David Pugh

“You are good, you belong, and you are important.”

My name is David Pugh. I’m a therapist-in-training offering a free 45-minute consultation and a sliding scale from $60 to $100 per hour.

My approach is gentle, trauma-informed, multi-faith, and affirming of the full range of human identity and expression. I work relationally and draw on strengths-based principles, attachment theory, experiential methods including play and creativity, and person-centred therapy. More than six years in social development, child-youth care, and public health work — including work with people experiencing homelessness — have shaped a genuinely holistic understanding of mental health that holds the biological, psychological, social, and spiritual together.

I work with anxiety, depression, bonding and attachment concerns, complex trauma, sexuality and identity, relationship difficulties, aging, self-esteem, parenting and family challenges, life transitions, emotional regulation, childhood sexual abuse and incest, and spiritual and existential questions.

I’m a trained facilitator of trauma recovery for childhood sexual abuse through The Gatehouse, a published researcher on homelessness through COH, and have worked with children and youth navigating aggression, impulsivity, and attention difficulties, as well as single mothers transitioning out of homelessness into housing and employment.