Our Team
Isaac Cherian
Isaac is a Registered Psychologist with the College of Alberta Psychologists. He has worked in the field of mental health since 2003 and has extensive experience in treating clients with PTSD, depression, anxiety, dissociative disorders, survivors of sexual abuse, personality disorders, and addressing trauma in addiction, and somatic disorders.
Isaac’s therapeutic expertise is in Mindfulness-based approaches, Emotion Focus Therapy, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, and Body-centered approaches. Isaac primarily uses empirically supported Mindfulness-based approaches and has received advanced training in providing Mindfulness-based therapy from the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice, Bangor University, one of the foremost universities in the UK that continues to contribute to neuropsychological and evidence-based research in Mindfulness. He is also trained in Emotion Focus Therapy, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, and Body-centered approach.
My approach to healing is the natural outcome of my 20 years of self-inquiry, research, practice, and teaching. This approach of counseling and healing is built on the central principle that at the “core of our being is a positive state of consciousness” – which we experience as calmness, joyfulness, freedom, goodness, or whatever other names we may call that experience by. All of us have had that positive experience at one time or the other, and all we need to do is to learn how to function from that state of consciousness at all times.
This is simply because it is now an empirically established fact that we perform well when we are relaxed and at peace with ourselves. I often use a “rose” as a metaphor to explain this point. Our life or ‘beingness’ can be compared to a rose flower. At the center of our being is a certain positive essence and of course, there is pain and suffering, but they are always at the periphery. The rose has an ‘essence’ that symbolizes the positive-ness of being – it also has thorns that symbolize pain and suffering. We have a “choice” to live from the beauty and fragrance that rose embodies, which is the positive-ness of our being, or live from the thorn, which is pain and suffering. This is the underlying principle of the approach, which I call Consciousness-Based Psychotherapy. From this approach, therapy is about learning how to function from a positive state of consciousness all the time. Mindfulness, reflective practices, nature, and creative art are used as mediums for learning in this approach.
As a counselor, I integrate a humanistic-experiential and ‘dialogical self’ approach to help people make sense of their suffering. This insight and understanding is the basis for restoring wellbeing and peace with oneself and others. I firmly believe that one central factor that facilitates the process of therapy is my relationship with my clients. I consider my relationship with my clients a very sacred one based on trust, integrity, respect, and a deep empathetic relationship. Indeed, it is a privilege and a sacred calling for me when a client entrusts his/her self with me and asks for understanding and support.
I believe that our well-being is contingent on how we see ourselves and how we are related to other aspects of this existence. Our psychological health and wellbeing are at risk when we are disconnected from ourselves - the deeper the disconnect, the more intense our suffering and the more difficult it for healing to take place. Rarely is one aware of such a disconnect or rather to say the disconnect is never expressed in itself but manifests as psychological issues, interpersonal issues, mental health disorders, etc. At the core of my counseling practice are three factors – dialogue, narration, and insight. A great share of my time in therapy is about applying these tools to help one become aware of the huge potentialities that remain hidden in their self.