Alejandra Lindan

I’m a registered psychotherapist and a music therapist accredited. My work is about helping people to grow and protect their preferred identities, shrink the problems that get in the way, and grow a stance of compassion and curiosity toward the contradictions that come up in the process. Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) helps us to do this by understanding and shaping the ways that our thoughts, actions, body sensations, emotions, and relationships all impact one another; and by developing mastery in mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation and relationship effectiveness. Narrative therapy helps us to do this by positioning clients as the authors of their own lives and inviting the stories that create each person’s preferred identity. Anti-oppressive practice (including anti-racism) helps us to do this by making space for experiences that are systemically erased, degraded and abused; and by confronting disproportionate powers that obstruct healing.

I've been a cis white settler for 37 years, and those credentials are pretty problematic! Therefore I do my best to defer to the lived expertise of people(s) who have been harmed by my privilege or ignorance, so that I can become a better ally. I fail often and persist anyways. As a queer woman and as someone who deals with mental health issues, I have some ideas about what it can mean to try heal in a heteronormative and ableist world. As a reunited adoptee and prospective adoptive parent, I have witnessed the complexities that impact various people who are touched by adoption: from birth family members and adoptive family members to adoptees themselves. For many years, I belonged to a chosen community that primarily includes people who are homeless; my friends there taught me most of what I know about trusting in people’s complexity and resiliency in the face of adversity. I love my work but don’t think it’s worth much without changing the system; so I volunteer in activism as well.