Services - Kaela Drew

Individual Counselling Somatic Psychotherapy Trauma Informed Authentic Care

“The act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic change.” ~Irvin Yalom

Short-Term Counselling

Short-term counselling is ideal if you need a few sessions over a brief period of time rather than extended psychotherapy. It’s suitable if you’re navigating a particularly stressful or upsetting situation and need a confidential space to talk things through with a compassionate mental health professional. You might be looking for support with work-related issues, relationship matters, a significant life change, or an important decision. People also often need extra support when they are going through an acute experience of grief and loss. It can help to have someone who is able to hold space for your pain, your heartache and confusion, your anger or your fear. Other people may just be seeking practical tools to manage depression, build resilience, reduce stress or anxiety, or address unproductive thought and behaviour patterns.

“A person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity; a flowing river of change, not a block of solid material; a continually changing constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits.” ~ Carl Rogers

Psychotherapy (often longer term)

Some therapeutic work unfolds over weeks. Other work asks for seasons. Longer-term psychotherapy offers the time and steadiness needed to explore the deeper currents of your inner life — the patterns that didn’t form overnight and won’t shift through insight alone.

Often, the struggles that surface in the present have roots in earlier relationships and formative experiences. You may notice recurring themes that feel painfully stuck. These patterns are not random. They are ways you learned to survive, belong, or protect yourself. In longer-term work, we slow down enough to understand how these strategies took shape and how they continue to operate beneath the surface of daily life.

Rather than trying to fix or override these patterns, we cultivate a more compassionate and curious relationship with them. As understanding deepens, something begins to soften. The grip of old beliefs can loosen. New possibilities for choice and connection emerge.

This work may include reflective dialogue, mindful awareness of thoughts and emotions, and developing a kinder inner voice. It unfolds within a therapeutic relationship grounded in respect, authenticity, and collaboration. Over time, that relationship itself can become a place where new experiences of safety and being seen take root.

Longer-term psychotherapy is suited to those seeking not only relief from symptoms, but meaningful and lasting change. It is a gradual process of integration — of becoming more coherent, more self-trusting, and more fully yourself

Somatic Therapy & Integration of the Autonomic Nervous System

Somatic psychotherapy recognises that healing happens not just through talking, but through attending to the wisdom held within the body and nervous system. When we experience stress, trauma, or overwhelming emotions, these experiences become encoded in our physical being—in muscle tension, breathing patterns, and the state of our autonomic nervous system. Traditional talk therapy addresses the mind, but somatic approaches work with the whole person, understanding that lasting change requires engaging the body’s innate capacity for healing and regulation.

Nervous system repair is about gently recalibrating these protective patterns. It’s learning to befriend your body’s responses rather than fighting against them, to understand that the anxiety, the freeze, the dissociation—these were once adaptive survival strategies. Through this work, you’ll develop the capacity to notice what’s happening in your body, to track sensations and impulses with curiosity rather than judgment, and to gradually expand your window of tolerance for life’s challenges.

Together, we’ll work at a pace that honours your system’s need for safety. This might involve movement, breathwork, mindful awareness of physical sensations, or simply learning to pause and listen. The aim is not to eliminate difficult feelings, but to expand your capacity to be with them – allowing you to inhabit your body and experience the full range of human emotion while remaining grounded and present.

“I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being.” ~ Hafiz

LGBTQ

If you identify with one or more of the groups that exist within the LGB TQ umbrella, you may know how much nuance and diversity exists within our community. Whether you’re gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer or questioning, it can affect a lot of different aspects of your life. Even if you are not specifically coming to counselling to talk about your sexual orientation or gender identity, it can help to have a counsellor with a foundational understanding and appreciation of some of your experiences. Though I always find that each person is unique, and the issues that people bring to therapy never fit into a stereotypical box.