Our Practice

Nightingale Counselling blends scientific research, counselling theory, and clinical experience into a singular approach. Our practice enables people to literally reconstruct the neural pathways that guide daily living. From experiences of stress, difficult emotions, and physical pain, to the quality of everyday relationships, this approach has proven clinical results.

Based in Vancouver, BC, Nightingale Counselling compassionately serves clients of diverse culture, gender, age, ability, and economic access, who arrive with a wide range of presenting problems. Knowing that no single practitioner can serve all people, our group practice is open to everyone. We serve individuals and couples, as well as families.

Client-led Healing

At Nightingale Counselling it all begins with the relationship between you and the therapist. Our experience confirms what the research states: that this relationship is the single most important factor in the success of therapy.

In our work there are no x-rays or blood tests promising quick solutions. Instead, we follow the lead of our clients experience of what works and what doesn’t. Conversation that accesses those deep wellsprings of knowledge leads to healing.

Our process is developed to bring out this innate capacity for healing at all levels; from bodily sensations, to emotional experiences, from forgotten memories to cognitive understandings and spiritual or philosophical influences.

Process of Change

Science is beginning to confirm what clinical practice has shown for decades. Parts of our mind and body which normally function automatically—like breathing for example—can be brought into everyday awareness and even under our control. Therapy at Nightingale Counselling brings to light these hidden processes and unwritten rules in areas including our physical sensations, perceptions and memories. Even our very sense of self in the world.

Automatic reactions to life—like big responses to little things, or the same response to different experiences—become accessible to change in this special type of conversation.

And new research in the flexibility of the adult brain (such as neuroplasticity and epigenetics) confirms what a century of counselling has always known: with practice we can make shifts that last a lifetime.

Areas of Experience

Today the most common presenting problems for our clients are anxiety & depression, trauma, grief, difficulty in relationship, and the management of strong emotions like anger, frustration, and resentment. All of our counsellors have had successful courses of therapies with each of these issues. We work simultaneously in the “here-and-now” and the “there-and-then”, supporting our clients with safety and coping strategies, while the work of deeper healing goes onward.

In our work with couples we frequently see issues related to intimacy, sex, communication, loneliness, and frustration. We consider couples counselling to be a special experience in which we don’t just talk “about” things, but actually experience them in the moment. This approach is especially powerful in creating change for both the individuals and the relationship itself.

True empathy is always free of any evaluative or diagnostic quality. This comes across to the recipient with some surprise. “If I am not being judged, perhaps I am not so evil or abnormal as I have thought.”

— Carl Rogers