Zak Hulstrom

Our relationship is the most important part of therapy, so it’s important you work with someone you can trust. I will want to help you have insight into yourself and your relationships, and find new ways to live your life. I find it important to create a warm and respectful relationship, so that you feel safe enough to explore what brings you to counselling.

As an integrative counsellor, I’ve got a number of ways to approach the challenges you’re going through. I draw on a range of different therapeutic approaches that are best suited to your needs, integrating them into a therapy that fits you specifically.

In particular, I’m curious about how you grew up, the patterns that started when you were young and how they might still be with you today. As children, we rely so much on our parents to survive that we can twist and contort ourselves to earn their love, but then we become adults and sometimes those patterns are still there. We can honour those ways you survived, but maybe it’s time to re-evaluate their usefulness.

I’m also keen to understand what is happening in your body. Often, we can feel or sense things that we don’t have the words for because our bodies are trying to communicate something. If we stop and listen to these signals, we can learn about how we really feel. Words can also get in the way of expressing ourselves, especially if we don’t have a language for our emotional landscape.