Meghan Thom, Clinical Counsellor
meghan.thom@gmail.com
Hours
Mondays 9:30am – 2:30pm
Rates
$80 – 200 sliding scale
I accept cash, e-transfer, debit & credit
- New client – Clinical Counselling (50 minutes), $80-150 sliding scale
- Returning client – Clinical Counselling (50 minutes), $80-200 sliding scale
- Returning client, extended session – Clinical counselling (90 minutes), $120-200 sliding scale
*Please reach out if you cannot afford my rates, meghan.thom@gmail.com
Offerings
Scope of practice
In Meghan’s clinical practice she supports you to become yourself. To shed the layers of ‘shoulds,’ of expectations, pressures and efforts to conform. Through creative, somatic and evidence based practice Meghan supports you to understand how your life experience has shaped your personality and behaviors. She supports you to examine beliefs about who you are and who you want to be. You are invited to show up exactly as you are and to explore a full range of emotion. There is often laughter in sessions, as well as tears, rage, grief, shame and even joy. Meghan supports you to be in the world as authentically as you feel safe to.
Meghan combines several counselling modalities and draws on a range of theoretical frameworks to meet your needs. These include:
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR)
This gentle process supports the integration of trauma so that difficult memories no longer cause distress. EMDR is a recommended treatment for several types of traumatic experiences and ongoing conditions such as depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and post traumatic stress disorder.
Dance Movement Therapy
Dance Movement Therapy mindfully incorporates the body into the therapeutic process. Given that we experience life in our bodies, our bodies are often our most reliable source of information about how we feel and relate to the experiences we have had. Dance movement therapy can be as simple as paying more attention to your body during a talk therapy session. If you are interested in incorporating more movement into the counselling session we begin with gentle rhythmic movements. Over time you will be invited to explore movements and reflect on how they feel in your body. Throughout the process, movement is used as a way to express and process emotion and experience, and develop increased somatic awareness.
Psychodynamic Theory
Psychodynamic theory focuses on early childhood experiences and the way they shape our behavior and relationships as adults. When childhood needs go unmet we may form the subconscious belief that no one has the ability to meet that need. Similarly we often develop coping mechanisms in childhood that may not serve us in our adult life. Through talking about our childhood and present life we can make connections and better understand our behavior and beliefs in order to change them where that is beneficial. You are also welcome to discuss dreams and fantasies.
Family Constellations
Family constellations was developed by Bert Hellinger after he spent time living among the Zulu people in Southern Africa. It acknowledges that we do not live in the world as distinct individuals, but rather as a family network. As a result we may be impacted by experiences within our family that we did not have first-hand, and may even have taken place several generations ago. In an individual session we can set up your family constellation using objects to better understand the relationships within the family and their impact on your current experience.
About Meghan
Meghan (she/her) grew up in the Scottish countryside with a Glaswegian father and a Canadian mother who was raised in Yellowknife. Inspired by her mother’s collection of Inuit art, and her parent’s travel stories, she set off for Pearson College in Metchosin in 2005. This experience informed her commitment to social justice, and interest in world cultures. Since then Meghan has lived in Uganda; the West Bank, Palestine; Ecuador and Saudi Arabia, and engaged in a range of volunteer projects, paid work and activism. She has also worked in all three of Canada’s territories. Meghan is now an uninvited guest on Lekwungen territory, where she raises her wildlings and has adventures on the beautiful lands.
During her undergraduate degree in Social Anthropology and Development Studies in London, UK Meghan supported refugees and asylum seekers held in detention centres. Meghan engaged in activism to protest the use of detention centres and support freedom of movement and self-determination. Through this Meghan learned more about the somatic experience of trauma, and the power of dance. Subsequently Meghan trained in Dance Movement Psychotherapy with a psychodynamic lens at Goldsmiths University in London, UK. Throughout her travels Meghan found dance to be an enjoyable and effective way to connect across cultures. She performed with a traditional dance troupe in Fort Portal Uganda throughout her time there. She also supported a Dabke group in Palestine to learn some contemporary dance. In Saudi Arabia she enjoyed participating in underground salsa classes. Meghan is interested in the potential of dance as a modality to connect and uplift, as well as a means to explore our emotional experience of the world and our relationship to our own bodies.
In Victoria, Meghan also works at the Victoria Child Abuse Prevention and Counselling Centre supporting young people and their families. In private practice Meghan combines psychodynamic theory with Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Emotion Focused Family Therapy (EFFT), Dance Movement Therapy and Family Constellations. Therapy sessions often involve sitting on the sofa and talking, but Meghan will offer options including movement, stretching, music, mindfulness and meditation, using props and some basic art materials. In Meghan’s perspective, therapy is about becoming yourself. This may involve using the space to explore early childhood trauma, as well as more recent trauma and struggles. Meghan invites a shedding of other people’s expectations and pain which we may hold in our body. Meghan also invites an acknowledgement that we experience life in and through our body, and to honour that experience and potentially repair that relationship. Meghan is also a certified yoga teacher and will offer the opportunity to move and stretch in session as much as the client feels comfortable.