Professional Background
Shirley is a Registered Psychotherapist and a Registered Social Worker. She has 30 years’ experience providing individual psychotherapy. Her expertise is in areas of: trauma (PTSD), complex trauma (CPTSD), depression, anxiety, grief, stress management, suicidality, and relationship issues. She has taught in the graduate Counselling Psychology program at Western University and has been providing clinical supervision to new and experienced therapists for more than 15 years.
Shirley has written two books on trauma. She wrote Surviving the Valley: Trauma and Beyond, for her trauma clients, to provide them with a between-session reminder of the concepts and strategies discussed in therapy. She also wrote a book for new therapists, or those new to trauma therapy, called Treating PTSD: A Compassion-Focused CBT Approach. Additionally, she has authored applied research articles on college student mental health.
She believes that no one specific therapy approach is the answer for every client – and that it is the therapist’s responsibility to adjust their approach to what will be the best fit for each client. Thus, she draws on an eclectic mix of theories and interventions to meet the needs of her clients. These include: Relational Cultural Therapy (RCT), Culture Infused Counseling, Client-Centered Therapy, Solution Focused Therapy, Brief Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Compassion-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (cf-CBT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Motivational Interviewing (MI), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Imaginal Rescripting and Reprocessing Therapy (IRRT), Comprehensive Resource Model (CRM).
In terms of her trauma experience, Shirley has worked with clients who are survivors of one or more of the following types of traumas:
- childhood neglect and/or abuse (physical, emotional, sexual)
- domestic violence
- sexual assault or stalking
- racism
- witnessed violent death and/or attempted murder
- military/first responder experiences
- kidnapping
- civilian experiences of war
As a result of providing years of trauma therapy, and her personal experiences of trauma therapy, Shirley developed a new approach to trauma processing, which she called Compassion-Focused CBT. She found that clients who were unable to tolerate the high levels of emotional distress that EMDR can elicit fared much better with this structure, which appears to provide better containment of emotional distress.
Professional Affiliations:
Canadian Counseling and Psychotherapy Association
American Counseling Association/a>
Ontario College Counselors
Books:
Porter, S. Soldiers and PTSD. (2019). In B. R. Green (Ed.)., Into the valley of the shadow: An American soldier’s military journey and his battle with PTSD. Ashland, OR: Hellgate Press.
Porter, S. (2018). Treating PTSD: A compassion-focused CBT approach. New York: Routledge Press.
Porter, S. (2016). Surviving the Valley: Trauma and Beyond. London, Canada: Althouse Press – Western University.
Contributor to the following publications:
Canadian Journal of Counseling and Psychotherapy
College Quarterly
Counseling Today
Trauma and Beyond
