Working with Joel
Joel brings a welcoming, companionable quality to counselling. He aims to help you feel at ease enough to speak openly, explore difficult experiences and be yourself without having to put on a front. His style combines warmth and compassionate guidance with genuine curiosity about your emotions, relationships and what matters to you.
Joel brings a warm, compassionate, and deeply relational presence to his counselling practice. He believes that therapy works best when clients feel genuinely understood, emotionally safe, and free from judgment. His goal is to create a space where clients can explore, integrate, and transform the parts of themselves and their lives that may feel painful, confusing, stuck, or overwhelming.
Joel holds a Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy from Trinity Western University. His approach draws from Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT, Johnson) and Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT), Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems, and Satir Systemic Therapy. These approaches are attachment-based, trauma-informed, and experiential, helping clients better understand their emotions, relationship patterns, protective parts, nervous system responses, and deeper needs.
In therapy, Joel helps clients slow down, make sense of what they are experiencing, and begin to relate to themselves and others in new ways. He believes that change is possible, even when people feel broken, stuck, or unsure where to begin. Through a strong therapeutic relationship, emotional exploration, and courageous curiosity, Joel supports clients in moving toward healing, self-understanding, and more authentic connection.
Outside of counselling, Joel is a husband, friend, and the youngest of three brothers.
Joel has diverse training in several areas, including:
* Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy
* Emotionally Focused Therapy
* Neufeld Institute developmental attachment training
* Hospice visiting and grief support
* Understanding abuse in relationships