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.
Ages
Location
12-50 Years
Vancouver, BC.
Availability
In-Person Sessions in Vancouver
Virtual Sessions for Residents in Ontario or B.C.
Fees
Individual Therapy (50 Mins)
$235
Family Therapy (80 Mins)
$350
Couples Therapy (80 Mins)
$350
Specialties
Anxiety and Depression
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
Emotion Dysregulation
Family Conflict
Relationship Issues
Parenting Challenges
Adult Children-Parent Conflict
Parent-Teen Conflict
Intergenerational & Cultural Family Conflicts
Life Transitions, Grief and Divorce
Therapy Approaches
Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT)
Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT)
Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT)
Attachment-Based Therapeutic Modalities
Narrative Therapy
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)
Acceptance and Commitment (ACT)
Culturally Sensitive Therapy Approach
Gottman Method (Couples)
Exposure Response Prevention (ERP)
More About Alani
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
“You have what you need, together we will find it”. – Miller W. and Rollnick S.