Soo Sen Lee
Soo Sen Lee is a Registered Clinical Counsellor who sees clients virtually, over the phone and in-person in Burnaby, BC. Burnout, debilitating anxiety and depression, burnout, sexual assault, painful family conflicts,and…
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About Soo Sen
Soo Sen Lee is a Registered Clinical Counsellor who sees clients virtually, over the phone and in-person in Burnaby, BC.
Burnout, debilitating anxiety and depression, burnout, sexual assault, painful family conflicts,and acquired disabilities due to stroke are just some of the traumas clients come to me for support. All of this sound profoundly difficult, yet clients have taught me that every person has an incredible innate resilience that is waiting to be uncovered. It has been my privilege to help many connect to this inner resource and watch them flourish despite everything that has happened. I belief this can happen for you as well. I have been involved in the mental health field since 2014, serving individuals who face profound physical and mental health challenges. My therapeutic work is in early-life trauma, sensitive temperaments, and entrenched patterns of reactivity that contribute to burnout and relational difficulties.
For our work together, I bring to the counselling space a trauma-informed approach and a sensitivity to the multi-faceted ways that traumatic events affect the lives of people.
Clients who have found my support especially helpful are individuals who:
- identify as highly-sensitive persons
- are burnout
- feel constantly overwhelmed and stressed
- have experienced early-life trauma due to neglect and/or abuse
- desire to develop new and satisfying ways of relating to loved ones and family
- want to create and maintain life-giving boundaries for work, life, and relationships
- aspire to live responsively, rather than reactively, to life according to their inner values
- long for a break from their chronic anxiety and/or depression cycles
- seek to heal from profound grief and loss
- experienced sexual assault
My clients who identify as highly sensitive often say things like:
“I feel like I pick up everything in other people’s energies. It is exhausting.”
“I feel exhausted thinking of office parties! I like people, I like my co-workers, don’t get me wrong, but there is so much going-on”
“Things that people do and say ... could they not be softer, gentler?”
“I need so much space to recover from hanging out with people. Is there something wrong with me?”
“My baby’s cries just cause me to tense up I don’t know why… it is so jarring, and I feel so bad for feeling that way”
“If you are highly sensitive, it is a gift, yet it can be overwhelming. I would love to work with you to create safety around your system.”
For clients who are burnout, I hear this from them:
“It’s not even that others have this expectation for me, it’s me”
“I know I need a break, but I can’t stop working ...”
“Even the smallest tasks, things I don’t use to think about, feels like a demand”
“I just want to withdraw and hide, go to a beach far away from everything”
“I just explode ... start yelling and crying over something small ... my partner is shocked and confused”
Burnout can come from a variety of sources, from external events like the pandemic, from the triggering of past traumatic associations, hidden believes, and certain temperaments, like being highly sensitive, puts people at higher risk. I just want to say that you can and will recover from burnout. I hold the hope for you. Working with a therapist helps to accelerate the process and to unearth any patterns that might gotten you into that place. Do reach out to me for further conversations about working together.
What to expect in a counselling session with me:
Using a gentle and attuned presence, my clients are invited into a safe relationship with me, so that they can relax and tune into what is really happening for them at their core. Our minds have a story but our bodies have one as well. By bringing a sensitive awareness to our bodies, feelings, thoughts, and choices, my clients find themselves tuning into stresses, memories, and feelings that they had not even known existed. They often express surprise to find unmet needs and longings that have been ignored for a long time or incongruent believes and hidden assumptions that have influenced their choices and actions. What is also surprising to some is the strength, solutions, and capacities that they already have. Once brought into awareness, I work with clients to rework entrenched patterns of beliefs and behaviours that keep them stuck, refine skills that serve them, while exploring new resources, tools, and alternate ways of responding. For highly sensitive persons, working on psychological and physical boundaries to create an internal buffer of calm as you move around the world has been reported to be helpful.
What can happen in therapy…
As a result of our work together, clients often say that they feel calmer and more grounded, are able to respond to challenges in ways that reflect their inner values, and feel more fulfilled and happier. The mind-body approaches have been shown to be especially helpful for those who have experienced relational difficulties in their childhood and who are currently facing conflict with loved ones, friends, and co-workers. During the pandemic, these conflicts can be further exacerbated, gaining the support of a trained therapist can be very helpful to not only de-escalate the tension but to use this opportunity to transform entrenched patterns so as to deepened connection and intimacy.
My Training
I pull from several theoretical approaches based on the needs of my clients. My trainings, besides my Masters of Counselling from City University of Seattle in Canada, and my Masters of Experimental Medicine (UBC):
EMDR,
Primary Attachment Therapy
Interpersonal Neurobiology,
Hakomi Comprehensive Training,
Somatic Relational Psychotherapy (Dr Lisa Montimer),
Somatic Relational Transformation (Dr Sharon Stanley; similar to Somatic Experiencing by Peter Levine),
Counselling Sexual Assault Survivors (Assoc. of Alberta Sexual Assault Services),
Neurobiology of Safety: Boundaries inside and out (by Juliane Moore),
Self-TRUST And Resilience Method (by Juliane Moore)
Memory Recounsolidation (Julianne Moore)
Narrative Therapy (VSNT),
Internal Family Systems (Basic),
Gottman Couples Therapy (Level 1),
Adlerian Psychotherapy,
Systematic Training for Effective Parenting
I welcome the use of faith-based worldviews for clients who would like to incorporate this lens into their healing.
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Specialized Training
Somatic Transformation - Sharon Stanley
Somatic Relational therapy - Lisa Mortimer
Interpersonal Neurobiology by Dr Dan Siegel
Neurobiology of Safety: Boundaries inside and out by Juliane Moore
Systematic Training for Effective Parenting