About Us
Mental health is not the absence of mental illness. It’s about how well we are able to manage our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. It’s about how we handle stress and relate to others and the world around us. We face different challenges to our mental health as we experience new stages of our life. We all need help from time to time. Yet, for most people that help is hard to find, expensive, impractical and confusing.
A redesign is needed.
Let's change the way we look at mental wellness and the criteria for getting help.
Let's make help it more accessible.
Let's make it easier to fit it into your busy schedule.
Let's make it more casual, comfortable and less intimidating.
Enter Redesigning Mental Health.
We approach therapy from a belief that it is often not our emotions that cause us suffering, it is our attempt to cope with and ‘fix’ them. We believe therapy should be both insightful and practical. Because we balance understanding where clients are at, with providing new skills and ways of approaching our emotions, we work primarily from a dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) lens. Based on your needs, we can offer either comprehensive DBT treatment or DBT informed therapy. Both paths help you understand, experience and tolerate your emotions more effectively. Together, we will work on replacing your problematic behavior with skillful behavior.
Mabel Reimer
Human. Helper. Problem Solver. Advocate. Creative.
Registered Social Worker. Earner of 3 degrees, including Master of Social Work. Mental Health Clinician. DBT Therapist & Skills Training Facilitator.
Parent. Partner.
I originally wanted to be a doctor. I know now I just wanted to help people and had assumed the most honorable way to do that was to become a doctor. While I was finishing my Bachelor of Science degree at McGill University, I discovered that I loved listening to people’s stories and felt honored when I was able to walk alongside someone as they faced some of life’s hard moments. During that time, I also experienced my own struggle with mental illness and learned firsthand how frustrating the mental health system can be and how challenging it is to advocate for yourself while unwell. This is when I realized my path to helping people was through social work.
In the last 20 years as a social worker, I have been a frontline counsellor with complex youth and their families, supervisor of place-based treatment centers, a mental health therapist at a non-profit agency and a DBT Skills Training facilitator. Regardless of my role, I blend my passion for mental wellness and helping, with my belief in the power of relationships, my love of teaching and my creative and down-to-earth approaches to creating solutions.
I am not a typical therapist in many ways. I prefer not to meet people in an office. I prefer to wear jeans. I despise neutral tones and ‘professional’ vibes. I believe part of my role is to eliminate barriers and offer support in a way that is accessible. I believe we need community and connection more than therapy. I also believe life is hard and can be so fulfilling if we all share our gifts and help each other out along the way.
Areas of Expertise
ADHD
Borderline Personality Disorder
Depression
Anxiety
Self harm
Suicidal ideation
Highly sensitive individuals
Parenting highly sensitive children
Supporting families involved with Children's services
Supporting front line staff in the social service sector
Adolescents and family conflict
Teens
Grief and loss
Lived Experience
Depression
Neurodivergent family members
Inter-racial marriage
Parenting highly sensitive children