S2|EP13: Healing in Relationships with a Therapist (with Chris Lam)

Intro

Hey y’all, welcome back to the Soul’s Work Podcast. I’m so excited to bring you my guest today, Chris Lam. He is the owner of and counsellor at Ride the Waves Counselling Service. And we are talking about doing therapy today.

But before I share his bio with you and jump into the conversation, hello, how y’all doing? I hope you’re all as well as can be, and taking care of yourselves. By the time this comes out, I will be in Italy, presumably eating a lot of food. If you missed my last episode, it was about this idea of life being short, and part of that was booking this trip to Italy, but also taking a more nuanced approach to what it means to live our life like it’s short, and therefore live authentically. Which is what this podcast is all about. 

Another episode I want to point you to is my "Doing Therapy" episode in the trauma healing series of this season – that is episode 9. And I think it’s really good complement to this one, because I do talk about my various experiences working with different therapists, things to maybe consider if you’re thinking about doing therapy yourself. And this episode is really cool, because it’s kind of hearing from the other side, from the therapist or counselor themselves and what they might bring to that therapeutic relationship.

So just as a reminder, if you are loving the show, are finding it helpful to tune in and learn about things or just hear about another human’s experience that makes you feel a little bit less alone in life, and you want to support the show, please do leave a review and rating on Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the pod. It’s also on Spotify and all the things. Share on social. And that all really helps to build engagement and get others tuning in as well. And I thank you in advance for that.

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Okay, so as I mentioned, Chris Lam is the owner of and counsellor at Ride the Waves Counselling Service. He is a registered Social Worker and has been in the field of therapy for 15 years. The majority of his time as a community Social Worker has been providing individual therapy with youth involved with the justice system while his private practice primarily works with adults. He has experience working with clients around issues of trauma, anxiety, relationship difficulties, emotion management, and exploring future life paths. A key focus of Ride the Waves Counselling Service is to help people develop a better understanding of their emotions, to gain greater personal awareness, and to help people develop more skills to manage the ups and downs of life. 

I love it. And how I know Chris is that we worked in the same non-profit organization, back when I was there in 2014, 2015, and this organization did serve folks who were going through the justice system or were at risk of coming into contact with the justice system, perhaps because of unemployment issues or addictions or housing instability, etc. And so, I met Chris when he was facilitating one of the programs there where he did work with these youth and really helped them to talk through some of their life challenges. And he’s no longer there now. He is doing his private practice, but of course it’s still all super important work. And he does share his contact info at the end of the episode, but just want to say at the top that you can check out his website www.ridethewavescs.com/ to learn more about him.

Okay, without further ado, here is my conversation with Chris Lam. I hope you enjoy.