Our team is your team
About Our Team at Hearts Together Therapy
Hearts Together Therapy is a woman-founded therapy provider for teens and families in Vancouver. Our licensed therapists throw out a lifeline for teens facing serious challenges, including severe anxiety, depression, and self-harm. We are committed to building a safe, supportive space where individuals can find the strength and skills to navigate life’s hardest challenges.
Our Therapists
Alani Van
(She/Her)
Founder, Social Worker and Psychotherapist
MSW, RCSW (BC), RSW (ON)
Hi, I’m Alani, a licensed therapist with a deep personal understanding of the struggles faced by today’s youth and families. Growing up in a first-generation immigrant, working class family, I shouldered the responsibility of caring for all of my younger cousins, many of whom faced significant challenges. I know firsthand what it’s like to navigate life’s hardships, and that understanding drives my lifelong passion to provide meaningful, compassionate support to those who need it the most.
Available for In-Person Sessions in Vancouver
Available for Virtual Sessions for Residents in Ontario or British Columbia
MORE ABOUT ALANI
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Alani is a Registered Social Worker in Ontario and a Registered Clinical Social Worker in British Columbia. She specializes in working with parents, families, teens, and young adults ages 19-35 going through transitional life changes in their relationships, work, and education.
As the founder of Hearts Together Therapy, Alani uses a multi-modal approach to my therapy practice, drawing strategies from CBT, DBT, ACT and Narrative Therapy. She is a trained DBT Therapist (to help with emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and focusing on doing what works) as well as an Emotion-focused Level 1 trained Therapist (adept with doing chair work).
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She is also trained in Emotion-focused Family Therapy (caregiver-focused intervention) and Gottman Method for couples therapy.
Alani believes in working with individuals collaboratively to get to the root cause of the difficulties they experience. We need to arrive at a place before we can leave it. We need to feel an emotion in order to change it.
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Change first rides on individual readiness, to become aware of the chaos or rigidity we have built into our lives, then to explore what past experiences led us to where we are now. When we understand where the problem originated, we have better power to improve our current life circumstances.
As a Vietnamese speaking therapist, Alani is passionate about providing a culturally-responsive therapy approach taking in account of cultural and generational gaps, language barriers between generations, amongst all others issues that make it difficult for a parent and child of any age to see eye-to-eye. Immigration poses a lot of changes in language barriers and socioeconomic stressors that can impact the families’ social-emotional wellbeing and their overall sense of connectedness to one another. Alani has a strong understanding of diaspora and immigration, parent-child attachment issues, as well as collectivist culture child-rearing.
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Alani helps individuals at all stages of life to navigate improved relationships with others in their lives.
Alani was born and raised in GTA and moved to Vancouver 3 years ago where she was able to achieve advanced clinical licensure to diagnose mental health conditions (from the DSM-V) for her clients in BC. With 10 years of psychotherapy experience, Alani also provides Clinical Supervision to other therapists and is working towards her provisional RCC-ACS licensure.
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In her free time, Alani enjoys contemporary dance, figure skating, and re-exploring what play can look like for a now adult who grew up in an immigrant refugee-status, working-class family.
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"We only operate at a fraction of our capacity. No one should have to wait for a crisis to find out how much more they really have." - Della.
Minh-Trang Nguyen
(She/Her)
Social Worker and Mental Health Therapist
MSW, RSW
​​Minh is a Registered Social Worker (MSW, RSW) in Ontario and has extensive experience working in community social services, women's issues, settlement and immigration, as well as family legal issues. She has been a skilled case manager for many years and has extensive experience working as a multicultural school social worker to provide parent coaching to improve parent-child relationships for the school board. Minh also works at an Asian community-based legal clinic supporting legal issues pertaining to housing, domestic violence and estate planning. Minh is a graduate from the Master of Social Work Program specializing in Gerontology at the University of Toronto.
Available for In-Person Sessions in Toronto
Available for Virtual Sessions for Residents in Ontario
MORE ABOUT MINH
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In your therapy sessions, Minh strives to create a safe space to help work with you to organize and understand your thoughts and emotions— whilst building a healthy relationship with yourself to navigate complex relationships in your life. In addition, her aim is to support you to build a stronger connection to self to feel integrated, and build the trust and confidence to live an authentic life. Her practice is influenced by the belief that with compassion, non-judgment and curiosity, we have the ability to regain control of how we navigate our experiences.
Minh has worked with women from many different life transitions and circumstances. She has over 15 years of experience supporting families with legal issues, health and education, Power of Attorney for older adults, child-rearing, domestic violence, children with disabilities, women’s issues, elder care and elder abuse, immigration and settlement support.
She is passionate in supporting women who have recently immigrated to a new country to learn about available opportunities and support/empower them to reach their goals.
As a Vietnamese-speaking therapist, Minh has a great love for working with visible minority women, seniors, children and families. Her approach offers a balance in skill development and exploration of the self. Her practice utilizes strength-based, mindfulness-based, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), family systems, and nature-based clinical interventions. There are many variables that often contribute to a presenting concern, such as mental health, past trauma, and lived experiences of an individual. She is very passionate about seeing and understanding the whole picture.
In Minh’s free time, she enjoys taking photos, hiking, gardening, practicing Tai Chi and playing Chinese chess. In addition, Minh likes to meet people from different cultural or diverse backgrounds as she believes this is the best way to learn a new culture and develop new skills and mindsets.
“Don’t compare yourself with others because no one can play your role better than you”.
Our Team
Joyce V.
Administrative Lead
& Bookkeeper
Our Partners
Tina Senger
RCC, MS
Certified PEERS® Trainer
Mental Health Therapist & Behaviour/ Family Universal Support
Laarni Bernardo
RCC, MS
Group Facilitator
Child & Youth Mental Health Therapist
Our Approach and Values
Our values define our practice. At Hearts Together Therapy, we use these principles to guide our sessions and work.
COLLABORATIVE
Working together with you to create effective personalized treatments.
INCLUSIVE
Welcoming and honoring diversity in all forms and walks of life.
EQUITY
Ensuring everyone receives the care and support they need.
SUPPORTIVE
Offering unwavering support through every step of your journey.
HOLISTIC
Caring for your entire well-being—mind, body, and relationships.
EMPATHETIC
Listening to you deeply with compassion and understanding.
EMPOWERING
Equipping you with the tools to take charge of your journey.
RESILIENCE
Helping you to build strength to overcome life’s challenges.
Testimonials
"Alani was the most knowledgeable clinician I worked with..."
I feel that Alani has a very robust clinical acumen and a sophisticated clinical understanding of varied presentations of mood and anxiety disorders, neurodevelopmental disorders, psychotic and substance use disorders, as well as trauma-related and obsessive compulsive disorders. Alani was the most knowledgeable clinician I worked with and also possesses excellent communication, rapport building and therapeutic skills that facilitated the accurate diagnostic process. I highly recommend her as a clinical social worker for mental health assessments and therapy.
- Colleague, Child Psychiatrist
