About Bruce Sanguin

How I Got Here

I grew up as a high-performance athlete and graduated from university with a degree in psychology and a couple of national championships in volleyball.

That path eventually led me to seminary, where I spent years studying theology, asking big questions, and training for ministry. During that time, I also became a registered marriage and family therapist.

For several decades, I worked within the church—preaching, teaching, and walking with people through the complexities of their lives. Over time, however, I began to see the limitations of the frameworks I had inherited, particularly when it came to healing, trauma, and what it means to live an authentic life.

Today, I work as a psychotherapist and guide for people who are ready to move beyond people-pleasing and into a more honest, self-directed way of living.

I’ve written a number of books exploring spirituality, psychology, and human development—some of which have received awards. But more important than any credential or recognition is the work itself: helping people reconnect with their own experience, trust what they feel, and begin to live their own life.

My approach has been shaped not only by formal training, but by lived experience—both the successes and the failures—and a willingness to question what no longer feels true.

If you’re here, you’re likely already asking some of those questions yourself.

What I Love

I’m the lucky father of two daughters—one all grown up with a daughter of her own, and one still very much in the thick of becoming. And I’m married to my soul mate to boot. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is proof there’s something like grace at work in the universe.

I also love my work.

It’s one of the great joys of my life to work with people who want more than anything to live their own life—to fall in love with themselves; to break out of the prison of self-obsession; to wear different colour socks and not care what anybody else thinks; to call bullshit on the bullshit; to love madly, get your heart broken, and do it all over again—except better; to know what it feels like to stand apart from the crowd when the crowd simply got it wrong; and to open their hearts in compassion for this off-kilter world we’ve made.

I love playing guitar and singing songs by Tom Petty, John Prine, and Bruce Cockburn—just for the hell of it. I love those moments when something clicks and I slip into the flow of things and disappear into the experience.

I love the garden our small family is growing. Looking out over Vancouver and Mount Baker from our island home. The resident ravens checking us out for scraps. The eagles riding the thermals.

And I love watching my daughter swallow the world whole.

As it relates to my work, I love being with people as they strip away all that gets in the way of being their own unrepeatable self.

How I Work

I’m not a fan of methods or maps that reduce people to categories—whether psychiatric labels or tidy theoretical frameworks.

I’m more of a phenomenologist.

Which is to say, I pay close attention to what is actually arising—moment to moment—in the space between us. And together, we try to name it as accurately and honestly as possible.

Because the truth is, what’s getting in the way of you being fully you doesn’t live “out there” somewhere in your past. It shows up right here, in real time, in how you experience yourself… and in how you relate to me in the present.

Psychotherapeutic treatment means just that - it's about how you are treated, in such a way that you are never humiliated or made to perform or be anything other than who are are.

That’s the work.

I’m not here to change you.

You’ve likely had enough of that—enough pressure to be different, to be better, to get it right.

Instead, I offer a space where you can begin to see, and feel, how you came to organize yourself the way you did.

What we think of as "me" is, in large part, a self-protective structure—an ego formed in the interest of survival, often in response to failures of love.

It made sense then.

It may not be serving you now.

The movement in this work is not toward becoming someone else, but toward shedding what no longer fits—what I call the shift from ego to Heart Self.

That process takes as long as it takes.

Nothing is forced.

But something begins to change when you are met—consistently, honestly, without judgment—and when you begin, perhaps for the first time, to meet yourself in the same way.

This work takes different forms.

I work one-to-one with people who are ready to look honestly at their lives and begin the process of living them more fully.

I also offer a 12-week mentorship for those who are done circling the issue and want to go all in—guidance, support, and a clear path out of people-pleasing and into a life that actually feels like your own.

I work with couples as well—not to change or fix one another, but to see clearly what’s happening between you, and what might become possible with more truth in the room.

And for those who feel drawn to it, I offer preparation and integration support for psychedelic work—held carefully, and always in service of real, embodied change.

“The psyche is not inside us but between us”

(Donald Winnicott)

“The psyche is not inside us but between us”.

(Donald Winnicott)

Testimonials

“The felt sense of love working with Bruce has been the springboard from which all clarity is now budding. Feeling his care and believing he loves me came at the exact moment I was ready to finally be DONE with the unconscious negative beliefs about myself that I desperately clung to. I did decades of work trying to improve myself.

There was nothing to improve. I needed his steady, loving presence to encourage my practice of self-compassion, self-acceptance and self-love”.

— Mary

"Working with Bruce has been a great experience. Over the years I have worked with several counselors often feeling like no real change or growth was occurring in my life. However, in the time that I have been working with Bruce, I have experienced profound changes to my health and well-being physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Today I feel more peaceful, grounded, and confident.

I experience far less anxiety in my body, sleep more soundly, and have a much greater capacity to manage and hold everything in my life.

These changes have rolled over into every area of my life positively impacting my relationships, business, physical health, and even my spiritual life. I am grateful for the opportunity to work with Bruce and continue to refer friends and family."

— Dr. Joseph

"The principles that guide Bruce’s work aren’t a marketing strategy. They are foundational to who Bruce is and how he showed up with me during therapy.

Some therapists approach their work by inhabiting a role. Not Bruce. His forthright honesty, transparency, steadiness, calm, and gentle humor was the beautiful thread, the how, of Bruce’s humanity. This cannot be faked. His humanity touched those places within me that had gone underground and been cut off, providing permission for their expression.

We were two human beings meeting and discovering what wanted to be revealed during those therapeutic meetings. I’ll always be grateful for the great good fortune to have met and worked with Bruce. Everyone should be so lucky."

— Elaine

BOOK OUT NOW!

Dismantled: How Love and Psychedelics Broke a Clergyman Apart and Put Him Back Together

This book describes my healing
journey with psychedelics.

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Bruce Sanguin

Psychotherapist