Welcome!
I want to meet you in your lived reality—not with platitudes, but with genuine understanding and competence.
My practice is grounded in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). While some criticize CBT for its alleged coldness and disinterest in deeper concerns, rest assured: CBT can address both immediate symptoms and the deeper sources of your distress. Moreover, I believe that therapeutic expertise is only effective when delivered through a warm, human connection. When you arrive, I invite you to pour a cup of tea or coffee, grab a blanket, and settle into a comfy couch.
My role is to provide the clinical skills you need to change within the warmth and stability you need to heal.
Joanna
What is Cognitive Behaviour Therapy?
If you are looking for a way to manage life’s difficulties with more clarity and less suffering, you have likely come across the term Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT. It is a term that gets thrown around often, sometimes oversimplified as "positive thinking" or reduced to a set of rigid worksheets.
In reality, CBT is much more nuanced and responsive to the individual needs of the person in pain.
CBT is an umbrella term for a family of therapies rooted in a simple observation: our thoughts, emotions, body physiology, behaviours, and attention are synchronized and interact with one another. This observation changes how we approach suffering: While we cannot simply flip a switch to change our emotions—we cannot force ourselves to feel happy when we are sad or calm when we are panicked—we are not helpless. Because these components are linked, we can mitigate emotional pain by working with our thoughts, our physical sensations, our behaviours, and critically, where we focus our attention
My Background
I am a regulated health professional registered with the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers and a member of Ontario Association for Social Workers. I have been working as a clinical social worker since 1996 in a variety of settings, including emergency department/crisis intervention, inpatient psychiatry, community outreach and hospital affiliated mental health clinics. The bulk of my professional life was spent at Trillium Health Centre in Mississauga.
I have a bachelor degree in psychology from the University of Western Ontario, and a master’s degree in social work from the University of Toronto. I pursued specialization in cognitive behaviour therapy and became accredited by the Academy of Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies and the Canadian Association for Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies (CACBT-ACTCC). You can learn a lot about CBT and confirm my credentials by accessing the websites of these two organizations.
What to Expect in Therapy
Our first meeting is used to gather as much information as possible about your history, problems and strengths, as well as things that are important to you. You are likely going to be given some tests or monitoring sheets to complete before the next appointment. This is necessary for us to better understand the mechanisms that maintain your difficulties and to create a working model of what is happening in your life. Obviously, each person is different, with different life philosophies and aspirations. Yet many of us get stuck in self-reinforcing cycles of triggers, thoughts, emotions, actions and outcomes that all add up to create our lived reality. Therapy is about ensuring that your mind works for you and not against you.
Many prospective clients seek therapy to address challenges such as depression, anxiety, chronic stress, or difficulties stemming from their family of origin that impact their ability to live lives that they desire. Below, you will find links to a series of articles that provide insights into each of these concerns and describe how Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)—the approach that I specialize in—can help manage and overcome these difficulties.
Concepts and Clichés
Concepts and Clichés is a blog dedicated to exploring the real-world application of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in everyday life. This space offers practical insights, expert advice, and thought-provoking reflections tailored for both prospective and current clients and anyone else who is interested in building a deeper understanding of common concepts. Here, you’ll find accessible explanations of CBT principles, common misconceptions (“clichés”), and how these concepts can be used to navigate life’s challenges.
Anxiety and Stress Management
CBT has a solid evidence base as an effective treatment for anxiety. When working on your anxiety, you will learn to understand you triggers, replace anxious predictions with factual thinking, and to face your triggers effectively despite the initial discomfort. And no worries: We do a lot of work differentiating discomfort from dangers.
