About Ancora:

Towards hope and healing.

While counselling has become an increasingly accessible and viable service for those grappling with a wide range of life-controlling issues, many people are still unsure of what counselling entails and what it is meant to achieve.

One way to understand counselling is through the concept of "compassion". Com (with) passion (suffering) both evokes and underpins the relational process that is counselling. In counselling, a trained and highly skilled professional comes alongside you, offering knowledge, perspective, tools, and expertise to a collaborative process of seeking ways to move in and through suffering towards courageous measures of personal growth.

Anchored and enduring.

Ancora is a Latin term with dual meaning. As an adverb, it translates to "even still". Both professionally and more personally, I recognize that tragedy, loss, relational conflicts, trauma, and significant life transitions can affect us profoundly; even still, I believe that it is possible to find creative and effective ways of navigating painful and difficult circumstances. Through Ancora Counselling Services, I am dedicated to your own personal, unique process towards that which helps you to heal, to reconcile, to find depth, meaning and purpose, and to flourish.

Ancora also means "anchor". I believe that an important part of going where it hurts and entering into places of pain has to do with discovering what anchors you. Gregory Boyle writes, "Sometimes resilience arrives in the moment you discover your own unshakeable goodness". At Ancora Counselling, I am committed to helping you locate those vital and unshakeable elements of your life, your belief system, and your sense of self; this, in turn, can support the process of reclaiming or recreating parts of yourself that feel as if they may have been lost as a result of traumatic experiences.

Theoretical Orientation and Personal Practice

A woman smiling outdoors in a forest with sunlight filtering through trees, wearing a brown T-shirt and showing tattoos on her right arm.

A woman sitting on a large fallen tree trunk in a forest, with tall trees and green foliage in the background, wearing a reddish-brown t-shirt and black pants.

About Elizabeth, M.A., R.C.C.

My name is Elizabeth and I am a Registered Clinical Counsellor (#15306) and psychotherapist currently working both in private practice and in non-profit community services with a broad range of clientele. I specialize in areas of acute and developmental trauma, addictions, healthy body image development and eating disorder prevention, as well as issues related to intersectionality and identity.

From a trauma-informed and relationally-centred approach, I seek to create trusting and allowing spaces for clients to really open up and be with their tough stuff in a safe, therapeutic environment. I believe in the process of transformative and healing connection. To that end, I offer caring, attuned support along with clinical dexterity and a wide range of professional expertise vital for shifting patterns of stuckness and pursuing new horizons of healing. I believe that it is important for the therapeutic process to be premised on the implicit, intuitive wisdom of clients, drawing upon their internal sense of vision and desire for well-being; thus, when given the opportunity to have a glimpse into clients' lives, I work to support them in uncovering who they truly are, how they feel and how they love. Ultimately, it is my hope to come alongside clients as they journey from loneliness to connectedness; from fear and numbness to peace and presence; from a sense of deficiency to the experience of wholeness; from an inner void to a felt sense of embodiment; from the loss of essence to regaining essential qualities such as love, joy, strength, courage, and confidence.

I hold a Masters of Arts in Counselling Psychology (2017) as well as a double major Bachelors degree in Psychology and International Studies (2014).

From an academic standpoint, I draw on a background in complex trauma theory, socio-politics/ideology, philosophy, literary studies, and global development. More recently, I have researched topics which include feminist research praxis, voice and embodied personhood, spirituality, gender and sexuality, trauma and dissociation, ontological underpinnings of healing and wholeness, cross-cultural applications of psychotherapeutic practice, and community health. I am also a contributing author to “Embodiment and Eating Disorders: Theory, Research, Prevention and Treatment”. At a clinical level, I have trained in a variety of research-informed therapeutic modalities including Lifespan Integration, Observed and Experiential Integration, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Emotion-Focused Therapy, Radically Open Dialectical Behavioural Therapy, and Existential Analysis. I have also received training in Trauma Sensitive Yoga as an adjunctive treatment for complex trauma and PTSD. I gravitate to integrated, experiential modalities that foster creativity, compassion, and embodiment as a part of connection.

If you are interested in participating in counselling services uniquely tailored to your specific goals, please contact me for further information and/or for booking an appointment.

Services