Heike Dumke

Individual and caregiver counselling to help you navigate cognitive, emotional, and life changes:

• Acquired Brain Injury (ABI)
• Cognitive Rehabilitation & Wellness
• Brain Health & Cognitive Ageing
• Caregiver Support
• Physical Injury Rehabilitation Counselling
• Cancer-Related Cognitive Impairment (CRCI)
• Anxiety
• Stress Management

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

Dr. Heike has over 14 years of clinical experience working with individuals with brain injury, including roles within interdisciplinary brain injury rehabilitation programs. Throughout this time, she has developed specialized expertise in cognitive rehabilitation therapy (CRT) through advanced training, including Brain Tree training (United Kingdom), and clinical experience. This allows her to address thinking and memory difficulties that often underlie the emotional challenges people experience following acquired brain injury or other conditions affecting cognitive functioning (e.g., cancer treatment-related cognitive changes).

As a counsellor integrating brain health, cognitive wellness, cognitive ageing, and brain injury rehabilitation principles, Dr. Heike can provide insights into what drives the challenges that a person may experience.

Depending on a client’s specific concerns, Dr. Heike is able to address cognitive as well as emotional challenges that clients may present with. Emotional difficulties may result from challenges experienced due to ageing or brain injury (e.g., traumatic brain injury/concussion, brain infection, stroke, brain tumour, chemotherapy). However, cognitive challenges can also contribute to feelings of irritability, frustration, grief, anxiety, and loneliness/social isolation. Addressing these underlying cognitive factors can help support emotional well-being. Dr. Heike often accomplishes this through education about emotions, cognitive wellness, myths of cognition (e.g., memory functioning), and practical strategies while supporting a client's emotional well-being.

At the same time, Dr. Heike's approach to counselling draws mainly from humanistic and behavioural approaches, including Rogerian (i.e., client-centred), Gestalt, Existential, and cognitive behavioural therapy, while utilizing principles of the biopsychosocial framework.

She received her MSc in Clinical Applications in Psychology from the University of Leicester, UK, and has also completed doctoral-level studies in cognitive neuroscience and rehabilitation sciences. She received her PsyD in January 2026.