The relationships we build—with ourselves and with others—shape how we experience the world. Through connection, compassion, and safety, healing becomes possible.
Works with individuals and couples
Life can feel overwhelming, especially when you’ve spent years trying to think your way through your struggles. You may have insight into why you feel the way you do, yet still find yourself stuck in familiar patterns, disconnected from yourself, or longing for relationships that feel safer, deeper, and more fulfilling. Whether these experiences stem from early relationships, trauma, neurodivergence, or significant life transitions, healing rarely happens in isolation. It happens through connection.
Leana is a warm, grounded, and compassionate psychotherapist who works with individuals (16+) and couples. She believes that meaningful change begins within the context of a safe, authentic therapeutic relationship—one where clients feel genuinely seen, understood, and accepted. From this foundation of trust and a felt sense of safety, the nervous system can begin to soften, allowing space to explore emotions, reconnect with the body, and create new ways of relating to oneself and others.
Leana understands that many of the ways people cope today were once adaptive responses to difficult experiences. Rather than viewing these patterns as something to “fix,” she approaches them with curiosity and compassion, helping clients understand how their nervous system, relationships, and life experiences have shaped the way they move through the world. Together, therapy becomes a space to build self-awareness, develop emotional resilience, and cultivate a deeper relationship with every part of oneself.
Working from an integrative, trauma-informed framework, Leana incorporates both bottom-up and top-down approaches, drawing from somatic therapies, attachment theory, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST), relational psychotherapy, and evidence-based approaches that support lasting change. She believes healing is not simply about reducing symptoms but about fostering a greater sense of safety within oneself, strengthening self-trust, and creating relationships rooted in authenticity, connection, and emotional security.
Leana works with clients navigating childhood trauma, complex trauma (C-PTSD), attachment wounds, emotional neglect, anxiety, chronic stress, burnout, grief and loss, perfectionism, shame, self-criticism, and life transitions. She also supports autistic adults, including those who have been late identified, as they explore identity, unmasking, autistic burnout, sensory and emotional experiences, and building lives that honour their unique strengths and needs. Her practice is inclusive of individuals exploring identity, sexuality, gender, culture, and neurodivergence, and she provides LGBTQIA+ affirming care in a space where clients are welcomed exactly as they are.
Leana also supports clients in exploring their relationship with intimacy, sexuality, and the body. She works with concerns related to sexual wellbeing, desire, pleasure, communication, body image, sexual shame, identity, and the ways trauma or relational experiences may impact intimacy and connection.
Alongside helping clients deepen their relationship with themselves, Leana is passionate about supporting healthier relationships with others. She works with individuals seeking to develop more secure attachment patterns, strengthen communication, establish boundaries, navigate conflict with greater confidence, and break cycles of people-pleasing, emotional withdrawal, or relational distress. Therapy offers an opportunity to understand longstanding relational patterns while creating new experiences of safety, trust, and connection that can extend beyond the therapy room into everyday life.
Leana also works with couples who want to strengthen their relationship, repair disconnection, or navigate life’s challenges together. She helps partners move beyond cycles of blame and misunderstanding by fostering greater emotional safety, curiosity, and responsiveness toward one another. Her work with couples includes communication and conflict, attachment and emotional connection, intimacy and sexuality, betrayal and infidelity recovery, neurodiverse relationships, premarital counselling, parenting, shared responsibilities, boundaries, and major life transitions. Together, couples learn to better understand one another’s emotional experiences, creating a relationship where both partners feel heard, valued, and securely connected.
At the heart of Leana’s work is the belief that healing occurs through relationships. As clients experience a consistent, attuned therapeutic relationship and develop a deeper connection with themselves, they begin to experience a greater felt sense of safety—within their bodies, within their relationships, and within their own lives. From this place, lasting change becomes possible. Clients often find themselves relating to themselves with greater compassion, connecting with others more authentically, and building lives that feel more meaningful, intentional, and aligned with who they truly are.
Leana offers both in-person therapy in Nepean and virtual sessions for individuals and couples across Ontario.
Areas of Focus:
Relationship to Self
Clients may seek long-term therapy to deepen their relationship with themselves, understand longstanding patterns, and move toward greater self-compassion, authenticity, and emotional wellbeing.
Common presenting concerns include:
- Childhood trauma and complex trauma (C-PTSD): Healing the lasting impact of early relational wounds, emotional neglect, attachment injuries, or adverse childhood experiences that continue to affect relationships, self-esteem, and nervous system regulation.
- Shame, self-worth, and the inner critic: Exploring chronic feelings of not being “enough,” harsh self-judgment, perfectionism, and internalized messages that limit confidence, self-acceptance, and connection.
- Perfectionism and burnout: Understanding protective strategies around achievement, productivity, and people-pleasing while developing greater flexibility, self-compassion, and balance.
- Autism and late diagnosis: Supporting autistic adults in understanding their neurodivergent identity, unmasking, navigating sensory and emotional experiences, recovering from autistic burnout, processing the impact of late diagnosis, and building lives aligned with their authentic needs and values.
- Identity exploration: Exploring questions related to identity, purpose, values, culture, neurodivergence, sexuality, or gender in a supportive and affirming therapeutic relationship.
- LGBTQIA+ affirming therapy: Providing an inclusive space for individuals exploring sexual orientation, gender identity, relationships, family dynamics, minority stress, and self-acceptance.
- Sex therapy: Addressing concerns related to desire, arousal, sexual shame, communication about sex, pleasure, body image, sexual identity, and the impact of trauma on intimacy.
- Anxiety and nervous system regulation: Working with chronic anxiety, overwhelm, hypervigilance, emotional dysregulation, and stress through relational and somatic approaches.
- Grief and loss: Supporting clients through the loss of loved ones, companion animals, relationships, identities, or significant life chapters while making space for the complexity of grief.
- Life transitions: Navigating changes such as becoming a parent, career shifts, divorce, retirement, relocation, diagnosis, or other significant transitions that impact identity and relationships.
Relationship to Others
Therapy can also support individuals and couples in creating healthier, more connected, and more authentic relationships with partners, family members, friends, and colleagues.
For individuals, therapy may focus on:
- Developing healthier attachment patterns and increasing relational security.
- Improving communication skills and expressing thoughts, emotions, and needs more effectively.
- Building assertiveness and confidence in setting and maintaining boundaries.
- Navigating conflict in ways that foster understanding rather than disconnection.
- Strengthening social skills and relationships while honouring individual differences, particularly for autistic adults.
- Healing relational trauma and reducing recurring patterns of people-pleasing, avoidance, or emotional withdrawal.
- Recovering from betrayal, infidelity, or other significant relationship ruptures.
- Learning to recognize and shift relational patterns that no longer serve them.
Couples Therapy
- Couples may seek therapy to strengthen their relationship, navigate challenges, or deepen intimacy. Areas of focus may include:
- Premarital counselling: Building a strong foundation by exploring communication, conflict resolution, values, finances, intimacy, family expectations, parenting, and future goals.
- Communication and conflict: Identifying repetitive cycles of misunderstanding or disconnection and developing more effective, compassionate ways of communicating.
- Patterns of disconnection: Understanding the emotional and relational dynamics that create distance, and fostering greater safety, trust, and connection.
- Infidelity and betrayal recovery: Supporting couples in processing betrayal, rebuilding trust where desired, and making thoughtful decisions about the future of the relationship.
- Sex and intimacy challenges: Addressing differences in desire, intimacy needs, sexual communication, pleasure, sexual functioning, and the impact of stress, trauma, or neurodivergence on intimacy.
- Attachment and emotional connection: Helping partners better understand one another’s emotional experiences and develop more secure, responsive ways of relating.
- Neurodiverse relationships: Supporting couples in understanding differences related to autism, communication styles, sensory needs, executive functioning, and emotional processing while building mutual understanding and connection.
- Boundaries and shared responsibility: Navigating emotional labour, household responsibilities, parenting, extended family dynamics, and creating agreements that support both partners.
- Life transitions: Working together through parenthood, career changes, illness, caregiving, retirement, relocation, and other major life changes that affect the relationship.