Dr. Kelly Clarke

By nature, I am a people person and have always been drawn to helping youth.  When I first started my career, I began working with emotionally challenged youth at Yellowhead Youth Centre. After several years of being employed as a Youth Counsellor, I pursued two masters degrees and a doctoral program in psychology from the University of Alberta. I completed a clinical internship at the Grey Nuns Community Hospital  where I engaged and facilitated individual and group therapy as well as gained benefit from complex psychological assessment training through the acute psychiatric program. I believe this clinical depth of training and exposure has helped me to work effectively with people in private practice to provide therapeutic or assessment services.

With respect to assessments, I have completed thousands of assessments ranging from clinical (hospital, mental health, DSM diagnoses), psychoeducational (school), behavioral (ADHD and behavioral problems), emotional (depression, anxiety, etc.), career (capacity, skills, personality), parenting assessments (custody, parenting skills, capacity), and functional assessments (adaptive everyday skills, intellectual disabilities).  

 My general therapeutic approach in counselling considers that people tend to replay templates of relationships that they have been exposed to in their early life in both functional and dysfunctional patterns with themselves and others. Our responses to circumstances, events, and people become evidence of healthy and unhealthy earlier interactions and reveal beliefs, feelings, and emotions that reflect our functioning. In my experience, I have learned that many people are disconnected from the thoughts, emotions, and feelings that are contributing to their relationship problems with themselves and others. Through the process of helping people with depression, anxiety, stress, anger, sleep difficulties, self-doubts, and relationship problems, I focus on both the current problems and how they were cultivated in one’s early life and relationships.

Connecting both the present and the past with people I have worked with has released the potency of the symptoms they are experiencing, and provided new ways of thinking, relating, and expressing toward others and themselves. Although I focus on object relations theoretical underpinnings when engaged in therapy, I also utilize Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) intervention techniques.  

 I was born and raised in Edmonton, living briefly in British Columbia while pursuing higher education. Today, I enjoy spending time with my young family and enjoying the outdoors with skiing, mountain biking and dirt biking.