About

Changing my Wound into a Gift 

 

My story as an international adoptee growing up with mental health issues paved the way for me to become a child and youth counsellor. Growing up without the emotional support I needed in my developing years made my journey an emotionally challenging and lonely one.

 

However, as I grew up, I noticed how easy it was for me to put myself in someone else's shoes and "feel their feelings". For some reason, my own emotional and mental struggles helped me deeply understand other people's experiences. While I used to see my mental health issues as a curse, believing that there was something inherently wrong with me, I slowly realized that my challenging early life experience gave me a special power, that of deeply and compassionately understanding other people who are struggling with painful feelings too. 

 

Learning from my Teaching Experience

 

With my first career as a Highschool Teacher in Switzerland, I noticed how much I enjoyed engaging with teenagers. I loved finding a way to break the ice so that they would "let me in". I started off by being way too strict with my boundaries, and then moved to the opposite end of that spectrum, which didn't work either. It took me a while to figure out how to engage with them in a way where they would respect my rules and boundaries while still feeling light and connected with me. 

 

It is then that I realized how important the quality of my "relationship" with the students was. The better our connection, the easier it was for students to follow my rules and do whatever exercises they were asked to do. When our relationship was shaky, they were more resistant and less willing to cooperate in class. And teaching was extremely challenging when students exhibited disruptive behaviours. So, I made a point of trying to establish a good rapport with them, trying to see and highlight the good in them, validating their feelings as students, showing humour but also seriousness when work needed to be done. This teaching experience became the springboard that led to my next career. 

 

Becoming a Child & Youth Therapist

 

After immigrating to Vancouver and training as a therapist, I started my first internships in Elementary Schools using Art Therapy. I realized how easy it was for me to connect with children as well. I learned to speak their language, namely that of imagination and play. Through their drawings, paintings, sculptures or collages, children invited me into their world and told me their stories metaphorically. They were speaking in a creative language that I could easily understand. Again, validating their feelings, providing empathic support, and showing deep understanding of their emotions and behaviours, came to me like second nature. 

 

Over the years, I worked with hundreds and hundreds of children and teens with different "presenting problems", from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, in different countries, and different agencies. I noticed how much love I felt in my heart when working with children and teens who were adopted like me, who lived in foster care or even in orphanages. So many of them had had terrible early life experiences and endured terrible abuse and neglect. Due to their trauma, they exhibited all kinds of challenging, sometimes terrifying, survival behaviours. Their little nervous system was so easily, and sometimes chronically, dysregulated and out of balance. However, no matter what had happened to them, what was usually most hurtful to them was that they didn't feel understood by their caregivers. They felt judged and criticized for their behaviours, and left alone with their feelings, which they didn't know how to manage or control. I realized how I often played the role of a "surrogate mother" for many of them, providing them with the emotional support they so deeply craved. This experience led me to my next life-changing realization. 

 

Working with Families

 

One of my most profound experiences was working with children and teens at an orphanage in Peru, the country I was adopted from as a baby. I had returned to my birth country many times before to get to know my culture, learn Spanish, and meet my birth mother. I had always had the dream of helping the children of Peru, especially the ones who had also been separated from their birth parents. So, I went to Cusco, in the Andes, to work as a Child & Youth Counsellor for six months in 2018 and then again in 2022. 

 

As mentioned, all my clients showed challenging behaviours which made life difficult for the staff at the orphanage. They did their best to "parent" them, but struggled with understanding where the children and teens were coming from. This is when I decided to start teaching workshops about trauma, attachment, child development, and the autonomic nervous system among other. My goal was to help staff become more trauma and attachment-informed in their responses to my clients' problematic behaviours. I realized that while my individual work with the clients was helpful because they felt understood and supported by me, I knew that what all these children needed most was caregivers who could provide the emotional support I was offering them.

 

Coming back to Vancouver, I started including caregivers (no matter whether adoptive, foster, biological parents) in my work with children and teens. I knew that if they learnt to understand and develop an strong emotional connection with their children, my clients would recover much faster than they would just by working with me. This was a turning point in my career as a counsellor!

 

Today, I continue working with children individually when necessary, as well as offering parent consultation. However, whenever possible, I make a point of inviting parent and child to the office together, in a family session. And I love witnessing how family members slowly move from disconnection to repair and reconnection. And as the caregiver-child connection starts becoming stronger, the child/teen's mental health slowly starts improving too, and the problem behaviours start shifting.  

 

I now firmly believe that a close parent-child connection is the best way to help children and teens recover from whatever emotions and behaviours they are struggling with. And a by-product of it all is parents feeling more secure, relieved and happy again too! It's a win win for the whole family!