Practice information:

Individual as well as caregiver counselling to help you regain your footing in life:

• Depression
• Anxiety
• Stress Management
• Acquired Brain Injury
• Brain Health & Aging

Heike's approach to counselling draws mainly from the humanistic and behavioural approaches including Rogerian (i.e. Client-centered; Gestalt, Existential) and cognitive behavioural therapy while utilizing the principles of the biopsychosocial framework.

Heike's professional experience includes working in the fields of cognitive aging as well as brain injury.  Within the cognitive aging arena, she has spent years researching lifespan development including aging issues such as healthy and pathological aging (i.e., dementia, mild cognitive decline).  She has published in this field and is currently writing blogs on aging issues, which you read at her website.

Heike also has been helping clients with brain injury for over a decade, working in a variety of interdisciplinary brain injury programs.  Throughout this time, she has specialized in cognitive rehabilitation therapy (CRT certificate) to allow her to also address any thinking/ memory difficulties that often underlie the emotional difficulties people experience following an acquired brain injury or any condition that can affect cognitive functioning (e.g. chemotherapy).  

As a cognitive aging and brain injury counsellor, Heike can provide insights into the challenges that a person may experience, and how to address them by providing education surrounding the myths of cognition (e.g., memory functioning) in addition to practical strategies and supporting a client emotionally.  Therefore, depending on a client’s specific concerns, Heike is able to address not only the emotional difficulties that clients experience as consequence of issues resulting from challenges experienced due to aging or brain injury (e.g. traumatic brain injury/ concussion, brain infection, stroke, brain tumor, chemotherapy), but also the cognitive difficulties that often underlie the feelings of irritability, frustration and/ or depression, grief, anxiety, and loneliness/ social isolation.

She has received her MSc in Clinical Applications in Psychology from Leicester University, UK, and has also studied in several PhD programs, including cognitive neuroscience and rehabilitation sciences, both a the University of British Columbia.  She is currently studying to receive a doctorate in clinical psychology.