Heike Dumke

Individual as well as caregiver counselling to help you regain your footing in life:

• Depression
• Anxiety
• Stress Management
• Acquired Brain Injury
• Cognitive Wellness
• Brain Health & Aging
• Caregiver support

Heike's professional experience includes working in the fields of cognitive aging as well as brain injury for more than a decade.  Within the field of cognitive aging, she has spent years researching lifespan development including aging issues such as healthy and pathological aging (i.e., dementia, mild cognitive decline) and brain health (e.g. cognitive wellness).  She has published in this field and is currently writing blogs on aging issues, which you can read at her website.

As a counsellor for cognitive wellness, cognitive aging, and brain injury, Heike can provide insights into what drives the challenges that a person may experience. Heike also has been helping clients with brain injury for over a decade, working in a variety of interdisciplinary brain injury programs.  Throughout this time, she has specialized in cognitive rehabilitation therapy (CRT certificate) to allow her to also address thinking/ memory difficulties that often underlie the emotional difficulties people experience following an acquired brain injury or any condition that can affect cognitive functioning (e.g. chemotherapy).  

Depending on a client’s specific concerns, Heike is able to address cognitive as well as emotional challenges that clients may present with.  Emotional difficulties may result from challenges experienced due to aging or brain injury (e.g. traumatic brain injury/ concussion, brain infection, stroke, brain tumor, chemotherapy).  But as mentioned, oftentimes, cognitive challenges underlie feelings of irritability, frustration and/ or depression, grief, anxiety, and loneliness/ social isolation, and thus, the underlying driver must be addressed in order to support people's emotional well-being.  Heike often accomplishes the latter by, for example, providing education surrounding emotions, cognitive wellness, the myths of cognition (e.g., memory functioning), and practical strategies while supporting a client's emotional well-being.

At the same time, Heike's approach to counselling draws mainly from the humanistic and behavioural approaches including Rogerian (i.e. Client-centered; Gestalt, Existential) and cognitive behavioural therapy while utilizing the principles of the biopsychosocial framework.

She has received her MSc in Clinical Applications in Psychology from Leicester University, UK, and has also studied in several PhD programs, including cognitive neuroscience and rehabilitation sciences, both at the University of British Columbia.  She is currently studying to receive a doctorate in clinical psychology.