Linda Wan

Thank you for visiting and learning more about who I am. My hope is that I assist you in your path of finding less suffering and improving overall quality of life. I am a Registered Clinical Counsellor through BC Association of Clinician Counsellors (#3808) and have worked in a community setting for over 9 years. I enjoy working with children, adolescents, and adults. My journey as a British Columbian begun when I started my Master's in Counselling Psychology program at Simon Fraser University. During my studies, I worked as a mental health worker, supporting adolescents with life skills and daily activities at the Maples Adolescent Treatment Center. Some of their primary struggles were anxiety, depression, self-injurious behaviours, and emotional dysregulation (i.e. lack of control of the intensity and/or duration of emotional responses to stimuli). These identified issues instigated a question for me, "What evidence-based treatment approaches would help individuals with these mental health concerns?" One approach that I begun to learn about was Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT). In 2012, I completed the DBT Foundational Training and am part of a weekly consultation group, which adheres to the gold standard of the DBT treatment model. The wisdom of the body is a consistent resource I tap into to help me cope with stress and anxiety. The capabilities of our bodies is truly remarkable. There are ways that the body tells us when we are not okay (i.e. physical symptoms like chronic pain and that "gut" feeling). The body can also be a powerful source to help us regulate and/or enhance social connectedness. With this belief in mind, I wanted to utilize our body wisdom in my therapeutic work with clients. As a result, I completed Level 1 of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (2013/2014)- an evidence based therapy for individuals suffering from emotional and physical trauma as well as a 500 hour yoga teacher training program through Modo Yoga (2014) and Trauma Sensitive Yoga Teaching Training (2017). In Spring of 2018, I attended a one day workshop about Radically Open Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (RO DBT) and was extremely intrigued about how this evidence based treatment can help people be less lonely in this world, authentically connect with others and thus live and create a more fulfilling and meaningful life. This approach helps individuals get connected to a tribe again by identifying how their ineffective overcontrolled behaviours are obstacles to cultivating meaningful relationships.