My Approach

I offer individual therapy for adults and I also work with teenagers and their families.

I can help with:

Recovering from anxiety & depression
Working through trauma
Recovering from burn out and learning to take care of yourself in the midst of stress
Improving your relationships
Understanding and strengthening your identity (cultural, gender or sexuality)
Negotiating big life transitions
Honouring grief & loss
Transforming harmful coping strategies into healthy ways of being
Supporting a loved one with serious mental illness
Finding meaning, purpose & creativity and a new lease on life

Melanie Siebert holds a Masters in Social Work and is registered with the BC College of Social Workers (RSW #13638).

She is an approved mental health provider with:

I work from a trauma-informed approach, focusing on building trust and safety, honouring personal choice, working in collaboration, and building your resiliency and skills in a way that works for you.

I have seen that when we cultivate a compassionate relationship with ourselves, we can let go of shame, heal the wounds from the past, hold healthy boundaries and find greater authenticity and fulfillment in life.

I hold that each person has the inherent strength, creativity, and capacity to grow. I also believe in the interconnection of all living beings and the healing power of healthy relationships with one another, animals and the earth.

I always aim to honour each person’s cultural identity, embodiment, gender identity, pronouns, sexual orientation and unique ways of being in the world.

Some of the tools I find to be helpful in this work:

Self-compassion
Listening to the body
Exploring family patterns and belief systems
Looking at the relationships between thoughts, feelings and actions
Unpacking old, limiting stories and finding new, hopeful stories
Connecting to nature
Creative expression

Areas of Specialty

Trauma Work

We will start with skills to manage trauma responses and be able to ground and hold your boundaries. Going at your own speed, as it feels safe and manageable, we can work with past experiences to reprocess and integrate them so that they no longer feel overwhelming. This will give you the freedom to be present in your life and your body and to once again feel whole.

Mindfulness & Self-compassion

Mindfulness is a skill that can be learned that helps us to embrace ourselves and our experience in a non-judgemental, warm, compassionate way. This is the beginning of quieting the harsh inner critic, the fears, the worry.

Emotion Focused Family Therapy (EFFT)

If you're feeling shut out of your child's world. If your teenager's emotions are big and hard to handle. Or if you're feeling distant from your adult child and wondering where things went wrong. If you're supporting a loved one with a mental health challenge and are finding it to be draining or baffling.

EFFT can provide you with a new perspective and skills to open up new channels of connection and communication.

DBT Skills Training

Dialectical behaviour therapy teaches that while acceptance of the way things are and the desire for change might seem like opposites, they actually need to go hand-in-hand. This therapy focuses on understanding the connections between our thoughts, behaviours and emotions and works on four key skill sets: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotional regulations and interpersonal skills

Nature-based Therapy

Nature is a powerful teacher and healing, grounding force. As we ourselves are natural beings, it can be so helpful to explore our natural rhythms, to get outside and immerse our bodies in fresh air and the wonders of the pacific coast. Talk to me about having your sessions on a beach or in a forest.

I also have training in:

Gender-affirming care
Fostering Resiliency with Indigenous Children and Families
Narrative Therapy
Solution Focused Brief Therapy
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy