Julie Hughes Counsellor: Clinical Director, RPC, SEP

With 15 years of experience in private practice, Julie Hughes Counsellor is a dedicated therapist specializing in Relationship Counselling, Individual Counselling and Somatic Experiencing®. She is warm and approachable, creating a safe and inviting space where clients immediately feel at ease.

Julie combines a gentle but directive method, which has helped many couples and individuals process their feelings and be with their experience while finding more ease and capacity in their lives and relationships. With a blend of confidence and intuition, She is adept at addressing and resolving a wide array of life and relationship issues. She is equipped to support you through life’s challenges and transitions.

Your time with Julie Hughes Counsellor will help you feel more resourceful, empowered, and better equipped to deal with life’s challenges. The hope is that you experience more resilience, capacity, and skill in handling life’s stresses and find more meaning, depth, and secure attachment in all your relationships. Through our work together, you will experience an increase in life force energy and vitality, and build the nervous system capacity to effectively handle stress and resolve trauma.

Education and Approach

Julie Hughes Counsellor draws from a variety of modalities tailored to meet the unique needs of each client. Recently, she completed a three-year training program in Somatic Experiencing and obtained a Certificate in Somatic Experiencing®, a body-oriented, nervous system approach to healing trauma and other stress related challenges.

Trained as a trauma-informed somatic experiencing practitioner and expertise in attachment-based practices, family systems, and Stephen Jenkinson’s profound work on grief, aging, and the reclamation of culture and community,

For the past 15 years, Julie Hughes Counsellor has deeply immersed herself in the study of Family Systems Theory, which moves beyond the modern concept of hyper-individualism to a more relational model of being. Through the lens of systems theory, we understand ourselves as intricately linked to and shaped by our family of origin, early life experiences, and culture. We learn primarily from our environment and the people closest to us, extending even to the generations before us. Drawing on these insights, she explores the history of losses, relationship dynamics, and the trauma that may have been passed down inter-generationally.

This relational perspective can offer you the opportunity to transform your perceptions and behaviours by breaking down old patterns that may have kept you isolated. Instead, it empowers you to make different choices during personal struggles or crises, often involving actions contrary to your instinctual, fear-based responses. With increased awareness and a willingness to engage in personal healing work, everyone is capable of developing healthy, functional, and loving relationships.

Continuing Education and Professional Development:

  • Somatic Experiencing® (“SE™”) Professional Training, 3 year trauma intensive program, a body focused approach to the resolution and healing of trauma developed by Dr. Peter Levine, September 2019 to February 2023
  • AEDP for Couples: Transforming Relationships through Healing Relational Deprivation and Trauma with David Mars, Vancouver, February 2019 .
  • AEDP Transforming Trauma through Fierce Love: with SueAnne Piliero, November 2018
  • Die Wise: Making Meaning. A Manifesto for Sanity and the Soul, with Stephen Jenkninson, MSW, Vancouver, November 2017
  • AEDP for Couples: Find Love Hidden in the Everyday: A Case that Inspires Building Bridges between AEDP and EFT with David Mars, Ph.D., May 2013
  • Introduction to Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples, Vancouver Couples and Family Institute with RIchard Harrison, Ph.D. Certified EFT Therapist and Supervisor and Kristine Rea, M.A., Registered Clinical Counsellor and EFT Therapist, April 2013.
  • Remembering Conversations with the Dying and Bereaved, The Vancouver School for Narative Therapy, workshop with Lorraine Hedtke MSW, LCSW, Ph.D. (March 2013)
  • Healing and Treating, Trauma Addictions and Related Disorders – Workshop with David Burns (Sept 2011)
  • Re-Evaluation Counselling – Training, Classes. Vancouver (2012)
  • University of Ottawa – Bachelor of Social Science – Degree in Psychology / Sociology (2004)
  • Mariannopolis CEGEP – Social Science Program – Major in Psychology (2000)