Liz Kahle

Liz’s journey with anxiety developed at a young age, though she did not have the language to understand what she was experiencing. Due to adverse childhood events, including spiritual trauma and shame-based experiences, Liz developed a deep-rooted journey of fear, which presented through shyness, excessive cleaning, trichotillomania, and a disordered view of her body that resulted in a ten-year journey of battling with food and body image.

Through hard work and focusing on service in her church community and later through pastoral ministry, Liz could only avoid the symptoms for so long and eventually experienced a battle with burnout. Through a supportive community, counselling therapy, and spiritual direction, Liz found ways to cope by learning to name boundaries, growing in a healthier relationship with her body, and accepting limitations by drawing on her community and faith for help and support. Liz especially values spiritual practices such as solitude, journalling, and contemplative walks. She offers this additional support for clients who want a more spiritually-integrative approach in their counselling sessions.

Liz Kahle is passionate and invested in supporting clients who desire to work collaboratively to achieve their personal goals in therapy. Liz provides a holistic framework with a strengths-based focus to help clients discover and experience what it means to be more present in their thoughts, emotions, and behavioural responses, drawing upon clients’ strengths and resources while helping them address the areas they feel stuck in their daily lives. Liz’s goal is to help clients learn to compassionately listen to the more difficult and complex parts of their stories to intentionally move through their struggles rather than avoid them.

Throughout the therapy process, Liz aims to provide a compassionate and non-judgmental environment so that clients can feel comfortable and emotionally safe to share their stories while working towards their goals. Counselling creates the potential for clients to discover more of their unique voices, both within their individual stories and their role within their wider community. Liz aims to respect the values, norms, and beliefs of her clients, whether they are similar or different from her own.

Because each client is unique, Liz does not provide a one-size-fits-all model for each client. Still, she borrows from a blend of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT), Attachment Theory (AT), Narrative Therapy (NT), and Spiritually-Oriented Psychotherapy. The benefits of these modalities include increased compassionate attention to thoughts, emotions, and sensory experiences, a workable framework to process and work through complex issues, and practical techniques clients can work through outside their sessions.