Before I became a psychotherapist, I spent years in a high-pressure corporate environment. I was capable, driven, and by most measures successful. And I was also quietly falling apart. Burnout eventually forced a reckoning that I couldn't think my way out of. That experience cracked something open, and it pointed me toward a completely different way of understanding what people actually need in order to change.
That shift led me first to massage therapy, where I worked one-on-one with clients for several years. What I learned there stayed with me: that so much of what people carry lives below words, and that safety, consistency, and embodied presence can create change that talking alone often can't reach. When a wrist injury ended that chapter, I returned to university to train as a psychotherapist. Not to leave the body behind, but to bring everything I'd learned into a deeper, more integrated kind of work.
I'm still in that process of integration. This summer I'm beginning training in Somatic Experiencing, and later this year in cannabis-assisted psychotherapy. These aren't additions to what I already do - they represent a genuine evolution in how I work, one that's been building for a long time and finally has the right shape.
Alba Marussi, MA, RP
Registered Psychotherapist
My path to this work wasn't straightforward
Why I work the way I do
I've spent a lot of time with people who are smart, self-aware, and genuinely committed to their own growth, and who are frustrated that understanding themselves hasn't translated into actually feeling different. I know that frustration well, both professionally and personally.
What I've come to believe is that lasting change rarely happens through insight alone. The patterns that cause the most suffering aren't held in our thoughts. They're held in our bodies, our nervous systems, the parts of us that learned to adapt long before we had words for any of it. Reaching those places requires something more than conversation. It requires working with the whole person, including the parts that don't speak.
That's what draws me to experiential approaches. Not because talking doesn't matter - it absolutely does- but because for a lot of people, especially those who've already done significant therapeutic work, the next layer of change needs a different kind of key.
A bit about how I show up
I tend to be direct, warm, and pretty casual in session. I'm not going to sit across from you in professional neutrality. That's never felt authentic to me and I don't think it serves the work. I'll be genuinely present, sometimes a little irreverent, and always honest with you, including when honesty is uncomfortable.
I also believe strongly that only you can do your own healing. That might sound obvious, but it has real implications for how we work together. My job is to create the right conditions, hold the space with steadiness and skill, and navigate the process alongside you. The inner work, the showing up, the willingness to feel what needs to be felt - that part is yours. Not because I'm withholding anything, but because that's where your actual agency lives.
Self Haven is built on that belief. The name comes from the IFS concept of the Self - the part of you that was never broken, that doesn't need to be fixed or improved, only returned to. A haven isn't somewhere you escape to. It's somewhere you're safe enough to be honest. That's what I'm trying to build here, one session at a time.
Bachelor of Arts, Psychology (Hons.) (2015)
Master of Arts, Counselling Psychology (2022)
EMDRIA-approved EMDR Basic Training (2022)
Internal Family Systems, Online Circle (2022)
Neurobiology of Attachment (2023)
Education & Professional Development
Internal Family Systems Immersion (2023)
Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy, TheraPsil (2024)
Psychedelic-Informed Internal Family Systems (2024)
Internal Family Systems Trauma Treatment Program (2025)
Conscious Connected Breathwork (2026)
Contact
info@selfhaven.ca
(343) 453-0211
Location
Virtual Practice
Available across Canada
Hours
Sunday 10:00 am - 4:00 pm
Monday 12:00 - 7:00 pm
Tuesday 12:00 - 7:00 pm
© 2025 Self Haven Therapy. All rights reserved.
Fees
$170 per session
50-min individual session