Meet The Team

Doug is a Trauma Therapist who specializes in the Nervous System. He has developed the Allodynamic Model of Recovery and Nervous System Recalibration©. 
His experience in trauma started off during his 20-year career in the Canadian Armed Forces Infantry. He has personal experience with peacetime and combat operations. His formal trauma training background is Somatic Experiencing and Therapeutic Enactment, for which he now takes on a mentorship role. He has developed Nervous System Recalibration, designed to not regulate but to regain agency of our own body's reaction to stress and recalibrate it to more appropriately match the current environment we are in. This is key for people who work in high stress environments but who also want to be able to take the uniform off at the end of the day or after retirement.

Karen started her career in Health Education and branched out to the social work field in the 1990s. Her experience runs the gamut from education in schools, child protection, sexual health, LGBTQ2S issues, family relationships, chronic illness, grief, peer support, and trauma. She served as one of the first Family Liaison Officers for ill, injured, and fallen soldiers of the Canadian Forces. She returned to the Annapolis Valley from abroad (i.e. Toronto) in 2017, as a clinical social worker for DND and, continues to do so in private practice.
Karen is certified as a clinical trauma specialist and has training in DBT, SE, EFT, IFS, and EMDR. Her work with couples is informed by Gottman, Emotion-Focused Therapy, and she is continuing advanced training using the developmental model through the Couples Institute. She is a licensed facilitator for Mindfulness-Based Chronic Pain Management and is involved in the development of a nationwide association. Karen brings her experience as a facilitator of peer support training with Survivors of Abuse Recovering (SOAR), and  She is eager to grow with the AGTTC through continued sharing and learning.

Brock specializes in domestic violence and the effects of lifelong trauma. He is also a facilitator for group-based retreats with the Veterans Transition Network, where he works with veterans suffering from operational stress injuries. Brock focuses on balancing the mind / body system through Narrative, Psychodynamic, and body-based Somatic approaches. He practices what he preaches as he continuously strives to enrich his own life through deeper connection to his nervous system, which greater connects him to himself, his family and the world around him.

Derrick is a Canadian Forces Veteran, and a currently serving Firefighter. He has over 30 years of operational and lived experience that he brings to the table. His experience working  as a Firefighter has also led him to work along side Law Enforcement and Paramedics. He is 25 years sober and an active Sober Coach. He is also connected with the LGBTQ community. There is simply no better person more capable to meet any peer where they need to be met.

Amber joins the team with a background as a Level 1 Firefighter and Medical First Responder, an Acadia University alum and a mom to a fiery daughter.
Passionate about firefighting since joining Windsor Fire in 2007, she has also been a member of New Minas Fire where she completed her Level One certification, and most recently Aylesford and District until suffering a stroke in February of 2023. Unable to continue as an active volunteer firefighter she has immersed herself in the fight for better mental health access for First Responders beginning in October of 2022, when she completed her first mental health awareness training. With the mental health epidemic growing exponentially the phrase "Everyone goes home" means a little more.
Joining the team at AGTTC was a perfect fit, bringing both purpose and passion together.

Jordan is a retired paramedic who has served in multiple provinces since 2002. After 10 years of working as an advanced care paramedic in Nova Scotia, a change was required to align with his own mental health. His core values of being present and authentic, combined with honesty and integrity have made him a great role model along the path of peer support. As he continues to explore, learn, and understand more, the more he wants to be part of a group that builds resiliency. Jordan wishes to take these recovery skills and repurpose them to help first responders and military personnel PREPARE for the events they will encounter as part of their profession. Preparation IS the best prevention.

Clara Whitman is a trauma-focused Clinical Social Worker in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia. She holds a Bachelor of Social Work from Dalhousie University and a Master of Social Work from Wilfrid Laurier University. Clara worked in child welfare and acute healthcare settings before joining AGTTC.  She has supported many clients struggling with the internal and social impacts of acute stress and trauma, including complex and intergenerational trauma. 

Clara takes a relational psychodynamic approach in her clinical work.  Roots in attachment and developmental sciences have led her to understand grounding and depathologizing relational experiences as critical to facilitating a state of nervous system ‘rest’.  From this place of relational rest, positive neuroplastic change begins through engagement with increased interoceptive awareness, relational mentalizing exercise, and narration and re-narration of key experiences.

In addition to client work, Clara has a strong interest in advancing theory and theoretical models drawn on by the social work field.  Her theoretical work examines the purposefulness of biopsychological and psychosomatic experiences in the context of a survival orientation. She brings some of her own models to clinical practice, where they stand to destigmatize mental health ‘problems’ through normalizing frameworks.  She also sees potential in her theoretical work for a reimagining of transference and countertransference in psychotherapy and social services work, and for bringing increased attention to critical, functional mechanisms within the therapeutic alliance.

James is a registered Social Worker who draws on a lifetime of research and clinical experience to find safe, viable and effective solutions to domestic violence, James specializes in addressing the impact of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on current relationships with self and others. His primary focus is on providing clinical therapy with individuals who have used abuse or violence within an intimate partnership. He has developed an approach to deepening responsibility for building awareness of harmful behaviours and perspectives as well as creating change, growth and healing. James blends a number of therapeutic modalities to meet the client’s needs but specializes in trauma-informed approaches to address the impact of early ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences). His primary focus is on how this influences a clients current behaviour. He is well versed in Narrative Therapy, mindfulness and grounding practices, somatic awareness, CBT, DBT and a psychotherapeutic model of practice wherever relevant and necessary.
James' research interests include deepening responsibility for the impact of early trauma, abuse, violence or neglect on mental, emotional and neurological development. Also, how learned behaviours or ideas and somatic experiences of internalized trauma may influence later perspectives, actions and responses to stress or conflict.
He has presented his work on Deepening Responsibility to numerous governmental and non-governmental agencies and organizations nationally