our services
Family Therapy Toronto offers anti-oppressive and trauma-informed psychotherapy services to adults, children, adolescents, families, and couples. We provide a supportive and inclusive environment where you and the people most important to you can work together, learn, grow, and go on to enjoy inwardly enriched lives.
individual psychotherapy
Life can present many challenges. Those challenges often come at you in the form of emotional distress, mood disorders, life changes, and difficulty coping. We’re here to work with you one-on-one to help you overcome whatever it is that’s causing you to feel unhappy, fearful, or isolated.
These are some of the specific issues we can help you with:
Grief
GriefHow grief affects you is different from how it affects others. That’s one reason why we take a highly personalized approach to therapy. It’s also why we try to help you understand that coping with grief begins by accepting that the particular set of emotions it stirs in you are normal.
Anxiety
It’s too easy to be overwhelmed by anxiety when we don’t recognize its source. Our goal is to assist you in discovering that source and to then give you the tools you need to take your mind to a place of calm.
Depression
You can fall into the grip of depression when your life lacks connectedness. We help you establish or regain connectedness by showing you how to tap into resources you may not be aware you have.
Trauma
We believe trauma festers—and its effects worsen—when you go silent about it. We help you find the courage to open up and talk about the trauma you suffered. Doing so can take away trauma’s power to continue inflicting emotional pain upon you.
Addiction
To overcome addiction, you need a plan to put yourself in control. But that plan may not work if you don’t first fully understand the addiction-behaviour issues at the heart of your problem. We help you gain those needed insights—and help you create an effective plan of action.
Interpersonal Conflicts
Perhaps you continually fight with people. Or, possibly, you fly off the handle for the least little reason. If so, we can show you non-conflict ways to interact with others and turn your encounters with them into win-win situations.
Communication
It’s as important to be able to listen as it is to talk when trying to achieve healthy relationships. We work with you to you develop the skill of really hearing what others say to you—along with the skill of asking for what you really need.
We recognize that you’re a complex individual made up of many layers, and so we develop our understanding of you by looking at all those layers (not just the one that is most prominent). This is why, in our sessions together, we make use of a variety of person-centered modalities, such as emotion-focused therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, narrative therapy, relational psychotherapy, and anger management.
couples counselling
Couples counselling can be invaluable to the success of romantic relationships. For you and your spouse or partner, it helps produce better communication, conflict-resolution skills, conflict-management capability, and emotional intimacy. These gains come about as you and your loved one examine the relationship’s inner workings, which we help reveal to you.
Sometimes, however, couples decide their relationship can’t be saved, but very much desire to part ways on good terms. Couples counselling can play a vital role in these situations too by helping guide you through the challenges of separating. If children are involved, couples counselling can help you and your ex function smoothly as co-parents during and after separation.
family counselling
Families come in many stripes, shapes, and sizes. We welcome them all.
Help is available from us for family members yearning to improve communication and resolve conflicts—including those that involve youngsters, adolescents, and/or adult children. Ours is an LGBTQ-friendly practice and one extensively experienced in helping families navigate what can be difficult-to-work-through dynamics. We aim to provide you the tools required to break the barriers and strengthen your family’s bonds.
parent coaching
Effective guidance, proven tools, and successful strategies are what we offer to parents faced with the challenges of raising children.
You aspire to become a good parent, and we can help you achieve that goal. First, we’ll assess the dynamic that exists between you and your child or children. Then, together, we’ll explore positive new skills and approaches to overcoming the weaknesses and issues revealed by our assessment.
We’ll also help you connect to community resources that can further enhance your parenting abilities by offering you additional learning tools and materials.
Individual Education Plans
The IEP your local school district creates for your child plays a big part in determining a youngster’s future. So, it’s critically important that the IEP be designed to help your child achieve fullest potential in the classroom and in life. That’s why we offer to get involved in the creation of your child’s IEP by sharing with your school district our assessments of your child’s interests, aspirations, strengths, and capacities.
separation & divorce
Sometimes relationships end and it can be a difficult and confusing time for couples and families. Even partners who make the mutual decision to separate can experience a lot of emotions which lead to heightened levels of stress. In order to adjust to the process and open the lines of communication some couples chose the path of therapeutic support for themselves and for their children. At Family Therapy Toronto we can help you to navigate this very difficult time with support around a mutually respectful separation, child centered parenting plans and creating opportunities for your children to have their voices heard in decisions that are central to their lives.
Parenting Plans
Negotiating how to raise your children after divorce can be an emotionally charge process. Our goal is to assist you in making decisions that are child and family centered. Parenting plans are personalized plans that fits your family and typically address concerns around parenting time, decision making, holidays, travel, schedules, and communication among others.
Voice of the Child Reports
“How will this affect the kids” is a common concern parents have while working through a divorce and the answer can greatly differ among children. A Voice of The Child Report is a non-evaluative report that can be prepared for parents, mediators and the Court. The VCR helps parents to better understand the thoughts, feelings and needs of their child/children.
Therapeutic Re-Integration
Sometimes after a difficult or lengthy separation and/or divorce children can become estranged and separated from one parent. Research has shown that children do best when they have an intact and loving relationship with both of their parents. In this type of therapy, we help to gradually re-introduce children to the estranged parents in a supportive and therapeutic setting.
child therapy
We offer help to children and teens struggling with mental health, behavioural, social, and/or emotional issues that affect how they feel, act, and learn.
Family Therapy Toronto is experienced in aiding youngsters and adolescents from dysfunctional or stressful home environments and who may also have suffered some form of trauma. In our work with children and teens, we use cognitive therapy, attachment therapy, talk therapy, emotion-focused therapy, and other recognized, widely accepted therapies. Woven into these therapeutic approaches are play, art, and imagination techniques.
And because children don’t exist in isolation, we’re available to work with you and other adults in their lives. We believe this is vital to creating the quantity and quality of nurture children need in order to grow up with healthy emotions, values, and life goals.