Dr. Lisa Dulgar-Tulloch, PhD, CPsych

A word I say a lot in therapy is ‘balance’, so much so that one of my first clients bought me a little plaque with that word on it to keep in my office. In some ways, balance encapsulates what I am trying to help people achieve in therapy. When they start coming to sessions, people are often focused on what is going wrong in their lives.

This makes sense, of course, because those are the things they want to change. However, I believe it is equally important for us to pay attention to a person’s strengths and what is going right in their lives in order to understand the person as a whole. Similarly, as much as change is important, I also work with people to balance change with acceptance, whether that means learning to accept this moment exactly as it is, acknowledging that a fresh, new and potentially better moment is on the way, or that part of coping well involves accepting those things in life that we cannot change.

Finally, while I believe the work I do is both serious and important, I try not to take it or myself too seriously. Humour and empathy are key in the therapeutic process and I try to use both in equal measures.

I work with adults, university students and older teens.