I am a Canadian who came to working with people more directly in counseling after twenty years of community-based work and developing a keen understanding of the impact of various stressors and community factors that can affect our lives.
As my clinical practice evolved, I was drawn to systemic approaches to working with people. This was a natural evolution from my community work where we drew on a range of health promotion and population health models for working with health challenges. My work with families and couples lead me to an interest in attachment-based approaches. While I am trained and have a keen interest in attachment-based clinical approaches, my clinical and research work retains the social environment as part of understanding how challenges develop and how best to work with them. I am also an ICEEFT certified therapist, supervisor, and trainer.
Areas of Expertise
- Emotionally Focused Therapy
- Couple counseling/therapy
- Counselor/therapy supervision
- Minority stress
- Evidence-based practices
Education, Licensure & Certifications
- BA, Queen's University
- MEd., Acadia University
- PhD, Dalhousie University
Resumes/CV:
Research
I am interested in counselor/therapist training and supervision and attachment-based approaches to therapy such as Emotionally Focused Therapy.
Publications and Presentations
- Allan, R. Teaching and learning evidence-based practices: Promoting dialogue for counsellors and psychotherapists. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research. doi: 10.1002/capr.12223
- Linhof, A., Y., & Allan, R. A narrative expansion of Emotionally Focused Therapy with intercultural couples. Family Journal, 27(1), 44-49. doi: 10.1177/1066480718809426
- Allan, R. & Poulsen, S. (Eds.). Creating cultural safety in couple and family therapy: Supervision and training. AFTA Springer Briefs in Family Therapy. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-64617-6