#Abby Chow, MA, RCC-ACS (She/Her)
Available for sessions online Sunday-Wednesday, in person in Vancouver on Tuesdays, and in person in Port Moody on Sundays
Art, Somatic + EMDR Practitioner Registered Clinical Counsellor.
Works with Practitioners, Businesses, and Adults Individually and in groups, Clinical Director.
Welcome, I'm so glad you're connected - you don't have to wade through this isolating, demanding, sometimes heartbreaking world alone! Whether you're grieving what you've envisioned for your life or the dumpster fire that is this world, feeling weighted down by constantly questioning your place and where you belong; whether you're grieving the loss of a loved one, harmful relational contexts or the body you once knew because of chronic pain & fatigue, I can help.
I specialize in working through this intricate interconnection between identity, purpose and grief. Many folx I work with have also experienced histories of trauma (not just trauma with a capital T) and have had to navigate invalidating and minimizing environments. In working together, we can co-create sustainable systems of self-exploration and relational engagement so that you can connect to rootedness in joy and groundedness in purpose, while reconnecting with the lineage of resistance to create the world that could be.
A little about me: I'm a cisqueer, working-turned-middle class, half-gen, currently non-disabled, straight-sized settler from Hong Kong who lives with chronic pain and ADHD. I found my way to this work through exploring and navigating my own relational trauma through the lens of privilege and systemic oppression.
For the last decade, I've had the privilege of working with folx resisting multiple systems of oppression, which often manifests as being impacted by the criminal punishment system, addictions, and relational trauma. Through our work we've dissected the paradoxes of life, cultivating growth and healing by exploring the stories we subscribe to and the stories we tell. My approach centers on co-creating spaces of change by cultivating a culture of compassionate curiosity and discernment; often with a dose of humor and creativity (and lots of questions!). We look at your experience through an intersectional, systemic, and political context, often incorporating things like EMDR, Art, and Somatic work to further contextualize your exploration, compassion, and growth.
While I am continually engaging in direct clinical work with clients within a counselling context, most of my work now revolves around providing clinical supervision and business consulting services from a justice-grounded perspective. Many practitioners are not supported in accessing business development education, let alone one that is in alignment with our ethics, our knowing, and the world we are trying to create. If you relate to this, my role is to support you in developing a sustainable practice without having to sacrifice the ethics you hold dear.
In addition to my work here at Venturous, I am a board member of Healing in Colour; teach and supervise counsellors-in-training at Adler University and Vancouver Community College; and founded Reflecting on Justice, a mutual aid/wealth redistribution-based virtual platform for therapists to unlearn systemic oppression within ourselves and our profession, through community with other therapists. To ensure continual alignment with ethical practice, I engage in ongoing clinical supervision with Vikki Reynolds.
Outside of work I have a passion for creating + learning, video games, comedy + live music. I'm also currently writing a book that critiques the Eurocentric ideology of familial love within a therapeutic context as grounded in my father’s experience as a refugee and explored through an intergenerational lens.
Additional Training:
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Immersion Program
- Applied Polyvagal Theory in Yoga Level 1 + 2
- Anti-blackness and anti-fatness: A 201 level teach in - Mary Senyonga
- Building Capacity for Mutual Aid - Dean Spade, Barnard Center for Research on Women
- Collaborative Teams: Creating Cultures of Accountability, Structuring Safety & Justice-Doing in Community Work
- Complex Trauma Certification (CCTP/CCTP-II) - Janina Fischer
- Critical Incident Stress Management
- Embodied Conflict Resolution with Kai Cheng Thom
- Emotion-Focused Family Therapy Core Training - Dr. Adele LeFrance
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Core Foundations
- Expressive Arts Therapy: Creative Solutions for Trauma Recovery
- Feminisms, Intersectionality and Narrative Practice - Dulwich Center
- Foundations in Somatic Abolitionism - Education for Racial Equity, Resmaa Menakem
- Free Up! Abolition & Transformative Justice Series Rania El Mugammar + Guest Facilitators
- Gottman Method Couples Therapy Level 1: Bridging the Couple Chasm
- HSABC Learn + Connect Series on Homelessness
- Indigenous gender diversity: creating culturally relevant and gender-affirming services - (PHSA)
- Institute for Radical Permission - adrienne maree brown + Sonya Renee Taylor
- Internal Family Systems: Clinical Applications
- Narrative Therapy Foundations - Vancouver School of Narrative Therapy
- Nonviolent Crisis Intervention
- San'yas Indigenous Cultural Safety Training; Core ICS Mental Health - Provincial Health Services Authority
- Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Body Oriented Therapy Techniques for Trauma and Attachment
- Sexualities, genders and narrative practice: A narrative therapy queer space - Dulwich Center
- Supervision of Solidarity: Clinical Supervision Training, Vikki Reynolds, Dương Ocean Đặng
- Taming the Hungry Ghosts: A Biopsychosocial Approach to Addictions
- The Body Image Course: Helping Every Body find Peace with Food and Weight
- Trauma and Resistance: Innovative Responses to Oppression, Violence, and Suffering
- Violence Prevention & Intervention Training Program – Battered Women’s Support Services
In the Media:
- Radical Therapist Podcast
- The Signal Magazine: Who is Caring for Mental Health Workers?
- Go Solo Entrepreneurial Magazine
