Kate Marlene
Counsellor
I specialise in:
About me
I’m an American-trained narrative therapist, certified mediator, and former lawyer, with a background in social justice, anthropology, and literary theory. My work centers on conflict resolution, emotional clarity, and compassionate understanding, especially during life transitions and relationship challenges.
I was trained in narrative therapy by John Stillman, a student of Michael White (founder of modern Narrative Therapy), and completed Advanced Training through the Vancouver School of Narrative Therapy. My approach is non-pathologizing and interdisciplinary, deeply influenced by post-structuralist theory and the recognition that cultural, relational, and systemic forces shape our emotional lives.
I bring a unique combination of legal expertise, mediation skills, and therapeutic insight to help clients navigate emotional conflict, clarify their values, and move forward with purpose. Having navigated divorce and major life transitions myself, I understand how overwhelming these moments can be—and how powerful it is to have support while rewriting your story.
Whether you’re in the midst of relationship conflict, facing a difficult decision, or seeking healing after a breakup, my practice offers space for reflection, growth, and deeper self-understanding.
I speak:
Location:
Approach
Narrative therapy is a strategic and proven approach for individuals, groups, and communities, based on the principle that we are the experts of our own lives, and moreover, we can realign ourselves with preferred and empowering narratives. Humans are by our nature, driven to tell stories, to make sense of events, to come up with patterns in our minds about what happened and why. Even our biology drives us to order and name, make sense of perceptions, and to give purpose and meaning to our experience. Narrative therapy capitalizes on these tendencies with the goal of uncovering opportunities for new growth, meaning, purpose, and life-fulfillment.
As opposed to traditional psychotherapeutic methods, narrative does not focus on diagnoses or following prescriptive techniques. It emphasizes collaborating over a delivery of knowledge and expertise, born of post-structuralism and informed by feminism, social justice, orientations of power, and a general aversion to traditional mental health and medical models that can tend to pathologize people and their problems.
I also combine my former work as a social justice advocate and family attorney to help clients mediate practical issues that may come up during family separation, divorce, and in the establishment of co-parenting arrangements.
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