Catherine Fournier

About Catherine

Catherine grew up in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, in a family that looked perfect from outside and was quietly devastating within. Her mother was an alcoholic who was physically present but emotionally absent for most of Catherine's childhood. As an adult, she realized she'd been grieving her mother for decades - grieving someone who was still alive.

Pauline Boss's concept of "ambiguous loss" gave Catherine a name for her own experience and became the foundation of her clinical work. Ambiguous loss is the grief that comes when someone is physically present but psychologically absent (dementia, addiction, mental illness) or physically absent but psychologically present (a missing person, an estranged family member).

She trained in Narrative Therapy at the Dulwich Centre in Adelaide - the approach that sees people as separate from their problems. She combines this with ACT, which teaches clients to hold painful emotions without being controlled by them.

She runs her practice from a studio in Kitsilano, Vancouver, overlooking the water. She works with caregivers who are exhausted and unrecognized, adults estranged from their parents, and anyone who feels they're grieving something they can't quite name.

Therapeutic Approach

Tradition

Narrative Therapy · ACT

Lay

Methods

Narrative Therapy + ACT

Education & Training

MA Counseling Psychology — University of British Columbia
Narrative Therapy Training — Dulwich Centre, Adelaide
ACT Immersion — Portland Psychotherapy

How Catherine Works

Catherine uses Narrative Therapy to help clients separate themselves from the grief story that's been running their life. "You are not your grief." She helps people re-author their narrative with agency and meaning. She pairs this with ACT's acceptance and defusion techniques - helping clients hold the pain of ambiguous loss without trying to resolve the unresolvable. For caregivers, she focuses on "disenfranchised grief" - the grief that society doesn't recognize because the person is still alive.

What It's Like to Work with Catherine

Warm, perceptive, with a slight French-Canadian lilt that makes everything feel a little softer. She's exceptionally good at naming things that don't have obvious names - the specific flavor of loss when your mother doesn't remember your name, or the guilt of feeling relieved when a difficult person finally leaves your life. She validates fiercely.