My Missions

My mission is to share with people an essential life skill – how to build healthy relationships and transform challenging ones.

Relationships transcend all boundaries, backgrounds and cultures as they are a part of everyone’s life. They unite us all. They also have the greatest influence on our lives. Our well-being is largely based on the quality of our relationships with others and also with oneself. 

Despite the great impact they have on our lives, we still rely on the idea that building healthy relationships is something we are born with or just pick up as we go. Sure, we do get bits and pieces here and there, but they are not enough to give us the full skill set that we need.
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I came to be a therapist because I struggled myself. It was a challenge for me to understand my intense and unpleasant feelings that I experienced in my relationships. In the pursuit of wanting to make sense of my anxiety and insecurities, I studied Neuroscience and, later, Counselling Psychology. But it wasn’t the academic knowledge or painful personal experiences that offered the most insight. It was therapy sessions with my own therapist that brought on the most growth and self-awareness and gave me the tools to successfully navigate relationships in my life. 

Trauma & Relationships

Relationships are often where most of our traumatic experiences take place. Traumatic events that can shake us up to the core are losing a loved one, going through a divorce or break up, or being physically, emotionally or sexually abused. It is also within safe and supportive relationships where a healing after such devastating experiences can occur. Counselling therapy relationship offers such a safe and confidential place for you to process the event, to heal and restore your balance. 

My Approach

It takes great courage to share intimate parts of ourselves like fears, worries, and desires with others. As your therapist, I would treat you with deep respect, and listen to your story and feelings with great honor.
 
To accelerate the change that you would like to see in your life, I address in therapy three main domains: feelings, thoughts and body sensations. 
 
Together,

• We will explore puzzling and intense feelings, understand their meaning and process past emotions that are getting in a way of experiencing joy and freedom.
• We will bring to light your current beliefs and values that drive your thoughts, re-examine and update them to fit your adult-self better.
• We will work with your body sensations, through which your body communicates with you about what needs your attention. Our emotional scars can manifest themselves in physical pain, which serves as a compass for what needs healing.

About Me

This might sound like a cliché, but I consider myself a citizen of the world. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunities that life have provided me to live in different parts of the planet. 
My adventures began quite early when as a teenager, 16, I had to adopt to a whole new culture and language as my family traded world’s biggest country, Russia, for the second world’s biggest country, Canada. Living in Vancouver, Canada, one of the most multicultural places on earth, I had an honor to be friends and to work with people from so many different cultures. 

Their stories of their homeland ignited my own adventure seeking and in 2016, I began my 2 year journey as an expat living abroad. I spent my first year in Manila, Philippines and, my second year in Tallinn, Estonia. I was in awe of incredible friendliness and patience of people in both countries and worked on cultivating the same qualities. 
Apart from traveling, my other passion has been the human mind. It’s been 13 years since taking my first psychology class, yet I am just as fascinated by the complexity that surrounds human relationships and the mysteries of our brain. I continue to feed my inner ‘nerd’ with the weekly helpings of latest neuroscience news through The Best Brain Possible and Psychology Today.

Viktoria Ivanova

Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC)  #13553 (BC Association of Clinical Counsellors) 
Certified Canadian Counsellor (CCC) #5237 (Canadian Counselling & Psychotherapy Association)
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Education
Master of Education in Counseling Psychology (University of Western Ontario, Canada) 2010
Bachelor of Science in Psychology (University of British Columbia, Canada)  2006

Specialities

• Relationship Issues
• Anger Management
• Self Esteem

Focus

• Anxiety
• Career Guidance
• Chronic Impulsivity
• Codependency
• Coping Skills
• Depression
• Divorce
• Emotional Disturbance
• Family Conflict
• Hoarding
• Infidelity
• Life Coaching
• Life Transitions
• Marital and Premarital
• Obsessive-Compulsive (OCD)
• Peer Relationships
• Sexual Addiction
• Sleep or Insomnia
• Stress
• Suicidal Ideation
• Trauma and PTSD
• Women's Issues

Please schedule a free 20 min call if you'd like to know more about my services, and like my facebook page or follow my Instagram for ongoing information and blogging! I always offer a free 20 minute consultation so that you can experience how it is to be in my presence and ask questions to see if my approach to therapy is something that will work for you.

Counselling in Vancover, BC
Counselling for Anxiety, Depression, & Stress
Trauma & PTSD Counselling
Car Accident Trauma Counselling
Counselling for Traumatic Birth
Therapy for Rape & Childhood Sexual Abuse