Rather than thinking in terms of whether you need help, it might be helpful to ask yourself whether you would benefit from help. In the same way that a personal trainer can help you to reach your fitness goals faster, more effectively, and more safely, a trained psychotherapist can help you work through your challenges more quickly, comfortably, and successfully.

Counselling and psychotherapy can help in a number of ways. First, talking through your concerns can help you to define them more clearly – how do you want your life to improve, exactly, and what stands between you and that better future? Second, exploring any obstacles you may be facing can help you to understand how they arose in the first place. Armed with that insight, you can actively prevent similar issues from happening again. Third, counselling can help you to establish an achievable plan for realizing your goals. Last, and most important, counselling can help you to develop new skills, perspectives, and insights that can enable you to work through your challenges on your way to the future you would prefer to be living.

A Registered Psychotherapist is a mental health professional who has met the rigorous educational and practical requirements of the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario, and who is therefore legally permitted to practice psychotherapy in the province of Ontario. By choosing a Registered Psychotherapist, you can rest assured that you are in the hands of a well-trained and regulated professional. A Registered Psychotherapist cannot, however, confer a mental health diagnosis or prescribe medication.

A psychologist is a mental health professional who is licenced and regulated by the College of Psychologists of Ontario. Ontario’s Registered Psychologists have completed a PhD, and have also met rigorous educational and practice criteria. They are qualified to diagnose various mental health conditions, and may tend to work with more severe concerns and disorders (although this isn’t always the case).

A psychiatrist is a medical doctor specializing in mental health. Psychiatrists are qualified to diagnose and to prescribe medication. The services of a psychiatrist are covered by OHIP. Psychiatrists tend to deal primarily with more severe or complex cases, often in association with a hospital or other health care facility. Here again, though, there is considerable variation within the field.

A typical session is one hour long. Longer sessions, if desired, are also available. How often you come will depend on the nature of your goals, your motivation to progress, your schedule, and your budget. Many clients start with weekly sessions, gradually tapering down to once every two or three weeks as treatment progresses. Based on your specific needs and concerns, we can establish an appropriate frequency.

My current fee is $165 per hour. Therapy services are exempt from HST as of June 20, 2024.

In person sessions are payable by cash, cheque, debit, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, or electronic transfer.

Telephonic, video, and e-mail  sessions are payable by Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, or electronic transfer.

Counselling and psychotherapy are not currently covered by OHIP, unless they are provided by a medical doctor. More and more third party benefits providers are covering my services, though, so I encourage you to check your plan’s coverage details to see if therapy provided by a Registered Psychotherapist is included.

I use a secure online platform for both my video and e-mail counselling services. The platform was developed specifically for counselling purposes, and uses industry standard encryption to ensure that our conversation is completely private.

For issues of mild to moderate severity, research indicates that online counselling (whether it be by video or e-mail) can be just as effective as in-person counselling. Please note that e-mail counselling is NOT appropriate for crisis situations.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT, emphasizes the relationship between how you think, how you behave, and how you feel. By helping you change the way you think about your challenges, and by encouraging you to act in new, positive ways, a CBT therapist can help you to shift your experience and create new possibilities.

Mindfulness, in its most elemental sense, is about being fully present and fully aware. If we were to stop and notice, most of us would find that we spend a lot of our time thinking about the past or the future, or about people or places that are currently elsewhere. Through the therapeutic use of Mindfulness techniques, you can gradually learn to bring your attention and energy back to the here and now, and to harness that energy more constructively. Regular mindfulness practice can help you to reduce stress and anxiety, as well as to gain a clearer perspective on your challenges and their solutions.

Brief and Solution Focused Therapy (or SFT, for short) is an approach that identifies and honours the successes you have already achieved in addressing your goals. SFT assumes that you have it within you to rise above your challenges, and that it is the therapist’s role to draw those resources out of you. SFT builds on your existing strengths and resources, focusing primarily on the present and recent past in order to chart a course for the future. SFT is considered ‘brief’ in comparison to more traditional forms of therapy, such as psychoanalysis, that sometimes continue for many months or years.

Environmental Psychology deals with the relationship between your inner experience (ie. your thoughts and feelings) and your outer environment. Using principles from environmental psychology, a therapist might suggest various outdoor experiences to relieve stress, or to increase a sense of connection. Alternatively, you may be encouraged to change certain aspects of your work or home environment in order to ‘mirror’ or promote the kinds of inner changes you are hoping to make.