Why Elephant Eye?
Our Mission
At Elephant Eye EMDR, we offer a space where healing is anchored in both art and science. Our licensed therapists specialize in trauma-informed care, EMDR, and body-aware approaches. We honour each client’s pace, protect their dignity, and walk beside them with curiosity, warmth, and respect.
We’re often asked about the name of our clinic—and it’s one we chose with intention and heart.
The elephant is a symbol of wisdom, memory, intuition, and emotional depth. These gentle giants live in close-knit, matriarchal communities, grieve their losses, and communicate through subtle vibration and body language; much like the quiet, layered communication that unfolds in therapy.
The eye represents awareness, presence, and the courage to look within. In trauma healing, especially with approaches like EMDR, the journey often begins with how we see ourselves and our story.
We chose Elephant Eye because we believe healing is relational, embodied, and intuitive. The strength of the herd. The grounding of the body. The quiet gaze that says, “I see you.”
Meet Our Team
Amy Tremblay
BA, Dip.Sec.Ed, MACP, RP — Psychotherapist & EMDR Clinician
Amy is a dedicated, compassionate therapist and the cofounder of Elephant Eye EMDR Psychotherapy Clinic. She holds a Master’s degree in Counselling Psychology and has extensive training in a wide range of therapeutic approaches. Before becoming a therapist, Amy spent more than 15 years working with children and teenagers as an educator in four different countries. This unique global experience shaped her deep understanding of developmental stages and strengthened her empathy for the diverse challenges that individuals and families face.
Amy’s practice is grounded in client-centred, trauma-informed care. She is committed to creating a warm, safe, and supportive environment where clients of all ages can show up authentically, explore their experiences, heal, and grow.
Five years ago, Amy trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), which has since become a central part of her clinical work. She integrates EMDR with complementary modalities and always tailors treatment to meet each client’s needs. Amy is passionate about the profound healing potential of trauma-informed EMDR and has witnessed its transformative impact on countless lives.
At Elephant Eye, Amy works with individuals, couples, teenagers, and families navigating trauma, emotional challenges, relationship concerns, and life transitions. She brings warmth, experience, cultural awareness, and genuine care to every therapeutic relationship.
Amy is honoured to support clients on their journey toward healing, and change. She carries deep respect for the courage it takes to open up, be vulnerable, and pursue growth.
Frank Kakarelis
MACP, R.Kine, Registered Psychotherapist & EMDR Clinician
Trauma, much like a splinter, embeds itself into a person and affects all aspects of life. Frank’s primary objective is to create a safe and compassionate therapeutic alliance which facilitates healing and growth. With Trauma, he believes that the body holds a great deal of the emotional weight, without us knowing. Frank witnessed severe difficulties in his community, and as an adult, he has grieved many friends who kept their suffering a secret, often until it was too late. He truly believes that every individual innately harbors the right set of tools to achieve their personal goals and find their way to a meaningful, fulfilling life.
Frank is the proud co-founder of Elephant Eye EMDR. As a Registered Psychotherapist with advanced training in EMDR therapy, as well as a Registered Kinesiologist, he brings a grounded, holistic, and integrative approach to supporting clients through trauma, anxiety, depression, and the emotional patterns that keep them feeling stuck. EMDR is the foundation of his clinical work, and he weaves in modalities such as Parts Work, Somatic Therapy, and CBT to deepen or support the EMDR process.
When working with couples, he combines the Gottman Method with Parts-informed interventions to help partners understand the protective roles they step into when feeling unseen or overwhelmed. This work creates space for clearer communication, deeper empathy, and meaningful repair.
Life is difficult as it is, particularly when one has experienced a traumatic event. Our brains and bodies are able and willing to heal. We are able to reach a level of meaningfulness in life that we may not have imagined possible. You have the right components within yourself to heal and grow, and Frank would be honoured to walk with you on that journey.
Pamela Rose Thwaites
RP, MACP, M.Ed. & EMDR Clinician
With a Master of Education in Counselling Psychology and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) training, Pam brings a compassionate, client-centered approach to therapy. Her academic background includes a Bachelor of Arts, a Bachelor of Education, a Master of Arts, and a Master of Education—reflecting a lifelong dedication to learning and human development.
Before transitioning into mental health, Pam spent years teaching both internationally and within unique cultural communities in Korea, the UAE, Kazakhstan, and Brunei. These experiences profoundly shaped her sensitivity to cultural diversity and deepened her commitment to creating a safe, inclusive therapeutic space. Her work on a First Nation’s reservation upon returning to Canada was particularly pivotal, sparking her path toward mental health practice.
Pam specializes in EMDR therapy, a modality she has found to be deeply transformative. Witnessing the significant impact it has had on her clients has strengthened her belief in the power of trauma-informed care.
Outside the therapy room, Pam is an avid yogi, a lover of nature, and a devoted traveler. She finds grounding in the outdoors and joy in motherhood, both of which continuously enrich her perspective as a person and a practitioner.
Shannon Rooyakkers
BSW., RSW. — Registered Social Worker
Shannon is a compassionate social worker with 15 years of experience supporting individuals through trauma, mental health challenges, substance use, grief, and life transitions. She also has specialized training in eating disorders, process addictions, and ADHD.
Her approach is trauma-informed and grounded in evidence-based therapies, including CBT, DBT, ACT, and Compassion Inquiry. Shannon integrates these modalities with warmth and flexibility, always honouring each client’s pace and inner strengths.
Currently completing her Master of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University, Shannon brings a strong foundation in Social Development Studies and Social Work from the University of Waterloo.
As a dedicated mindfulness practitioner, she incorporates nervous system regulation, body awareness, and self-compassion into the therapeutic process. She strives to create a safe, non-judgmental space where clients feel supported, empowered, and understood.
Shannon believes deeply in every person’s capacity for healing and meaningful change—and feels honoured to walk alongside them on that journey.
Zoe Eliopoulos
B.A. RSW. - Registered Social Worker & EMDR Clinician.
Zoe is a compassionate Registered Social Worker who supports individuals and couples experiencing anxiety, depression, PTSD, trauma, grief, relationship challenges, and work-related stress. She integrates Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), mindfulness, grounding strategies, and a strong foundation in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).
Zoe’s EMDR work focuses on helping clients process distressing memories, reduce emotional overwhelm, and reconnect with a sense of internal safety and resilience. She approaches EMDR gently and collaboratively, ensuring clients feel grounded, supported, and fully in control throughout the process.
Beyond EMDR, Zoe works with clients to explore the deeper roots of their stress—whether personal, relational, or professional—and to develop practical, empowering coping strategies tailored to their unique needs.
Melanie Huska
PhD, MSW, RSW. - Registered Social Worker & Trauma Informed Clinician
Melanie is a Registered Social Worker whose practice is grounded in anti-oppressive and trauma-informed care. She comes to therapeutic work after training and working as a professor of Latin American history. Her experience living and working in Mexico and Ecuador shaped her understanding of how culture, context, and systems influence lived experience. This perspective informs her clinical work, where she invites clients to explore how histories, identities, and social environments shape how they navigate the world. Patterns that were once adaptive can become limiting over time, and Melanie supports clients in understanding and reshaping these patterns with care and intention.
Melanie is especially drawn to working with students—undergraduate, graduate, and professional—as well as postdoctoral fellows and faculty, and values working with people navigating multiple, intersecting identities and systemic barriers. Her background in academia gives her insight into the “hidden curriculum”—the implicit expectations, performance pressures, and institutional norms that shape these spaces. She supports clients in understanding and responding to the complex interplay of achievement, burnout, identity development, relational strain, and questions of purpose and belonging. Her work focuses on helping clients stay connected to their own values, needs, and capacities while navigating these layered demands.
Melanie’s clinical toolbelt integrates psychodynamic, DBT, CBT, mindfulness-based, somatic, and parts-informed approaches. When appropriate, she also incorporates Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), a brief, eye movement–based approach that helps the brain process difficult memories so they feel less overwhelming, without requiring extensive verbal retelling. It can be useful in situations where cognitive understanding alone does not fully access or shift deeper emotional experiences. She works with concerns including depression, anxiety, PTSD/CPTSD, life transitions, identity development, perfectionism, neurodivergence, and body image. She tailors her approach to each client, balancing insight-oriented work with practical strategies for change.
Melanie’s style is warm, attuned, and genuine. She creates a space where clients feel supported and gently challenged. She believes healing becomes possible when people feel genuinely seen—with honesty, compassion, and enough safety to begin relating to themselves and others in new ways.
Kim McCullough
MSW, RSW. - Registered Social Worker, OCSWSSW Psychotherapist, Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapist
Somewhere along the way, most of us learn to manage what we feel rather than move through it. We become very good at surviving, and quietly exhausted by it.
If that resonates, you are in the right place.
Kim practices through the lens of Two-Eyed Seeing, holding Western integrative relational neurobiological science and Indigenous ways of knowing together as equally valid guides in understanding what it means to be human, to be hurt, and to heal.
Kim moves between top-down and bottom-up therapeutic processes, between story and meaning, and the body’s long-held tension that never had words for the hurt to begin with. Underpinning all of it are somatic practices, including Brainspotting (Phases 1 & 2), Polyvagal-informed therapy, sound therapy including the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) and Rest and Restore Protocol (RRP), parts-based work, and expressive play. She is currently completing certification in Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) and TraumaPlay.
Kim works with people who are emotionally, physically, spiritually, and mentally exhausted from a dysregulated nervous system, expressed in cycling emotional states, difficult thoughts and problematic behaviours. She specializes in abuse, PTSD, complex trauma, BPD, dissociative phenomena, depression, anxiety, TBI and concussion. These experiences often arrive layered with chronic pain, illness and inflammation, ruminating thoughts about suicide, excessive worry and low self-esteem, self-harm, relational issues and addictions, that asks for an approach that can hold complexity to create lasting change.
Something in you kept looking for a way through, even on the days you didn’t believe one existed. That kind of surviving takes more than most people realize.
You’re here now, and Kim is here to meet you with her compassionate and down-to-earth approach. There’s room here for exactly where you are.