We direct bill counselling services to Pacific Blue Cross, GreenShield, Canada Life & Sun Life! For a full list of direct billing providers, click here.
Skip to content We direct bill counselling services to Pacific Blue Cross, GreenShield, Canada Life & Sun Life! For a full list of direct billing providers, click here.
Trauma-informed, culturally responsive CVAP Counselling with full CVAP application assistance
Surviving crime changes everything. It can fundamentally shift your view of and relationship with the world around you, bringing up grief, hyper-vigilance and other stressors, emotionally or otherwise. The trauma you’ve experienced is real, and your healing matters.
CVAP counselling through Venturous Counselling offers trauma-informed, culturally responsive support designed specifically for crime survivors.
At Venturous Counselling, we understand that healing from crime isn’t just about “getting
over it”; it’s about reclaiming your power, processing what happened within its full context,
and rebuilding your life on your own terms.
And you don’t have to navigate this journey alone.
The Crime Victim Assistance Program (CVAP) exists to support your healing, and we’re here to help you access every resource available to you.
The Crime Victim Assistance Program (CVAP) is a government-funded program in so-called BC that the need for comprehensive support after experiencing a crime. CVAP provides financial assistance for counselling services along with other eligible expenses.
Who Qualifies for CVAP Counselling in Vancouver and Port Moody?
You may be eligible for CVAP-funded counselling in Vancouver & Port Moody if you are:
To be eligible, your application must have occurred within one year of the application and the crime must have occurred in BC.
If you have experienced childhood sexual assault, the
one year time frame restriction does not apply. In some cases, a letter written on your behalf by a physician, other health, or legal professionals may support the application process should you have past the one year time frame requirement. Immigration status is not considered a determinant of eligibility.
Important: You do NOT need to report the crime to police to access CVAP benefits. In these situations, you may have to provide contact information for any primary and
secondary health care providers that you have confided in about the occurrence of crime.
Looking for your best-fit CVAP counsellor in Vancouver & Port Moody? You’ve got options:
How we work
Crime doesn’t happen in a vacuum so your therapy shouldn’t either. Systemic oppression – racism, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of discrimination – can, and does, impact your experience of crime. A trauma-informed counsellor is important; AND a context-informed, culturally responsive counsellor that supports you in navigating your processing in ways that acknowledge how systems of power shaped what happened to you can make a huge difference. For example, this can look like:
Trauma lives in the body and spirit, not just the mind. That’s why simply focusing on talk therapy is like painting with only one colour. You can create something, but richness and depth comes from using a full palette. When you go beyond the talk with us, you’re supported in accessing your full capacity for healing.
These modalities are meant to “add colors to your painting” rather than replace talk therapy completely. You might find yourself weaving in and out of these practices, and your therapist will support you in navigating what works best for your unique healing journey.
Beyond the Talk CVAP Counselling in Vancouver & Port Moody
You know the saying “mind over matter”? Turns out that’s not usually the best way forward when healing from the impact of crime. Somatic therapy supports you in befriending your nervous system, so your emotions become less taxing, scary, and debilitating. You start to understand yourself on a deeper level, build trust with your body, learn how to navigate difficult emotions and seemingly automatic reactions, and can support pain and fatigue reduction. By engaging in bodywork from a mind-body-context perspective, you can practice emotional oscillation, nervous system expansion, and rebuild your relationship with emotions in a way that supports your full agency, liberatory rage, and scope of emotional experience.
Perfect for: Going beyond emotional regulation practices, moving towards nervous system expansion and reconnecting with your body after it’s been violated or threatened.
EMDR gets to the root of traumatic memories, offering insights on deeper subconscious dynamics at play. It doesn’t require the traumatic retelling of events – which can be especially important for survivors of crime. Essentially, EMDR taps into your brain’s natural wiring by engaging in specific cadences of bilateral stimulation that mimics REM sleep and physical motion. Both of these processes help you address the subconscious neuropathways that are keeping your internal alarm active beyond what you may find necessary. As you’re guided through the protocol, it works to help you build the neural networks that will actually work for you.
Perfect for: Processing traumatic memories and facilitating healing through natural meaning-making, restorying, and mind-body-spirit integration.
Ever felt like traditional therapy was too suffocating? Nature-based therapy can be an enriching alternative to office-based sessions. This is especially true if your home isn’t secure enough for fully immersive online sessions, or if office-based sessions feel too restrictive after experiencing crime. Aside from rebuilding a sense of connectedness that may have been disrupted by crime, research consistently shows that processing in natural environments help to support reduction in cortisol and stress hormones and helps to
restore a sense of agency.
Perfect for: When traditional office settings feel too restrictive and accessing grounding and healing in open, non-threatening environments.
When words aren’t enough to capture what you’ve experienced, creativity becomes your voice. The most important thing to remember about art-based therapy is that it’s not about the artwork itself. There’s no skill level required! By combining the creative process and psychotherapy, art helps you self-explore through unconscious meaning-making that’s inaccessible through talk therapy alone – especially when words feel impossible after trauma. If your emotions feel too big, art can also become a safer container to express and release emotions as part of your healing process.
Perfect for: When words aren’t enough to express what you’ve experienced or your emotions feel too big to dive into without a container
Play isn’t just for kids – it’s a powerful way to access healing that bypasses the analytical mind. Through games, creative activities, and playful exploration, you can process trauma in ways that feel safer and more non-threatening. Play therapy can help you reconnect with joy, spontaneity, and parts of yourself that crime may have made you feel you lost.
Perfect for: Accessing healing through joy and creativity, especially when traditional talk feels too heavy.
Animals have an incredible ability to provide non-judgmental presence and nervous system co-regulation. When trauma has impacted your ability to trust, feel safe, or regulate your nervous system, animal-partnered therapy can help to rebuild these capacities gradually.
Aside from their physical presence keeping you anchored in the present moment, animal-partnered therapy also supports you in accessing compassion, care, and connection in ways that human relationships can’t provide.
Perfect for: Building trust, practicing boundaries, and experiencing beyond-human compassion and connection.
Full CVAP Application Assistance
Applying for CVAP can feel overwhelming when you’re already dealing with trauma. That’s why we provide free CVAP application assistance – because accessing support shouldn’t be another barrier to your healing.
Our support includes:
We offer direct billing to select insurance providers and funded programs. Start with a free 15-minute video conversation to find out more.
Each of our counsellors brings a different lens to trauma counselling through CVAP funding.
Here’s how they approach it, so you can sense who might feel like the right fit.
If your experience of harm has left you feeling disconnected from your body or unable to find words for what happened, Sarada will meet you there. Her sessions draw on somatic work and expressive arts to create space for what hasn’t found language yet, without requiring you to retell or relive what happened. She works gently and at your pace, and is especially skilled at holding trauma that has accumulated over time rather than from a single event. Sarada is registered with CVAP, which means her sessions may be fully funded if you have been approved for coverage.
Work with Sarada if you’re worn down, emotionally overloaded, or disconnected from yourself, and you want support that feels gentle and spacious, without being passive.
If your trauma is connected to the experience of navigating worlds that had different rules for you, Julianna works with the cultural and relational dimensions of that alongside the personal. Her sessions draw on narrative practice and art therapy to help people make sense of what they have been carrying across cultures, families, and identities, without rushing toward resolution. She also offers nature based sessions, which can support nervous system regulation for people who find traditional office settings difficult. Julianna is registered with ICBC, which means her sessions may be funded if your trauma is connected to a motor vehicle incident.
Work with Julianna if you’ve spent a lot of your life translating yourself between cultures, roles, or worlds, and you want room to think out loud without flattening the complexity.
If your experience of harm is connected to how your body has been treated or made to feel unsafe, Parveen works with the relational and emotional weight of that alongside the body itself. Her sessions combine art, somatic awareness, and create space to resolve the shame, hypervigilance, and self-protection that often travel with trauma. She asks hard questions with care, and works well with people who want honesty alongside compassion. Parveen is registered with CVAP, which means her sessions may be fully funded if you have CVAP coverage.
Work with Parveen if anxiety about how you’re seen in the world has started running the show, and you want a space to slow down, untangle those stories, and build something more compassionate in their place.
Q&A
No. You do not need to file a police report to access CVAP benefits. We understand there are many valid reasons why survivors choose not to involve police.
CVAP applications should be submitted within a year of the crime, but exceptions can be made, especially for childhood sexual abuse.
Your privacy is paramount. CVAP requires minimal information, and we only share what’s necessary with your explicit consent. We never share details with police or other agencies without your permission.
There’s no “right” time to start therapy. Some survivors benefit from immediate support, while others need time before they’re ready to process their experience. If you’re questioning whether you’re ready, that curiosity itself might be a sign that some part of you is open to healing. We can explore readiness together during a free consultation.
Memory gaps after trauma are common and protective. Your brain prioritizes survival over perfect recall. We don’t need a complete narrative to move towards healing—we work with whatever you remember, feel, or sense in your body. Healing happens through connection and safety, not through forcing memories.
Healing isn’t linear, and there’s no standard timeline. Some clients feel significant relief within a few months, while others benefit from longer-term support. Factors like the type of crime, your support system, previous trauma, and current circumstances all influence the process. We’ll regularly check in about your progress and adjust our approach as needed.
Your safety is the priority. We’ll work together to assess your current safety needs and develop practical strategies to protect yourself. We can help you connect with victim services, safety planning resources, and legal advocates. Therapy can continue even when external threats exist—sometimes it’s even more crucial during these times.
You never have to share details you’re not ready to discuss. We can work with symptoms, feelings, and body sensations without needing the full story. Many of our approaches—like EMDR, somatic work, or expressive arts—can facilitate healing without requiring detailed verbal processing.
Therapy for survivors of crime recognizes the unique impact of having your safety violated by another person. It addresses not just the trauma symptoms, but also the shattering of assumptions about safety, trust, and justice. We work with the specific ways crime affects your nervous system, relationships, and sense of agency in the world.
Absolutely not. Forgiveness is a personal choice that belongs entirely to you. Some survivors find forgiveness meaningful in their healing journey, while others don’t; both paths are valid. It’s important to remember that forgiveness is highly politicized. Our focus is on your healing and reclaiming your power, not on what you should or shouldn’t feel toward the perpetrator.
It’s common to feel temporarily worse when you start processing trauma by nature of spending more time working through the impacts. We’ll go at your pace and support you in feeling grounded and regulated. You’re in control of the process, and we can always slow down or adjust our approach.
We provide a 24/7 resource database with crisis support numbers and coping strategies. While we’re not a crisis center, we can support you to create a safety plan that includes who to contact and what to do if you’re struggling outside of our meetings.
Yes. Nightmares and flashbacks are common trauma responses, and we have specific techniques to reduce their frequency and intensity. EMDR, somatic approaches, and trauma-focused methods are particularly effective for these experiences.
Emotional numbing can be a protective response to overwhelming experiences. It’s your nervous system’s way of keeping you safe when emotions feel too dangerous. We can gently work to help you reconnect with your feelings at a pace that feels manageable if that’s what you’d like to focus on.
Concerns around trust after crime are completely understandable; someone violated your trust in a fundamental way. We’ll go at your pace, focusing on building a therapeutic relationship that supports trust-building as we navigate this process over time.
Betrayal creates unique wounds around safety and relationships. We understand the complex feelings of grief, anger, and confusion that come with this type of violation. Healing is possible, even when the betrayal runs deep.
Self-blame is an incredibly common response to crime—it’s can be your mind’s way of trying to regain control by believing you had power in a powerless situation. We’ll work together to understand these feelings, helping you navigate the systemic contexts and nuances of accountability. Rarely, if ever, is surviving a crime your fault.
Crime often impacts our capacity for intimacy and connection. We can work on rebuilding trust in relationships, addressing changes in sexuality, and helping your loved ones understand how to support you. Relationship counselling is also available if that would be helpful.
You may not return to exactly who you were before; and it might not actually be the goal. Trauma changes us and healing might mean integrating what’s happened to you with who you’d like to become. That being said, you can absolutely feel safe enough, joyful, and fully alive again. Many survivors describe feeling stronger and more authentic after this process, even while acknowledging the pain of what they’ve endured.
That depends on what your goals are and what you hope to get out of our time together. You might choose to end therapy when you feel equipped to handle challenges, when symptoms no longer interfere with your daily life, or when you feel grounded in the work we’ve done together.
Get Matched
We offer direct billing to select insurance providers & funded programs. Start with a free 15-minute video conversation or get your personalized recommendations straight to your inbox, with this 3-minute form.
CVAP-funded counselling in Vancouver and Port Moody opens the door. What you work on once you’re through it is yours to shape. These are some of the concerns our CVAP-approved counsellors most often support.
occupying the stolen, ancestral territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), S’ólh Téméxw (Stó:lō), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), Qayqayt, and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) peoples. Our relationship with these lands dictates our commitment to understanding and responding to the ongoing impacts of colonization in our practices in and out of the counselling room.
Learn more about the land you’re occupying at native-land.ca
