Alice Kim | RCC

Aug 1

BACKGROUND

My name is Alice Kim (she/her), and I am a registered clinical counsellor at Stellium Sex Therapy and Avery Therapy Centre. I am a cisgender, middle class, non-disabled, heterosexual, racialized, immigrant and settler woman working on the stolen lands of the səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam) Nations. I was born in South Korea and immigrated to Canada at ten years old. The challenges I faced throughout my life and my own healing journey have led me to the field of counselling.

Academically, I hold a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and Family Studies at the University of British Columbia and a Master’s Degree in Counselling at City University in Canada. In addition to my counselling practice, I have experience working in the non-profit sector as a youth worker and am passionate about community care, practicing solidarity, and collective healing. In my personal life, I enjoy being in nature, spending time with loved ones, and cooking.

THERAPEUTIC APPROACH

I am passionate about working with relational challenges and trauma healing. Through values of connection, safety, intentionality, and collaboration, I combine talk therapy (exploring the connection between our emotions, thoughts, and the body) with body-based (somatic) and mindfulness-based approaches. I hope to empower you and support you in your journey of self-awareness, self-understanding, and self-compassion. With warmth, sensitivity, compassion, transparency, and shared vulnerability, I will meet you where you are and collaborate with you on what feels most supportive for you in your healing.

My therapeutic work is largely informed by an understanding of the lasting impact of early attachment relationships on how we relate to ourselves and others. I aim to support you to process and heal your attachment wounds while moving towards feeling safe and at ease in your relationships with yourself and others. My practice is also rooted in an understanding of the impact of trauma. I truly believe that your experiences all make sense based on your past traumas (not only relational trauma but also social, cultural and historical traumas) that you have survived and from which your brilliant autonomic nervous system has protected you. My hope is to support you to feel present, grounded, a sense of ease and joy in your life. Some ways we would try to reach that are through strengthening your mind-body connection, regulating your nervous system, and prioritizing safety in our relationship. I am also committed to a justice-centered, anti-oppressive approach. I invite you to explore how harmful structures of power in our society relate to your challenges, and I aim to support you to process and better understand your experiences within your intersecting social identities (e.g. race, gender, class, sexual orientation, etc.). I also honour that you are the expert of your own experience and strive to continuously decolonize my practice through challenging my own biases and patriarchal, hetero-normative, Eurocentric, and colonial counselling theories and practices.

In addition to individual counselling, I also offer relationship counselling. My hope is to support everyone involved in the relationship to (re)connect, repair attachment wounds, improve communication, and feel more at ease. Through incorporating aspects of attachment theory, interpersonal neurobiology, polyvagal theory, the Gottman Method, and Emotionally Focused Therapy, I aim to support my clients to explore and better understand their relational dynamics and subconscious patterns of self-protective strategies. I am queer and poly/non-monogamy -affirming, -aware, and -informed, and welcome any and all styles and types of relationships.

I am honoured to walk alongside you in your healing journey and look forward to connecting with you!

EDUCATION AND TRAINING

Master’s Degree in Counselling Psychology | City University of Seattle in Canada
Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology | University of British Columbia
Trauma-Informed Training Level 1 & 2 | The Trauma-Informed Practice Institute
The Sexually Competent Therapist - Allura Sex Therapy Centre
Somatic Attachment Therapy Certificate Program | The Embody Lab
Emotion Focused Family Therapy Training | Mental Health Foundations
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Training | EMDR Consulting

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