Play therapy is at the heart of my practice. I work individually with children and teens experiencing big feelings, anxiety, grief and loss, trauma, neurodivergence, family changes, and other experiences that can overwhelm a developing nervous system.

I also work with adults around grief, loss, trauma, major life transitions, and later-realized ADHD and autism.

Sessions are available in person on Pender Island, with online counselling available throughout British Columbia.

I also offer longer Personal Therapy Retreats for adults who want more time and space than a traditional therapy hour allows.

We begin with a free 20–30 minute consultation.

You can reach out through my contact form or by email and tell me a little about what brings you — or your child — to therapy. We’ll talk about what you’re looking for, how I work, and whether we seem like a good fit.

There’s no need to have everything figured out before you contact me.

Grounded, relational, and real.

I bring steadiness, curiosity, deep attunement, and a regulated nervous system to the work so there is room for whatever arrives — big feelings, silence, laughter, messiness, uncertainty, and meaning-making.

I take the work seriously. I don’t take myself terribly seriously.

With children, sessions are playful, imaginative, and responsive. I follow their lead while holding the structure and safety of the therapeutic relationship.

With teens and adults, therapy tends to be collaborative, curious, and depth-oriented. We may use conversation, art, music, movement, metaphor, mindfulness, nervous-system awareness, or simply stay with something long enough to understand it differently.

I’m not particularly interested in quick fixes or making someone easier to manage. I’m interested in what is happening underneath — and in creating more room for awareness, choice, connection, and change.

I bring together specialized clinical training, nervous-system science, lived experience, creativity, and a deeply relational way of working.

I’m trained in Synergetic Play Therapy and NARM, with additional training and experience in attachment, grief and loss, trauma, relational neuroscience, neurodivergence, and early developmental experience.

I’m also AuDHD myself. I understand from the inside that sometimes the problem isn’t that a person needs to try harder or learn to function better. Sometimes the environment, expectations, or story they’ve been given simply doesn’t fit.

And there is plenty of room for play here — even with adults.

Healing doesn’t happen only through insight. Curiosity, imagination, humour, creativity, embodiment, relationship, and moments of genuine connection matter too.

Children don’t always have the words to tell us when something is hard. They often show us instead.

You might notice:

• Big emotions or increasingly intense meltdowns

• Anxiety, fears, clinginess, or difficulty separating

• Withdrawal or a child who seems less like themselves

• Difficulty with frustration, transitions, or unexpected change

• Changes after a death, move, separation, illness, frightening experience, or other major event

• Changes in sleep, appetite, school, friendships, or physical complaints

• More conflict, rigidity, shutdowns, or explosive behaviour

• A child who seems to hold everything together elsewhere and fall apart at home

None of these automatically means something is “wrong” with your child.

Behaviour is communication. Often it is a sign that something inside or around a child has become harder to manage.

Therapy doesn’t have to wait for a crisis. Sometimes a child simply needs another safe relationship and another way to work through what they are carrying.

The child leads the play; I hold the therapeutic space.

Children may build, draw, create stories, move, make things, destroy things, hide things, care for things, invent elaborate worlds, repeat the same game over and over, or spend quite a while doing something that does not look remotely therapeutic from the outside.

That’s okay.

Play gives children a developmentally natural way to explore experiences, feelings, relationships, power, safety, vulnerability, and the things they cannot yet explain in words.

I’m paying attention not only to what your child is doing, but to what is happening in their nervous system and in the relationship between us.

Over time, the work supports greater awareness of what is happening inside, more capacity to stay with difficult feelings and sensations, and more choice in how your child responds to them.

The goal isn’t to train your child out of having big feelings.

It’s to help them develop a stronger relationship with themselves while increasing their capacity for regulation, connection, flexibility, and choice.

Play therapy with teens usually looks very different from play therapy with younger children.

Some teens genuinely want to play. That might mean games, beading, art, music, creative projects, movement, or something else that gives their hands and nervous system something to do while we’re together.

Sometimes we walk.

Sometimes we talk.

Sometimes a teen says very little, but shares a playlist, a meme, a character, a game, or something they’ve made.

That still counts.

For teens, play is often less about toys and more about expression, creativity, experimentation, connection, and having a way to communicate that does not require sitting face-to-face and explaining everything directly.

I don’t force teens into a particular way of doing therapy. We find the way that works for them.

Sometimes, but the child’s therapy belongs primarily to the child.

Parents and caregivers are important to the process, and I will involve you when it supports the work. That may include consultation, helping you understand what your child’s nervous system may be communicating, or talking together about ways to support what is emerging in therapy.

At the same time, children and teens need a therapeutic relationship that feels like their own.

We’ll talk at the beginning about how parent communication, privacy, and involvement will work for your particular child.

Yes.

Some children do very well online. They’re in their own environment, have access to their own toys and creative materials, and sometimes feel freer with the little bit of distance a screen provides.

Others benefit more from sharing a physical play space with me.

We can talk about your child, their age, temperament, needs, and circumstances and decide what seems most appropriate.

Online counselling is available to clients throughout British Columbia.

Yes.

Adoption, relinquishment, attachment, identity, belonging, and the many layers of loss that can exist within adoption have been areas of interest throughout my career. My first master’s thesis focused on supporting adopted infants in healing from the trauma of relinquishment.

I work from an adoption-competent, attachment-focused and trauma-informed perspective, with respect for everyone within the adoption constellation — including adoptees, first families, adoptive families, and foster families.

I don’t assume adoption is either inherently traumatic or inherently beautiful. It can contain love, grief, belonging, loss, complexity, resilience, and contradiction all at once.

Yes.

My adult work tends to be with people moving through grief, loss, trauma, significant life transitions, or the experience of understanding themselves as ADHD, autistic, or otherwise neurodivergent later in life.

The common thread is not age.

It’s depth.

I tend to work well with people who want to understand what is underneath their patterns rather than simply collect more strategies for managing them.

Personal Therapy Retreats are longer therapeutic sessions for adults who want more time than a standard weekly appointment provides.

Sometimes fifty minutes is enough.

Sometimes you have only just arrived at the thing that matters when the clock says it’s time to stop.

A longer session creates room to slow down, follow what emerges, work experientially, take breaks when needed, and allow the work to unfold without constantly watching the clock.

Personal Therapy Retreats are available in person on Pender Island and, when appropriate, online for clients elsewhere in British Columbia.

You can read more on the Personal Therapy Retreats page.

Absolutely.

I work with children, teens, and adults across the LGBTQ+ spectrum, including people who are questioning, exploring, or have no particular interest in finding the perfect label.

I’m nonbinary myself, and gender diversity is not something I approach as a clinical problem to be explained or corrected.

Gender identity, sexual orientation, family structure, and self-expression are met here with respect, curiosity, and care.

You don’t have to have yourself figured out before you come in.

With humility rather than an assumption of competence.

No amount of training makes me an expert on someone else’s culture or lived experience.

My responsibility is to remain aware of power, privilege, racism, colonialism, ableism, heteronormativity, gender, class, and the other systems that shape our lives — including the ways those systems can enter the therapy room.

My own learning around racism and privilege has been intentional and ongoing for decades. I continue to listen, learn, question my assumptions, and course-correct when needed.

I believe clients about their own lives.

I also don’t assume that sharing an identity means sharing an experience. My job is to be curious enough to learn who you are rather than deciding I already know.

Quite possibly, we will.

Small communities naturally create more overlap than larger cities, and I approach that thoughtfully.

If we see each other outside therapy, I will follow your lead. I won’t approach you or identify you as a client. You are always free to say hello, wave, ignore me completely, or interact in whatever way feels most comfortable to you.

If our lives overlap in a way that feels more complicated than simply passing one another in the community, we’ll talk about it together.

Privacy and boundaries matter, but pretending we all become invisible when we leave the therapy room doesn’t make much sense on an island.

Current session fees and information about payment, extended health benefits are available on my Fees & Payment page.

I keep my practice intentionally small so I can offer steady, thoughtful, deeply attuned care rather than maintaining a high-volume caseload.

Many extended health plans in British Columbia include counselling with a Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC), but every plan is different.

Please check with your benefits provider to confirm that RCC services are covered under your particular plan.

I do not direct bill extended health plans. You pay for your appointment and receive a receipt that you can submit to your insurer for reimbursement.

When you begin ongoing therapy with me, you reserve a regular weekly appointment time.

With at least 24 hours’ notice, I may be able to move your appointment to another available time during the same or an adjacent week, but rescheduling depends on availability and cannot be guaranteed.

If another time isn’t available, your regular session fee still applies.

Appointments missed or changed with less than 24 hours’ notice are charged at the full fee and cannot be rescheduled.

If you’ll be away for more than three weeks, you may continue holding your appointment by paying for the sessions you’ll miss. If you prefer not to hold the time, I understand, but I can’t guarantee that the same appointment spot will be available when you return.

You can read the full policy on my Fees & Payment page.

No.

I do not accept cases in which the therapy is likely to become intertwined with an active custody dispute, adversarial legal process, or ongoing conflict in which I could be pulled into a forensic role.

Therapy and forensic work serve different purposes, and I want the therapy relationship — particularly for a child — to remain a therapeutic one.

I do not provide custody evaluations or recommendations, parenting evaluations, expert witness services, or opinions about parenting time or custody.

Yes.

My practice is outpatient counselling and is not a crisis service or a substitute for a higher level of mental health care.

If you or your child needs more intensive support, crisis intervention, medical assessment, active management of significant self-harm or suicide risk, or another service beyond the scope of my practice, I’ll be honest about that.

If it becomes clear after we begin that another type or level of support would be more appropriate, I’ll help you think through next steps and referrals whenever possible.

The easiest way to reach me is through the contact form on this website or by email at dylan@elowen-therapy.com.

I generally respond within one business day during my regular working days.

If you’re interested in working together, you can also schedule a free consultation through the Contact page.