Greetings INPM community!  I am a registered clinical counsellor practicing counselling and psychotherapy in the bucolic community of Langley, British Columbia, Canada.  I completed a Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology in 1994, and I am near to completing a doctorate in Counselling and Clinical Psychology.  In my counselling therapy practice I work with a wide range of counselling and mental health needs both for couples and individuals on contract to Employee Assistance Programs, WorkSafe BC and health insurers, as well as private paying clients and churches.  For 30 years I worked in community-based family and criminal justice until my retirement in 2008.  My wife, who is also a therapist, and I commenced our private practice in 1992.   In the context of organizational development work I facilitated workshops in corporate envisioning and developing mission statements, conducted numerous staff wellness seminars, taught ethical decision-making and workplace change processes, provided professional coaching for managemers, intervened as a mediator for workplace conflict resolution, and facilitated numerous debriefings of critical incidents and traumatic events in the work place.  I have also done a great deal of mediation in the context of marital separation and divorce.  A current focus of treatment and research is first responder trauma and resilience.

I honestly do not recall for how long I have been a member of INPM, but it is certainly more than a decade.  My wife and I have attended a few conferences and private workshops led by Drs. Paul and Lilian Wong.  I was initially attracted to INPM because of my longstanding appreciation of Victor Frankl’s work, initially kindled when I first entered graduate school, now many decades ago.  I am spiritually attuned and my faith practice in the Christian tradition finds companionability with Frankl’s teachings on suffering, accountability, purpose, and meaning. Of course, my therapeutic training has been influenced by numerous practitioners over time:  Carl Rogers, Alfred Adler, Milton Erickson, Virginia Satir, and so forth.  Aiding clients in the creation of meaning is a core component of the work I do.  While I do not expressly label myself an existential psychotherapist or logotherapist, my work with clients frequently addresses existential and meaning focused issues within a brief, solution-focused and client-centered mode of treatment.  My work is informed by training in family systems theory, cognitive-behavioral theory, and trauma management orientations.

INPM therefore provides me with a community, a meaning focused context, and a reference point for the deeper issues that frequently arise in the counselling relationships I engage in.