Counselling in Squamish & online across BC
Offering in-person counselling in Squamish and the Sea to Sky corridor, and online therapy across BC
Jill Koehler, MA, RCC-ACS
Registered Clinical Counsellor + Supervisor
Communicating Well Counselling & ConsultingHi, I’m Jill.
I’m a Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC) and Approved Clinical Supervisor (RCC-ACS) based in Squamish, BC — offering in-person counselling locally and online therapy across British Columbia.
I’ve been working as a therapist since 2010, across a range of settings and with a wide variety of people. What I love most is helping someone find and shift what’s been getting in the way of feeling genuinely alive, grounded, like themselves — even when they’ve already tried a lot of things.
My path to this work wasn’t a straight line. Before becoming a therapist I taught fashion design in the Philippines, worked in web and tech, and ran a small clothing design business. Those experiences still shape how I work — with curiosity, flexibility, and a genuine appreciation that there’s more than one way to move through life.
I spent 10 years volunteering with Squamish Search and Rescue, in both emergency response and mental health education — and grew up in a medical family. That gives me a real sense of what first response and medical work involves — the culture, the demands, and the way it can stay with you. If that’s part of your world, you won’t need to explain it or filter what you share. I’ll have a sense of what you’re talking about.
How I think about change
Most of the patterns that cause us trouble made sense at some point. They developed for a reason — usually to keep us safe, to help us cope, to get through something hard. The problem is they often keep running long after they’re needed.
Change tends to happen when we slow down enough to actually notice what’s going on — what we’re feeling, what we’re thinking, what’s happening in the body — and start to understand where it came from. When something that felt automatic or mysterious starts to make sense, it stops having quite the same hold.
That’s usually where things begin to shift.
What working together is like
When we work together I want to understand you — what’s going on, what keeps showing up, and what’s gotten in the way. From there we can get a clear picture of what’s happening and what might actually help, and start moving in that direction together.
It can feel unfamiliar or uncomfortable at times. It can also bring real relief — when something starts to make sense, or shifts in a way you didn’t expect.
Meet the Office Poodle
Maisie is my Happy Office Poodle — hypoallergenic, non-shedding, and a little shy at first. She’ll usually come and say hello, then decide for herself whether to stay or quietly slip off and do her own thing. If you’d prefer a session without her, just let me know.
Maisie the Poodle, HOP
Happy Office Poodle
Communicating Well Counselling & ConsultingTraining + Approach
My work draws from a range of approaches — chosen because they work with more than just thinking:
- Relational and experiential therapies
- Somatic (body-based) approaches
- EMDR — for trauma and experiences that haven’t fully resolved
- Coherence Therapy
- Focusing-Oriented Therapy
- Trauma-informed approaches
Alongside my clinical training, I completed yoga teacher training at Ashtanga Yoga Victoria — and it genuinely shaped how I work. Something about showing up consistently, paying attention, and trusting that the process matters even when you can’t see it yet. That thread runs through everything I do.
For a full list of specialized trainings, see here.
Interested in working together?
If you’ve read this far and something is resonating, you’re welcome to reach out. We can have a conversation and figure out together where to go from there.
Book a session directly, or try a free 15-minute phone consultation first — no commitment required.
I offer counselling in Squamish and online across British Columbia, for individuals and couples.
PSYCHEDELIC INTEGRATION + ALTERED STATES
Psychedelics, plant medicines, breathwork and other altered states are getting a lot of attention right now — and for some people, these experiences genuinely open something up. For others they’re disorienting, or meaningful in a way that’s hard to carry back into everyday life.
They’re not magic bullets. And when they happen without a good container or proper integration support, the insights can simply fade — or leave people feeling more lost than before.
If you’ve had an experience like this and are looking for help making sense of it, I offer a grounded space to work with what came up — and do something with it.
If any of this sounds familiar, reach out — we can have a conversation about whether this kind of support makes sense for you.
Detailed Training & Specializations
Integrative Body Psychotherapy
4-day training + 4 years of supervision with a certified IBP therapist
IBP is a body-centred approach that works with the connection between physical experience, emotion, and the deeper patterns that shape how we move through life. Developed by Drs. Jack Lee Rosenberg and Beverly Kitaen Morse in the 1970s, IBP is based on the idea that unresolved experiences don’t just live in the mind — they live in the body too, showing up as tension, reactivity, and ways of relating that can feel automatic or hard to shift.
In practice, this means we pay attention to what’s happening physically as well as emotionally — not to fix or release, but to listen to what the body already knows.
Focusing-Oriented Therapy
Certified Focusing-Oriented Therapist
Developed by philosopher and psychologist Eugene Gendlin, Focusing is a body-centred approach that works with what Gendlin called the “felt sense” — a subtle, pre-verbal sense of something that lives in the body before it has words.
Often when something feels stuck, we’ve already thought about it from every angle. Focusing offers a different kind of attention — slower, more curious, more somatic — that can open up new understanding without needing to analyse or figure anything out.
Research at the University of Chicago, replicated across more than 50 studies, showed that the way clients pay attention to their own inner experience — even in the first session — is one of the strongest predictors of therapeutic success. Focusing is a way of cultivating exactly that.
Integrative Psychotherapy
Ongoing group supervision with Richard Erskine since 2024
Developed by Richard Erskine and colleagues, Integrative Psychotherapy brings together psychodynamic, cognitive, behavioural and relational approaches within a unified framework that honours the whole person — not just presenting symptoms.
At its core, this approach is interested in the unresolved parts of experience that still shape current functioning — the beliefs, defenses, and relational patterns formed earlier in life that continue to operate in the background. The goal is integration: a more cohesive, flexible sense of self that doesn’t have to work so hard to keep things together.
Coherence Therapy
Multiple workshops + 0ngoing training and peer supervision group.
Coherence Therapy, developed by Bruce Ecker and colleagues, is based on a simple but powerful idea: symptoms and behaviours that seem problematic are actually coherent responses to deeper emotional learning — things the mind and body learned, often early in life, that made complete sense at the time.
Rather than trying to manage or override these responses, Coherence Therapy works to access and transform the underlying emotional schemas directly. The process is experiential rather than analytical, and often produces change in fewer sessions than more conventional approaches. It draws on current neuroscience research on memory reconsolidation — the brain’s natural capacity to update old learning when it’s brought into contact with new experience.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
Certificate in EMDR Basic Training + ongoing clinical consultation
EMDR is an evidence-based therapy developed by Francine Shapiro that works with the brain’s natural capacity to process and integrate experience. When something distressing happens — whether a single event or an accumulation of smaller experiences — the brain sometimes stores it in a way that keeps it feeling current, even when it isn’t.
EMDR uses bilateral stimulation (eye movements, tapping, or sound) to activate the brain’s information processing system, allowing stuck experiences to be updated and integrated. Over time this reduces the emotional charge of difficult memories and creates more flexibility in how you respond in the present.
I integrate EMDR within a broader relational approach — we go at a pace that your system can tolerate, and I stay connected to what’s happening throughout the process.
Focusing-Oriented Dreamwork
Certified in Focusing-Oriented Dreamwork
Developed by Dr. Leslie Ellis, Focusing-Oriented Dreamwork brings a somatic lens to working with dreams and nightmares. Rather than interpreting what a dream means, this approach invites you to re-enter the dream through the body — to feel into it, stay with it, and discover what it might be trying to show you.
This is particularly useful for recurring dreams and nightmares, which often carry something that hasn’t yet found words. Research has shown that directly addressing nightmares can be correlated with a decrease in PTSD symptoms — making this a valuable tool not just for curiosity, but for healing.
First Responders
Registered for direct billing with Medavie Blue Cross (RCMP + VAC) and BCEHS (paramedics)
10-year volunteer with Squamish Search and Rescue
Specialized training includes:
- Understanding Emergency Worker Trauma — Level 1
- A Specialized Understanding of Emergency Worker Trauma — Level 2
- ICISF Critical Incident Stress — Individual and Groups
- ICISF Advanced Crisis Intervention — Groups
Working with first responders and emergency personnel requires a specific kind of understanding — not just clinical knowledge, but a grounded familiarity with what this work actually involves. Ten years volunteering with Squamish Search and Rescue shaped how I understand the cumulative weight of emergency response work — the pressure, the unpredictability, the things that stay with you long after the call ends.
I offer counselling for RCMP members, Veterans Affairs Canada clients, paramedics, and other emergency personnel, and am registered for direct billing with Medavie Blue Cross and BCEHS.
Nonviolent Communication
Multiple trainings through various NVC programs
Developed by Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication is a framework for understanding what’s happening beneath our words and reactions — in ourselves and in others. At its core, NVC is interested in needs: the universal human needs that underlie every feeling, every conflict, and every attempt to connect.
In practice this means learning to distinguish observations from interpretations, feelings from thoughts, and requests from demands — and developing the capacity to hear what someone is really saying even when the words are coming out sideways. I draw on NVC primarily in relationship work, though its principles show up across most of what I do.
Prepare-Enrich Couples Counselling
Certified PREPARE/ENRICH Facilitator
PREPARE/ENRICH is one of the most widely researched and used relationship assessment tools in the world, used with over 3 million couples across 30 years. Rather than a generic questionnaire, it generates a personalized report for each couple — mapping relationship strengths and growth areas across topics like communication, conflict, finances, intimacy, family, and values.
I use PREPARE/ENRICH as part of both premarital counselling and the 11 Conversations online course. It provides a structured, research-based starting point for conversations couples might not know they need to have — before those topics become problems.
Bader-Pearson Couples Model
Completed Level 1 and Level 2
Developed by Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson, this model understands couples through a developmental lens — mapping the natural stages of relationship growth and the places couples commonly get stuck.
Rather than treating conflict as a sign something is wrong, this approach helps partners understand the developmental task underneath the struggle — what each person is working toward, what gets in the way, and what would actually move things forward. It gives both the therapist and the couple a useful map for navigating some of the most charged dynamics in relationship work.
Gottman’s Couples Counselling Model
Completed Level 1 and Level 2
The Gottman Method, developed by Drs. John and Julie Gottman, is one of the most extensively researched approaches to couples therapy available. Based on decades of observational research on what makes relationships work — and what erodes them — it offers concrete tools for improving communication, managing conflict, deepening friendship, and creating shared meaning.
I draw from Gottman principles particularly around how couples communicate during difficult conversations — the patterns that escalate things unnecessarily, and the skills that help partners stay connected even when they disagree.
Psilocybin-Assisted Psychotherapy (preparation + integration)
(Preparation + Integration)
Trained by TheraPsil
I have completed training in psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy through TheraPsil, Canada’s leading organization advocating for legal access to psychedelic therapy. This training covers the therapeutic framework for working with psychedelic experiences — including preparation, the experience itself, and integration.
As a Registered Clinical Counsellor, my scope of practice in this area focuses on preparation and integration — the counselling work that happens before and after a psychedelic experience, which research consistently identifies as essential to whether those experiences create lasting change.
Integration support is available for experiences with psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine, ayahuasca, breathwork, and other altered states — whether accessed through legal pathways or otherwise, and approached from a harm reduction perspective.
Certification
I’m a registered member of the B.C. Association of Clinical Counsellors — the governing body for clinical counsellors in BC. Registration requires a Master’s Degree in counselling, supervised clinical experience, and adherence to professional and ethical standards.