Stefanie Krasnow, Registered Clinical Counsellor
I am a Registered Clinical Counsellor who uses an empowering, compassionate, and non-pathologizing approach that aims to help people recover their innate capacities for aliveness, connection, and transformation.
I have worked with adults, young adults and teens of all genders, orientations, and walks of life. I have two Master of Arts degrees – one in Philosophy & Literature and the other in Counselling Psychology – and a previous career as a writer and editor, all of which inform my approach through an emphasis on creativity, and an orientation that frames your goals and struggles in the broader historical and cultural context.
Some of my areas of specialization include working with low sexual desire and desire descrepancy in partners, vulvodynia (chronic pain and muscle tension that interferes with intercourse), mood disorders (anxiety and depression), attachment issues, trauma, navigating alternative relationship structures, addictions, personality disorders, and adolescent health.
Approach
I have obtained additional clinical training in IFS therapy, narrative therapy, relationship therapy, trauma therapy and somatic (a.k.a body-based) therapies, and in the realms of sexuality, gender oppression, and gender identity. I completed and published my own research on sexual desire in the Journal of Sexual and Relationship Therapy, and presented my findings at the Guelph Sexuality Conference. Sexuality, sexual desire, attachment trauma, and relationships are some of my primary areas of clinical focus.
Just like naturopathic medicine believes that the body knows how to restore itself to health, I believe that each psyche carries within it the wisdom that it needs. The role of therapy, then, is to help people access that wisdom, to uncover it from the rubble and noise. The primary modality I use in order to facilitate this is IFS (Internal Family Systems) therapy a.k.a parts work founded by Dr. Richard Schwartz. IFS is an evidence-based, emerging method of psychotherapy that is becoming widely known for its transformative results. This approach involves turning inward with compassion toward your inner world and greeting the many "parts" we all carry inside ourselves.
IFS begins with a 'befriending' process of getting to know your parts and coming to respect and appreciate how your intrapsychic system is organized based on early experiences in your life and even intergenerational patterns. With gentleness, curiosity, and permission, IFS then begins to 'update' your system to the present so your "parts" can be what they yearn to be (helpful inner resources), rather than who they became when they were burdened by difficult past experiences. Often the parts of us we come to therapy to change or 'fix' are simply parts of us that are trying desperately to protect us in the only way they learned how to do so. Once this is witnessed, these protectors often relax and shift their 'roles' inside of us. These shifts can be felt instantaneously in our minds and bodies as increased spaciousness, agency, and clarity in our lives. It is my honour and privilege to support you in this process.