About Amanda
&
The Couples Therapist Toolbox
Amanda Bacchus
MSW, RSW, RP, RMFT-SQ
Registered Social Worker
Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers
Registered Psychotherapist
Ontario College of Registered Psychotherapists
Registered Marriage and Family Therapist
Canadian Association of Couple and Family Therapy
Supervisor for Psychotherapists and Social Workers in Ontario
Qualifying Supervisor for Marriage and Family Therapists in Canada
Director and Founder of the Vaughan Relationship Centre
Co-Founder of The Private Practice Consultants
Founder of The Couples Therapist Toolbox
Amanda has been a couples therapist for almost 20 years. In her Masters Program, her peers wanted to work with children, but Amanda knew right from the start that her passion was to work with couples.
After obtaining her Masters Degree in Social Work, she soon started the journey of becoming a Marriage and Family Therapist. While the minimum supervision hours is 200 hours, Amanda has exceeded well beyond that. Most of her learning came beyond the 200 hours, which is seen in the couples therapist toolbox program.
The journey of becoming a couples therapist was not an easy one for Amanda. For a long time she struggled with imposter syndrome. Through supportive supervisors, determination, and compassion for herself, she learned to become an effective sought out therapist.
Amanda started out as a solo practitioner, but had a vision to create a centre specialized in relationships. In 2016, the Vaughan Relationship Centre was founded. She is very passionate about helping other therapist and this is seen in her other work as private practice consultant.
Amanda is an eclectic therapist and uses the therapy that works best for her clients. But she primarily uses Emotionally Focused Therapy developed by Susan Johnson, Narrative Therapy, Gottman Method, and Solution-Focused Therapy.
Finally, Amanda is a qualifying supervisor under the Canadian Association of Couple and Family Therapy (CACFT) and meets the qualifications to supervise psychotherapists and social workers in Ontario.
How the Couples Therapist Toolbox Program was inspired
Amanda is passionate about helping others become effective in their work with couples, so therapist can help their community.
She is hears too often from couples about seeing therapist who were unhelpful, sat and asked reflective questions without much guidance, leaving couples frustrated and hopeless. When interviewing therapists for associate positions at the Vaughan Relationship Centre, she has come across many therapist who say they do couples counselling, only to find out that these well meaning, good intentional therapists are doing mediation or teaching basic communication strategies, like using "I messages". While these strategies can be effective early on in therapy, couples will likely hit a wall and feel frustrated, and hopeless. Resilient couples will return to therapy, but with another therapist. Many times couples break up because their last ditch effort (couples therapy) was ineffective.
The problem is that it can take years to become an effective couples therapist because many training programs do not focus on how to support clients when they act less than ideal. Also, many program do not focus on how to work in the "grey areas". For instance, many couples training programs tell you that if a client reveals that they have been secretly having an affair, that therapy is counterintuitive and in order to move forward, the affair needs to be revealed. But what if the secret is about something else? Like someone is no longer attracted to their partner, but wants to stay in the relationship. Or they had a one night stand after getting drugged at a club, but telling their partner would cause a huge rupture and possibly lead to violence?
Amanda created The Couples Therapist Toolbox to discuss and explore the parts of couples therapy that is very important, but not focused on in other trainings.
Let's work together
Join the Couple Therapist Toolbox
Today
