compassion became something I started to practice for myself and model for my kids.
And, over time, our relationships have continued to evolve in ways I could not have expected.
There was more room for everyone to be themselves. More trust. Less pressure. More connection.
That experience has stayed with me in my work with clients.
We all come from somewhere. Every family has its own ways of doing things—some spoken, some never talked about. We learn how to handle conflict, how to ask for what we need, how to give and receive love, and sometimes how to keep the peace. We also learn what is safe to say, what isn't, and what we might have to carry for other people.
Some of those ways of being continue to serve us. Others don't.
And we don't always realize we're carrying them until something in our lives stops working.
This is part of what brings people to counselling. A relationship that feels stuck. A pattern that keeps repeating. Feeling disconnected from yourself. Struggling to understand someone you love. Or simply knowing that something doesn't feel right, even if you can't quite put your finger on what it is.
I work with individuals, couples, and parents/caregivers. The concerns may look different, but underneath them there is often a longing to feel understood, connected, and less alone.
That's how I think about therapy, too.
I don't see myself as the expert on you. You are the person who knows your life. My role is to be alongside you—to be curious with you, to help make sense of what is happening, and to offer a different perspective when it might be helpful.
Sometimes we need to understand where a pattern came from. Sometimes we need to make space for something we've been carrying alone for a long time. Sometimes we need to learn how to stay connected to ourselves while finding our way back to someone else.
And sometimes we just need another human being to sit with us and say, yes, that makes sense. You don't have to figure this out by yourself.
That's the kind of space I hope to offer.
A place where you can be honest about where you are, feel understood without judgment, and together continue finding a way forward that feels more like you—more authentic and more free, with less energy spent adapting, protecting, or sacrificing parts of yourself, and more space to simply be, connect, and live.
My Approach
My counselling work is rooted in a highly relational and person-centred approach. My training in Family Systems Theory helps me understand people within the relationships and systems that have shaped them, while my training in Transpersonal Counselling Psychology has broadened how I understand the whole person—mind, body, emotions, relationships, and meaning.
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Each offers a different way of understanding what happens within us and between us, and I draw from these approaches depending on what feels most helpful for the person or family I’m sitting with.
I hold a Diploma in Transpersonal Counselling Psychology and have extensive experience as a Family Peer Support Worker and Caregiver Peer Group Facilitator within Public Health. These experiences have shaped not only what I know, but how I think about the importance of meeting people with respect, curiosity, and an understanding of the realities they are living with.
My work has also been significantly enriched by my participation as a Kinship Circle Facilitator with Gathering Our Medicine, an Indigenous-designed learning and mentoring program led by Dr. Denise Findlay, a Sḵwx̱wú7mesh scholar practitioner from the village of Xwemélch’stn who holds a PhD in Education from Simon Fraser University.
This learning has had a profound influence on how I understand relationship, connection, and belonging. It has deepened my appreciation for the importance of slowing down, being relational, and recognizing that connection and community are fundamental to how we heal and grow.
One of the things I value deeply about this learning is the way Indigenous understandings of relationality can be held alongside contemporary Western theories of attachment and development. Gathering Our Medicine incorporates Developmental Attachment Theory, based on the work of Dr. Gordon Neufeld, offering a contemporary psychological framework for understanding some of the relational truths that Indigenous ways of knowing have understood for generations. For me, holding these perspectives alongside one another has expanded my understanding of what it means to be relational, connected, and part of a community.
These influences inform my work, but they are not a formula. I’m not interested in fitting people into a particular model. Instead, I draw on my training, experience, and ongoing learning to stay curious about the person or people in front of me and what might be most helpful in that moment.
Why I Do This Work
I consider it a privilege to walk alongside people and families as they find their way through difficult seasons, relationships, and transitions. I've seen how much courage it can take to look honestly at what is happening in our lives—and how different things can feel when we don't have to make sense of it all on our own.
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Together we revisit and explore your own personal history of family function and dysfunction, the relationships that shaped you, and the ways you learned to cope with what was happening around you. Some of those ways of coping may have helped you feel safe, belong, keep the peace, protect yourself, or take care of the people around you.
We don't usually choose these ways of being consciously. We learn them in the families and circumstances we grow up in. For a time, they may have been exactly what we needed. But sometimes the things that helped us then don't serve us in the same way now.
Whether we're talking about an individual, a couple, or a family, we're always talking about people in relationship. We all began as children in some kind of system—good, bad, or somewhere in between. We learned something about connection, belonging, conflict, love, safety, and what it meant to have needs. Those experiences don't disappear when we grow up. Sometimes they show up in how we relate to ourselves. Sometimes in our intimate relationships. Sometimes in the way we parent.
I think there is something very human underneath much of this. We want to belong. We want to feel known and understood. We want to know that we matter to the people we love—and that we matter to ourselves.
Part of this work is slowing down enough to notice what we've learned, how it continues to shape us, and where we might have more choice than we realized.
My ongoing learning about attachment and relational development has deepened my understanding of how fundamentally relational we are. We need other people. Our relationships shape how we understand ourselves, what we expect from others, and what feels possible in our lives.
My Indigenous learning has deepened this understanding in a profound way. It has connected me with an understanding of relationship and belonging that feels both ancient and deeply human. I've been struck by how often contemporary psychotherapy gives new names to things Indigenous ways of knowing have long understood as fundamental: that we are relational, that we belong to one another, and that connection matters.
This learning has reinforced for me the importance of slowing down. When we slow down, there is more room to be relational—to listen, to notice, to be present, and to allow something real to happen between people.
It has also deepened my understanding that healing happens in relationship and in community. Ruptures happen in relationship. Repairs happen in relationship. We don't have to do all of this on our own.
I also recognize that I come to this learning from my own position as a white, cisgender man of European settler heritage. I am mindful that the knowledge I have been invited to learn exists within a history—and an ongoing reality—of colonialism and its harms. I don't want to take what has been shared with me without acknowledging that context or my responsibility to remain a respectful, accountable learner and active participant in reconciliation.
I've witnessed these ideas come alive in my work with clients. Change often begins in small moments: pausing before reacting, finding the words to say what you need, setting a boundary, staying connected to yourself when someone you love is upset, or seeing your child differently because you are beginning to understand what might be underneath their behaviour.
Sometimes it is simply becoming a little less hard on yourself.
These moments may seem small, but they can change the way we experience ourselves and our relationships. A parent relates differently to their child. A couple finds more room for each other. Someone begins to offer themselves the same compassion they have always offered to everyone else. A family begins to find a different way of being together.
This is why I do this work. I believe people are shaped by their experiences and relationships, but they are not defined by them. I believe that when we have enough safety, curiosity, support, and compassion, we can begin to understand ourselves differently and find new ways of being with ourselves and the people we love.
I feel fortunate to be able to sit alongside people in that process. To slow down. To listen. To be curious. To sometimes offer a different perspective. And to witness what becomes possible when we don't have to carry everything on our own.
I’d love to work with you
