About Alex
Alex Abdel-Malek, MSW, RCC
I am a senior therapist with over 15 years of clinical experience and I have a great passion for what I do. I have helped hundreds of clients over the years make empowering changes in their lives.
I have worked and trained in a variety of settings over the years, including hospitals, community counselling agencies, Employee and Family Assistance Programs (EAP/EFAP), and private practice. Teaching about clinical work is another extension of my passion for therapy, and I have extensive experience as an instructor in Post-Secondary Social Work and Counselling Psychology programs, including regular affiliations with Simon Fraser University, Vancouver Community College, and Mount Royal College.
Education and Training
My education includes a Masters Degree in Social Work from McGill University, and a Bachelors Degree in Social Work from the University of Calgary. In the course of my degree programmes, I have completed training internships in forensic psychiatry, a family therapy programme, and a hospital-based eating disorder clinic for adults. You can rest assured that these programs have given me an excellent foundation for practice; in addition I am very active in augmenting my training every year through additional professional education courses.
I am a Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC) with the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors (BCACC). This means I am accountable to follow and uphold high ethical and professional practice standards. This ensures that I am actively staying up with current treatment and providing the best clinical service possible.
Approaches to Practice
I am well trained in a variety of orientations to counselling, but my expertise lies in Psychodynamic, Interpersonal Process Psychotherapy, and Satir Systemic Therapy. My couple therapy work draws on these approaches and is based upon Gottman Therapy, an leading edge approach of helping couples to build stronger relationships.
I am also certified in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), which is a well-established and highly effective method for working with people who have experienced trauma. I do not use this method exclusively, finding that talk therapy is also often a necessary part of the healing process.
These methods are particularly well suited to clients who are struggling with recurring patterns in their lives that they would like to change.
From a non-jargon perspective, you will find below some key premises that my practice rests upon. Check to see how compatible these are with what you are looking for…
Partnership: Having an openness to look at your life and the courage to make changes is hard work. Successful counselling is a partnership that involves work on the part of the client and counsellor. A good therapist should be in tune with where you are at and understand what you are looking for.
Patterns: We can get stuck in patterns of thinking, feeling, or behaviour that used to be adaptive at one time in life, but that may not be any longer. Often this shows up in a person’s life as points of conflict between people or within the person themselves. Alternatively, it can come from a sense of “going in circles” in life. Repeated unsatisfactory relationships, recurring feelings of depression or emptiness, difficulty with perfectionism or procrastination, and self-defeating or destructive behaviours are examples of some of these kinds of patterns.
Readiness: Readiness is an essential precursor to making change. Pushing or coercing people to change is usually unhelpful at best and can backfire. I help clients to identify the areas they are both wanting to change and ready to work on.
Past, Present, Future: It is sometimes helpful to explore with clients about past experiences they have had, particularly family and significant relationship experiences. At times, this can help cast light on current struggles that a person is having. While we may spend some time in understanding how past experiences impact development, the focus always comes back clearly to the present and future.
Making Change Happen: Insight is an important part of growth and development. In and of itself, it is often not sufficient for the kinds of changes people are trying to make. Learning new strategies of thinking and doing is a part of the growth process. I support and regularly coach clients in this area.
Feedback: Feedback is another part of an effective therapy process. I do not give advice to clients about what decisions to make, but sometimes it can help to hear another perspective on a situation. Feedback is also an integral part of learning new skills and ways of doing things, so practice and debriefing with feedback can be very helpful.
