Shari Derksen, MA
Shari would be honoured to walk along side you and help illuminate your path to inner growth and transformation for greater happiness, fulfilling relationships, and abundant living. She offers individual and couple’s therapy in a safe and non-judgmental environment that is LGBTQ and poly friendly, focusing on healthy relationships and sexuality. With a background in Holistic Studies, Shari understands the importance of trauma-informed therapeutic approaches that integrate body, mind, and spirit, as well as the value of incorporating cultural and spiritual practices and ideology relevant to clients.
Some areas of strength for Shari include:
- Adjustment Issues
- Anger Issues
- Anxiety
- Boundaries
- Codependency
- Complex Trauma
- Couple’s Therapy for Adults/Adolescents
- Dating Violence/Domestic Violence
- Differentiation from Family of Origin
- Grief
- Life Transitions
- Navigating Open/Consensual Non-Monogamous Relationships
- Over-Responsibility
- Personal Growth and Transformation
- Pornography Issues
- Relationship/Intimacy Issues
- Rescuing
- Self-Esteem
- Sexual Issues/Sexuality
- Sexual Trauma
- Spiritual Direction
- Stress
- Transgender/Gender Fluidity
Shari’s therapeutic approach is humanistic, trauma-informed, and process-oriented, utilizing techniques such as experiential, cognitive-behavioural, solution-focused, Jungian, Adlerian, and process therapies as appropriate to address individual client needs. She tends to draw largely on her training at Process Therapy Institute in California, which taught a perspective that is a mix of humanistic, transpersonal, Rogerian, Taoist, and existential ideas, and is often Gestalt and experiential in action.
As a client-centered, process-oriented therapist, Shari’s desire is to guide clients in releasing fear, shame, control, and other obstacles to freedom and the expression of one’s True Self by processing blockages and maladaptive learning, often through the use of free writing, parts work, dream work, sandtray, and visualizations.
Shari has daytime, evening, and Saturday appointments available. To book an appointment with Shari, please email intake@livingwellcounselling.ca or call (403) 695-7911.
Shari is part of our Therapy Thursdays writer’s group to provide our community on tips for better mental health. Shari’s articles can be found here, with her top articles being:
Job’s Friends and Jesus Weeping: Ways We Block Intimacy Part II
Job’s Friends and Jesus Weeping: Ways We Block Intimacy Part I