As a licensed social worker, Myra provides professional counselling services for anyone experiencing adversity and/or challenges, both big and small. She incorporates a mind-body-spirit approach into her clinical practice that empowers people to cope with challenges, changes, and traumatic events.
Areas of specialization include:
- Resilience Talks/Workshops
- Manage life transitions
- Navigate and recover from traumatic life experiences
- Deal with bereavement and loss
- Manage stress
- Develop a resilience mindset
- Explore trans-generational issues specific to the descendants of trauma survivors
- Understand the impact of aging on trauma survivors
- Cope with aging issues
Therapeutic approach
Myra has 30 years of experience using a strengths-based approach that places people, their values and preferences at the centre of her practice with individuals and groups. She believes that every person is resilient and has developed strengths, internal resources, knowledge and skills through their lived experiences to deal with challenging situations. Myra’s work with Holocaust survivors has taught her that horrendous events can lead to recovery, personal growth and development, and living life with meaning and purpose. She integrates these life lessons into her practice.
When faced with adversity, we may lose sight of our coping abilities and strengths that helped us to overcome previous challenges. It feels good to be reminded of them when someone believes in us and sees us as a whole person through the lens of resilience. Using a resilience mindset, Myra empowers people to tap into their adaptive coping skills and provides hope they will bounce back from difficult experiences and/or setbacks. Through a collaborative approach that includes empathic listening, building trust, and a non-judgmental attitude, she works with people to determine their goals and create an intervention plan that meets their needs. Therapeutic interventions may include a psycho-educational focus on practical tools and strategies to help people take charge of their lives.
Her work includes principles from positive psychology, resilience-based research, post-traumatic growth, trauma-informed care, neuroscience and gerontology.
Description of areas of specialization:
Life transitions: Provide supportive counselling for anyone experiencing retirement, job loss or career change, relationship issues, or caregiving and care receiving.
Trauma: Provide supportive counselling for people who have experienced a traumatic life event, including genocide and war, by helping them to tap into their resilient mindsets and learn practical techniques for recovery and growth from tragedy and adversity.
Bereavement and loss: Provide grief counselling in a variety of situations including the death of a loved one or pet, break up of a marriage or relationship, miscarriage, estrangement from a family member, and other types of losses.
Stress management: Explore practical and easy to apply relaxation techniques and self-care practices to help people de-stress their lives.
Resilience training: Teach evidence-based protective factors that mitigate stress and help people develop a resilience mindset.
Descendants of trauma survivors: Provide supportive counselling to examine the negative and positive trans-generational aspects of trauma; assist descendants who provide care for their aging parents to explore and cope with their caregiving roles and needs.
The impact of aging on trauma survivors: Explore the potential vulnerabilities of older people to traumatic events that happened decades earlier by learning about the unique issues and challenges they face.
Aging: Help people to navigate the health, psychological and social issues of aging.
