Counselling

Wendy has been providing professional counselling services to individuals, children, young adults, couples and families since 1987 in both Hong Kong and Singapore. She has received intensive training in different therapeutic models and employs an eclectic approach in helping her clients. She stresses the importance of client-centred and emotional-centred approaches in the helping process.

Wendy, fluent in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, has been helping local and international families resolve difficulties in their relationships during and after the break-up of their marriages. As both Singapore and Hong Kong are cosmopolitan cities, Wendy acknowledges the importance of culture and backgrounds of many mixed marriages and their third culture kids. When parents face separation and divorce, they need to settle for the future, including the possibility of relocating children away from one of the parents. There is in all cases a need to set up a positive and practical parenting plan, for which she provides assistance in design and implementation.

Co-parenting counselling is helpful for parents who are separated or divorced and need to resolve some of their emotions and unfinished business related to the end of their relationship, so that they can move on to become co-parents for their children. The counselling process helps parents to understand the needs of children and the effects of conflicts on children in the transition. Equally important, is that divorcing parents are in need of support and understanding of their own grief and pain. Wendy has had over 25 years of experience in helping and supporting parents and children in crisis and emotional pain. Managing conflict and emotional reactivity are paramount in the process. The counselling process also helps to rebuild the self-confidence of the parents and to restructure a new post-divorce two household situation. Wendy will assist the parents in exploring, developing and implementing a positive and workable parenting plan and resolving any difficulties that might arise in the process.

Wendy, as an adult child of divorce, understands the legacy of divorce for children and how parental conflict can bring life-long emotional baggage not only to children but also to grandchildren. Wendy is in particular concerned about the voice of children which is seldom heard by parents. She helps children express their feelings by drawing and reflects the messages and meanings attached to reach out to their parents. Wendy has co-authored a book on “Enhancing Parent-child Relationship” in 2001 showing parents how children express themselves through their drawing. This is important for young children who do not yet have the language to express their feelings. Similarly, many adult children of divorce have been helped by Wendy to handle their “Inner-Child Syndrome” relating to the emotional effect of divorce on them, since they were very young and at the time were unable to express their feelings.