Joe Ramirez’s mission statement is at once crystalline, concise and rooted in compassion.
As owner, director and primary psychotherapist of Clear Counselling, Ramirez and his team are bound by the following promise: cultivating a space where someone else can hold up the walls while one takes a moment to fall down and rest.
“When you’re here, you can let go of that exhaustion, fatigue or stress,” Ramirez says. “It’s my job to hold up the walls so you can take a break. If you want ideas around how to address the situation you’re facing, let me help you versus you having to do all the heavy lifting alone.”
Clear Counselling is a private boutique practice in the downtown Vancouver financial district. Their centre is easily accessible via transit or SeaBus, in a space that contributes to clients’ well being through individual counselling, relationship counselling and sex therapy.
Ramirez practices the Adlerian method of counselling, which emphasizes skill-building and problem-solving.
An Adlerian therapist lives a lifestyle of authenticity and is an active developer of community betterment programs. Ramirez practices this Adlerian method of counselling, which is a 100 years old in-depth psychotherapy practice, as well as the original approach to Individual Counselling. Adlerian counselling incorporates a positive holistic psychology that takes into account social-cultural factors of work, family, and mistaken ideas that contribute to client barriers and mental and emotional well-being, while emphasizing skill-building, problem solving, and client alignment with their authentic self for better health.
“It’s a positive approach where we talk about what’s right about you and the situations that are crazy making,” Ramirez says.
His career began in 2001, when he worked with the BC Society for Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse and the Vancouver Police Department’s Victim Services Unit. His involvement led to a request by the Justice Institute of BC to develop and pilot the first victim assistance program for the Vancouver LGBT community centre to address homophobia and same-sex relationship abuse prior to the legalization of same-sex marriage.
“These experiences that exposed me to the lack of counselling supports for men and members of the LGBTQ+ community shaped my incentive to create a practice that would meet the demands of providing counselling to specialized communities, which would then become Clear Counselling in 2017,” Ramirez says.
Ramirez’s team are active change makers with their clients, within the counselling profession and in the Vancouver community. They are a group that values living a meaningful life and making a positive impact.
To that end, Ramirez employs experienced counsellors who have encountered gaps in the counselling profession and wish to provide the kind of counselling support they wish they could have had, including:
- a doctor who immigrated and became a psychotherapist to meet the needs of new Canadians who have experienced physical and emotional trauma.
- a Vancouver school administrator who wrote programs for the Vancouver School Board to successfully support students with ADHD, autism, and/or in need of alternative supports.
- a psychotherapist who changed careers from Sony marketing to be a psychotherapist to support men with life changes and challenges as individuals and in relationships.
- a psychologist who is LGBTQ+ to support others in the LGBTQ+ community with counselling and assessments from a psychologist who can better understand lived social experiences.
Ramirez also freely contributes weekly supervision to high-quality counselling students enrolled in a master level counselling practicum as a contribution to their development, in hopes the students raise the standard of quality across the profession. In turn, he requires that they contribute counselling sessions for free for a year under his supervision.
As a result, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Clear Counselling provided 4,000 free sessions and will offer 1,500 more in 2025.
“When people are feeling more aligned with their sense of self, they tend to be more positive, feel more relaxed, have a clearer outlook and more energy,” Ramirez says. “That to me, is success.”
For more information, visit clearcounselling.ca
