Alisa Chirpicinic RCC

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Vancouver Location

In-person and Online Sessions
Monday, Wednesday and Thursday
10 am - 8 pm

Online Sessions only
Tuesday and Friday
10 - 8pm

Book Now with Alisa

About me

You may feel puzzled and confused about what happens in psychotherapy. “Do I deal with a specific ‘problem’ that is frequently at the forefront of my mind or is it about developing a better understanding of what makes me who I am?” I believe that all problems that seem to defy solutions are directly affected – even determined - by how you experience and relate to yourself and others. Exploring the psychological meaning and emotional sense you attach to your specific internal struggles, feelings, and experiences can bring new insights and creative changes to your life. I am deeply committed to facilitating a safe, trusting relationship that can help you heal, grow, and become more fully yourself. I work with a wide range of individuals and couples, focusing on helping people create healthy and fulfilling lives in their internal and external worlds. My experience includes working with people who may seek increased clarity in their everyday lives as well as with people who may feel that anxiety, depression, or past trauma is hindering them from achieving their goals.

As a result of my work with couples, I have developed sensitivity to a relationship’s areas of tension and the expertise to guide couples toward more mature ways of relating to each other. Regardless of the challenges my clients might face, I am very passionate about finding a way of guiding their growth and achievement in whatever they feel is important for them. I welcome clients with diverse backgrounds and needs.

Therapeutic Approach

I am a strong believer in viewing our challenges from a holistic lens, and the importance of attending to the body-mind connection. I retain compassion and curiosity for everyone that I meet and understand peoples’ struggles through significant life events and social-cultural narratives.

In terms of my counselling approach, I am largely guided by psychodynamic and Internal Family Systems (IFS) approaches. However, I understand that no one approach fits all, and I draw from a range of modalities to meet you where you’re at. These modalities include Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) as well as client-centered and somatic approaches. Above all, I value and encourage your input – while still guiding and structuring sessions as needed.

Working with Couples

There are times when couples have difficulty sustaining intimate and emotional connections with each other. It may be hard for partners to feel truly seen, loved, understood, and cherished during such moments of disconnection. Loving and intimate relationships need to be carefully and skillfully nurtured by couples’ ongoing work and commitment.

When couples slow down and feel recognized and understood by one another, they create space for healing and transformation. As a couples therapist, Alisa believes healing is a relational discovery process that brings to light the unsuccessful patterns and stances where many couples find themselves stuck, unconsciously.

She will help you identify your specific relationship issues and gain insight into patterns that cause relationship distress. You will learn various tools that will help you to restore trust, enhance intimacy, improve communication skills, and strengthen mutual respect. Alisa has the experience and welcomes the opportunity to work with couples in monogamous, non-monogamous, same, and opposite-sex relationships.

She has been trained in Terry Real’s Relational Life Therapy and Gottman’s Couples Therapy Method.

Training and Modalities

I hold a Master’s degree in counselling psychology from City University in Canada and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of British Columbia. I am also a Registered Clinical Counselor (RCC). ​I am currently training in psychodynamic therapy, which focuses on a deeper understanding of our inner experiences. Psychodynamic orientation also stresses the importance of dreams, fantasies, and desires, and assumes that all our experiences have layers of meaning. Such meanings could be either fluid – enriching or creative or concrete, stuck, petrified. My awareness of the presence of such layers of meaning permeates all my therapeutic perceptions.

My background

I was born and raised in the Republic of Moldova and my first language is Russian. I moved to Vancouver in 2010 and now consider it home. I provide counselling services in English and Russian.

In parallel to my training, I started my own therapy, which helped me to integrate some aspects of my experience in a more meaningful way. I believe that my training and my personal therapy experience allow me to be deeply attuned to my clients’ world while at the same time remaining mindful about what is going on in the session.

Issues I can help you with:

  • Emotional dysregulation and unstable sense of identity
  • Hopelessness, desperation, and suicidality
  • Intense sensitivity to rejection
  • Attachment, separation, and abandonment issues
  • Confronting traumatic or triggering past experiences
  • Dealing with excessive inner criticism and guilt
  • Working with various forms of grief (unresolved grief) and loss
  • Feeling disconnected and isolated
  • Creating more flexible boundaries and improving self-esteem
  • Conflict resolution and anger management
  • Relationship issues (communication, arguments, infidelity, growing apart)
  • Having a cold, unloving parent
  • Processing troubling dreams, fantasies, and feelings
  • Developing self-reflective skills
  • Regulating stress, excessive worry, and fear
  • Sexual problems and self-destructive behaviours