Hi, I’m Taryn Smith, Canadian Certified Counsellor with the CCPA and owner of Amethyst Island Counselling. I am an ICBC vendor.
Using a collaborative, person-centered process, I help clients feel safe, comfortable and confident in themselves. After working together in therapy, I find clients feel more confident in their own abilities to achieve successful outcomes.
For this reason, many clients have found our sessions to be a great place to "practice life." For example: has fear of conflict affected your work or personal life? We can role-play situations in counselling, practice expressing emotions or discuss effective communication strategies.
Other clients prefer to use counselling sessions to talk through trauma or to learn coping tools such as CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), visualizations, mindfulness and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).
I strive to make counselling a warm and comfortable experience for all of my clients, and listen with my heart. I believe there is space in counselling for humour, art, motion, mindfulness, drama and general creativity.
My training and experience spans a wide range of areas, including addictions, anxiety, depression, grief and loss, anger, interpersonal relations. I welcome clients with diverse goals and needs and offer specialization in both the chronic health, disabilities and LGBTQ2IA+ communities, being a member of these myself, as a queer woman living with epilepsy.
In my personal life, I enjoy crafting, dancing to my own beat, getting lost only to find exciting new destinations.