Online Trauma Counselling and Recovery: Who I Work With and How We Can Work Together

Online trauma counselling works for many different reasons. Some clients couldn’t find the support they needed locally. Some feel safer at home than in a therapist’s office. Some live with disabilities that make in-person counselling difficult to access. What they share is that the approach resonates. I work primarily online, offering online trauma counselling for adults across Alberta, Canada, and internationally.

During my own healing journey, I worked with trusted practitioners in other countries. Not because no one closer was available — but because their approach felt like the right next step for where I was. Geography wasn’t the question. The right fit was. I continue doing this. It shapes how I think about distance in this work.

Who I work with

I work mainly with adults who want to heal trauma — or who are somewhere in the uncertainty before wanting. Not children, not adolescents.

These are the communities I work with most often. Each links to a more specific article if you want to go deeper before reaching out.

Adults with childhood trauma

Childhood trauma — also called developmental trauma — shapes the nervous system, the sense of self, the capacity for relationship, and the patterns that feel inescapable in adulthood. Many of my clients arrive having tried therapy before and felt it didn’t reach what it needed to reach. That gap is often the difference between approaches that work with thoughts and approaches that work with the nervous system, the body, and the parts that carry the earliest wounds.

Read more: Adults with childhood trauma

Adults with complex trauma

Complex trauma stems from sustained woundings in environments we couldn’t escape — ongoing childhood abuse, domestic violence, living under sustained systemic oppression. It doesn’t heal the same way single incident trauma does. It requires a more layered approach, a longer preparation phase, and a practitioner who understands the difference.

Read more: What is complex trauma?

Adults healing from relational trauma or abusive relationships

Healing from relational trauma or abusive relationships is not about fixing what was wrong with you. There was nothing wrong with you. The work is about rebuilding what the relationship eroded — the sense of self, the capacity to trust your own perceptions, the parts that were activated and are still running patterns shaped by the harm.

Read more: Healing relational trauma

BIPOC communities

I work with Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour who are healing from trauma — including the specific and ongoing trauma of systemic racism, colonial violence, and discrimination. I integrate anti-oppressive practices into every aspect of the work. I do not treat the accurate read of a genuinely hostile environment as a cognitive distortion to be corrected.

I am a white settler in Canada – I am originally German-Croatian and lived in Spain prior to coming to Canada. I name this because it matters. I get that’s a risk to work with a white mental health professional and that I don’t have the lived experience. However, some BIPOC clients feel that the approach — the model, the anti-oppressive thread, the specific combination of clinical precision and personal honesty — fits what they are carrying. I am honoured when they trust me enough that I might be able to create a safer space. I hold it carefully.

Read more: Inclusive trauma recovery

2SLGBTQ+ communities

Queer, trans, and non-binary people carry specific wounds — including the developmental wound of learning during childhood that your existence is wrong, or that you don’t exist at all.

This is my community too. I don’t come to this work from the outside. As a non-binary person, I know that you shouldn’t have to educate your mental health professional before you can heal. You won’t have to here.

Read more: LGBTQ+ trauma recovery

Immigrants and refugees

Immigration trauma is a specific and often underacknowledged form of complex trauma — the losses, the dislocation, the experience of navigating a dominant culture that may be hostile or indifferent, the ongoing stress of immigration status, the grief of what was left behind. I work with immigrants and refugees who are healing from these specific experiences and the relational and systemic wounds that accompany them.

Mental health professionals

I work with mental health professionals who are doing their own healing work. Practitioners carry what they carry — trauma histories, vicarious trauma, the specific wounds of working in a field that doesn’t always support its own. The therapeutic relationship I offer to practitioners is the same as the one I offer to any client — honest, specific, adapted to what you are actually carrying.

People who resonate with the approach regardless of geography

You may live close by. You may live across the country or in another part of the world. What matters is whether my approach to online trauma counselling fits what you are carrying. If you have spent time reading through this work and something in it feels specific to your experience — reach out. Geography is not the question.

How I work

I work from a framework I developed – the Integrative Trauma Recovery Model™. My approach to online trauma counselling combines EMDR, IFS-informed parts work, somatic approaches, and anti-oppressive practices, adapted to what each client’s nervous system actually needs at each stage of recovery.

Online trauma counselling depends on what you are carrying and where you are in your healing. My approach adjusts to meet your needs. For all clients, the therapeutic relationship is the foundation — not a backdrop. Healing happens in relationship. 

Judith Herman’s phased model of trauma recovery guides the work — safety and stabilization, processing and mourning, reconnection — applied flexibly and adapted to what has happened to you specifically. You don’t need to tell your most traumatic story first. We start with what your nervous system is carrying now.

Why online trauma counselling works for recovery

The therapeutic relationship is the most important healing mechanism in trauma recovery — and relationship travels. I can observe changes in posture, breathing, facial expressions, and nervous system state through video. I can guide EMDR, parts work, and somatic approaches remotely. Many clients find that being in their own space — familiar, comfortable, sometimes with a pet nearby — actually supports the online trauma recovery work. The nervous system is already in an environment it knows.

For relational trauma and complex trauma specifically, the session itself is a relational experience — and that doesn’t require physical proximity.

One honest limitation of online trauma counselling

Online trauma counselling is not suitable for everyone in every circumstance. If you are currently in a relationship or home environment where privacy cannot be guaranteed — or where the person causing harm might be present — please assess honestly whether online sessions can be conducted safely before we begin. This is something we can explore in the free consultation.

I do not offer text or chat-based therapy for trauma work. The non-verbal cues that trauma counselling depends on are not visible in text. I use a secure video platform that complies with privacy regulations in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

How to begin

I offer a free consultation for new clients — to explore your history, what you are carrying, and whether working together makes sense. If we decide to proceed, the first session focuses on your current symptoms, your goals, and what your nervous system needs now. Not on telling your most difficult story first.

Sessions are delivered via secure video. You need a device with a camera and microphone and a private space where you won’t be interrupted.

If you are curious about whether this approach might be right for you — wherever you are — I invite you to reach out.

Book a free consultation online

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