Looking for Support?
Dr. Deb Cehak is a Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC) with a Master’s degree in Counselling and a doctorate in Psychology, who specializes in adolescence, PTSD, and practices as a narrative therapist, Divorce Coach, a Child and Youth Specialist.
Individual therapy
Deb believes in collaboration, curiosity, and respect. When dilemmas, problems, and obstacles grow big enough in our lives, they can come to dominate, pulling us towards dark ideas and stories in which we can feel hopeless, lost, fearful, and disconnected. Deb works with clients to identify the challenges in their lives and explore how to move into more spaces of joy and preferred ways of living. Part of Deb’s practice looks at the contexts in which our problems are created, which includes but is not limited to conversations around age, sexuality, gender, class, race, ethnicity, ability, and spirituality. Deb believes our identities, lives, and dilemmas as well, are created within a broader relational, social, and cultural context.
Relationship therapy
Deb works with relationships of all types and sizes: intimate partnerships, siblings, friendships, families, professional relationships, and more. When people in a relationship experience conflict, it is often a struggle between individuals. Fingers are pointed and blame is placed. Working with relationships, Deb removes blame by considering the relationship as its own entity. The practice becomes two or more individuals working together, collaboratively, on behalf of the relationship. The relationship and what it needs to thrive is considered and prioritized.
Divorce Coach and Child and Youth Specialist
Deb is a member of the Collaborative Divorce Vancouver team, she is trained as a mediator, and works as both a Divorce Coach and Child and Youth Specialist. During separation and divorce, what was once an intimate partnership shifts and becomes a co-parenting relationship. This transition is often filled with sadness, grief, anger, and shame, which effect the process of separation and divorce. Deb supports the navigation of this new relationship for families, including topics such as: what to talk to the children about, developing a parent plan, and how to engage in this new relationship with respect and collaboration.
Contact me
Email or phone me at deb@coastalnarrative.com or 604-317-3911 to learn more about how I can help or the services I offer.
Book a time
Book a time through the Jane booking system app. All sessions are conducted virtually through the Jane app. If you would like to book a session in person, please contact Dr. Cehak.
Attend session
Login to the Jane app prior to your appointment time for your virtual session. Please contact Dr. Cehak for in person sessions.
ABOUT
Deb is a child of narrative therapy. Deb’s father is a narrative therapist and growing up, Deb recalls coming home from school and wondering what types of clients her father saw that day at work, and how he helped them. Deb began her Master’s degree in 2004, but it was put on hold due to the diagnosis of her eldest son with a rare and progressive disease. Deb spent the next decade advocating for her son, researching and raising funds for his rare disease, and learning to cope with the mortality of her child, through yoga and meditation.
Deb also learned to teach yoga and had four more children. After completing her Master’s degree, Deb moved to Los Angeles to learn and train under David Marsten, a world-renowned narrative therapist working with individuals, children, and families. When Deb returned to British Columbia, she completed her doctorate in Psychology specializing in adolescence, as well as additional training in PTSD, mediation, and collaborative law. Deb currently works as a narrative therapist, divorce coach, and child and youth specialist.
Approach
Narrative Therapy
As a narrative therapist, Deb believes stories create meaning in our lives. Context plays a large role in the stories we tell and that are told about us. The ideas we have about what it means to be a man, queer, Catholic, Democrat, black, blind, middle class, adolescent, adult, Asian, daughter (etc) tells us how we are supposed to show up in the world and leads others to have expectations about how we are supposed to show up. Similarly, ideas regarding depression, anxiety, trauma, attachment (etc) and what constitutes mental heath shape the stories we tell about ourselves and others and the quality of our lives. Deb works with ideas and how they shape our reality.
Relationships
Many problems a person faces are relational. If a parent is struggling with a child or vice versa, both the parent and the child will be operating within social ideas regarding what the role or job of the child and parent are. When problems are relational, Deb prefers working with relationships when possible. This way, unconscious expectations can be made explicit, and with these cultural ideas on the table, the relationship can decide how it wants to respond to these ideas.
Unspoken Expectations
Unspoken expectations can negatively impact an intimate partnership. For example, when a heterosexual couple comes in with a problem around who does the housework, who cooks, who mows the lawn (etc), the couple has not created the ideas around whose jobs are whose. However, unconscious and often unspoken expectations regarding how each individual is expected to show up in the relationship can lead to disagreements and significant hurt and pain. The narrative approach to working with relationships involves removing individual blame from an individual or couple, which locates problems within a person or relationship, and places it in the context of larger social and societal norms and ideas.