Iseonna Silliker
Social Worker
When silence, big feelings, or grief feel overwhelming, Iseonna helps children find their way through.
Children don’t always have the words to explain what they’re feeling. Anxiety, emotional regulation challenges, trauma, or overwhelming emotions can show up as withdrawal, silence, anger, or difficulty connecting. For children experiencing selective mutism, finding their voice can feel especially difficult. And for children and families experiencing grief, death, and loss, finding a way forward can feel impossible.
Iseonna has a special passion for helping children find their voice and supporting individuals and families through grief and loss. At Brilliant Minds, she has had great success supporting children with selective mutism and has often become the first person a child feels safe enough to truly open up to and share what is in their heart. Through patience, connection, co-regulation, play, and an understanding of the nervous system, Iseonna helps children gradually feel safe enough to communicate, participate, and reconnect with the world around them.
Iseonna is also passionate about providing culturally safe, identity-affirming care. She welcomes and supports transgender and gender-diverse clients, creating a space where people can explore their identity without judgment and feel respected for who they are. She also has a particular passion for working with First Nations, including Anishinaabe clients, and incorporates cultural teachings and stories—when appropriate and guided by the client—to help make therapy feel meaningful, relevant, and safe.
Iseonna takes a holistic, neurodiversity-affirming approach, recognizing that emotional wellbeing is connected to the mind, body, relationships, environment, and sense of identity. She creates a warm, accepting space where clients feel genuinely seen and understood, helping them process difficult emotions, build coping skills, and develop greater self-awareness and confidence.
Her experience supporting grief runs deep. As a Social Worker with Hospice of Windsor and Essex County, Iseonna supported individuals and families through end-of-life experiences, providing individual counselling and support groups. She has also worked with people with disabilities from preschool through adulthood and has advocated for accessibility, inclusion, and equity.
Iseonna works with children, teens, adults, and families, drawing from Somatic Therapy, Child-Centred Play Therapy, CBT, Humanistic Therapy, Art Therapy, and Mindfulness-Based Therapy.
Her goal is to help clients feel safe enough to express what they’re feeling, find their voice, navigate difficult emotions, and move forward with greater confidence, connection, and understanding.
Outside of work, Iseonna volunteers as an AquaFit instructor at her local YMCA, where she loves creating an inclusive space for people of all ages to connect, move, and have fun. She is also a talented crochet artist and loves creating beautiful pieces by hand.