About

My story

Changing my wound into a gift 

 

My story as an adoptee struggling with mental health issues was the catalyst for me becoming a child and youth counsellor. Growing up without the emotional support I needed in my developing years made my journey an emotionally challenging one, 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, mental and physical 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. 

 

Learning from my teaching experience

 

With my first career as a Highschool Teacher, 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.  

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 became impossible when students exhibited challenging and 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 was the springboard to my next chapter. 

 

Becoming a Child & Youth Therapist

 

When I became a therapist, I did 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, sculpures or collages, children invited me into their world and told me their stories non-verbally, as children so often do. Again, validating their feelings, providing empathic support, and showing deep understanding of their emotions and behaviours, came to me like second nature. They were speaking in a creative language that I could easily understand. 

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 could feel 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 suffered all kinds of abuse and neglect. Due to that, 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. This is what led to my next life-changing realization. 

 

Working with Families

 

One of my most profound experience was working with children and teens at an orphanage in Peru, the country I was adopted from as a baby. I had returned there many times before to get to know my original 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 twice, with a few years in between.

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 (or staff) who could provide the emotional support I was offering them.

In some ways, being a surrogate attachment figure to my clients was no longer enough in my eyes. An important piece of the puzzle was missing, namely helping caregivers become their children's biggest support system. Without it, my impact as a counsellor was limited. It is really parents who hold the key to their children's well-being. They have an enormous potential that is just waiting for them to tap into. So, I am now passionate about working with parents and children together whenever possible. A great parent-child connection can work as a buffer against mental health issues, and iss the best way to help children and teens recover from their emotional struggles. 

 

 

Trainings