About Alana

I am a registered psychotherapist based in Toronto, Ontario. In addition to my mental health work, I volunteered at a local non-profit mental health organization on the front lines and on the board. For several years, I provided Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training and training in Suicide Alertness for Everyone. More recently, I have volunteered as a pancreatic cancer peer support volunteer with Wellspring Cancer Support Foundation. I also have a son in university who I adore.

For years, I practised as a lawyer at top tier law firms in Toronto, Ontario and London, England and in legal departments at financial institutions in London, England and New York, New York. In 2010, so that I could do more of what I loved in my day-to-day life, I began a series of changes that led to a shift from practising law to practising psychotherapy.

I earned a master of education in counselling psychology and a bachelor of arts degree at the University of Toronto as well as a bachelor of laws at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. 

Since then, I completed post-graduate training in narrative therapy at The Hincks-Dellcrest Centre/Gail Appel Institute, suicide intervention and suicide alertness at LivingWorks Education and cybercounselling at the University of Toronto and Worldwide Therapy Online Inc., internal family systems therapy at Pesi, Inc., internal family systems skills and competencies with Derek Scott, IFS-informed EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) with Bruce Hersey, IFS Levels 1 and 2 with IFS Institute, Intimacy from the Inside Out with Toni-Herbine Blank, somatic IFS training with Susan McConnell, IFS in addictive processes with Cece Sykes, EMDR basic training approved by EMDR International Association, attachment-focussed EMDR with Laurel Parnell through Pesi, Inc., Philip Manfield’s memory reconsolidation, the flash technique and EMDR, clinical applications of the polyvagal theory with Stephen Porges, PhD: trauma, attachment, self-regulation and emotions through Pesi, Inc., polyvagal theory informed trauma assessment and interventions: an autonomic roadmap to safety, connection and healing with Deborah Dana through Pesi, Inc. It is clear that I have a learning part! 

I engage in ongoing professional development each year.

I take an internal family systems, strengths-based and collaboratively curious approach. Together we will consider how your behaviours, emotions and thoughts connect so you make more space for your own Self in your own life. This will mean exploring skills you want to grow or skills you lost touch with. We will consider what life might look like if the problem that brought you to therapy were gone. Of course, we will also talk about where you want to go and how you might get there.

“We can always take a different path, retrace our steps, go back, repeat a track, or stay on the same road for some time. At the beginning of the journey we are not sure where it will end, nor what will be discovered.” – Alice Morgan