Darshan is a Registered Therapeutic Counsellor (RTC), licensed by the Association of Cooperative Counselling (ACCT).
Working from a somatic & polyvagal perspective, my belief is that our body carries healing resources and an innate wisdom and inclination to move towards wholeness and well-being.
About Me:
I have spent much of my life with depression and anxiety as close companions. Like most of us, I have experienced traumatic situations. I also carry the intergenerational trauma from my family; I believe we all carry this in one form or another, both through nature as epigenetics show, and through nurture, the family environment we grow up in, (which has been shaped in large part by the trauma of generations prior).
Often, the way in which my anxiety and depression has shown up is in the form of climate-anxiety — a sense of a looming collapse of the environment and subsequently society. As an adult, I realized I wasn’t alone in my experience of climate-anxiety. Neuroscience now teaches us that things that are unpredictable are perceived as a threat to the brain and nervous system making us feel unsafe and giving us a prevailing sense of unease.
We are living in a real-time climate crisis where our actual survival is not a given. I grew up in a household where from a young age I was taught there was a probable imminent demise of civilization just on the horizon. Often this was delivered via a combination of new-age spiritualism and conspiracy theory (otherwise known as conspirituality). Because of the added imprinting from my family of origin, the present-time climate crisis has had a very potent impact on my nervous system.
Because we are human animals and wired for survival, when we are constantly bombarded with messages that our survival in under threat, (as is the often the case when looking at social media, or the news), it can feel scary at a fundamental level. We live in a time of unprecedented rates of anxiety — in addition to climate-anxiety, the dominant culture promotes hyper-individualism, (which provides the opposite of the connection we actually crave for our well-being), as well as capitalism, (that our value is based on how much money we make).
My interest in cults and conspiracy theories was sparked through friends and family members becoming fascinated and subsequently radicalized via online Conspiracy theories such as QAnon. Seeing the dramatic shifts in people I care for has made me passionate about increasing access to therapy for those attempting to de-radicalize. Also, to promote cult education so that people are less susceptible to indoctrination from cultish groups and conspiracy theories.
Psychotherapy modalities have helped me the most when there is a somatic element — feeling into what is held in my body and listening with compassion to the felt-sense messages that my body has stored, (often since childhood). This somatic inquiry and ‘being-with’ is what has enabled me to feel safer in my body by regulating my nervous system and not feeling under threat (fight, flight, freeze, collapse).
The counselling training program I took as well as my training in Internal Family Systems Therapy was experiential — so what we will practice in our therapy sessions won’t be just coming out of a textbook, these will be practices I have lived and breathed, (and often squirmed in), myself.
Other interests:
In addition to my interest in psychotherapy, I am devoted to my family, my dear friends, and my community where I live on Cortes Island. I care about racial equity, queer rights, media literacy, sex-positivity, animal-rights. I’m a bibliophile, with a fond spot for poetry. Before I became a therapist I worked for a decade as a photographer. I play music, make mixed-media art & write fiction, and non-fiction (mostly about conspirituality).
““At the heart of darkness, there isn’t darkness, but latent light””
“You can’t do what you want till you know what you’re doing.”