Conditions We Treat in Ottawa & Westboro
Virtually Across Ontario
Life brings challenges that can feel overwhelming – whether you’re struggling with anxiety that won’t quiet down, navigating a difficult transition, or noticing patterns in your relationships that keep repeating. Our Registered Psychotherapists in Ottawa’s Westboro neighborhood work with people facing a wide range of mental health concerns, offering evidence-based approaches tailored to what you’re experiencing.
We provide therapy both in-person and virtually across Ontario, with bilingual services available in English and French.
ADHD
ADHD doesn’t just mean difficulty focusing – it shows up in how you manage time, regulate emotions, maintain relationships, and navigate daily responsibilities.
What it looks like:
You might lose track of time regularly, start multiple projects without finishing them, or feel constantly overwhelmed by tasks that seem simple to others. Emotional regulation can be challenging – reactions might feel bigger than the situation warrants, or you find yourself stuck in loops of frustration or rejection sensitivity. Many adults with ADHD describe feeling like they’re working twice as hard as everyone else just to keep up, which often leads to exhaustion and self-doubt.
How therapy helps:
Therapy for ADHD focuses on building systems that work with your brain rather than against it. You’ll develop practical strategies for organization, time management, and emotional regulation. We help you understand how ADHD affects your specific life circumstances – whether that’s work performance, relationships, or self-esteem – and create tools that actually fit your reality. Many clients also work through the shame or frustration that’s built up from years of feeling “behind” or “not enough.”
This might resonate if you:
- Struggle with procrastination despite caring deeply about your responsibilities
- Feel like you’re constantly playing catch-up or forgetting important things
- Notice your emotions shift quickly or intensely
- Have difficulty maintaining focus on tasks that don’t immediately engage you
- Experience rejection sensitivity or take criticism harder than you’d like
- Find yourself starting many projects but rarely finishing them
Approaches that can help: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) | Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) | Motivational Interviewing
ANXIETY
Anxiety is your nervous system working overtime, trying to protect you from threats that often aren’t as dangerous as they feel.
What it looks like:
Anxiety shows up differently for everyone – racing thoughts at 3am, that tight feeling in your chest before meetings, avoiding situations that used to feel manageable, or constantly playing out worst-case scenarios in your head. You might find yourself overpreparing for everything, seeking reassurance repeatedly, or struggling to make decisions because of “what if” thoughts. Physical symptoms like tension headaches, digestive issues, or difficulty sleeping often accompany the mental worry.
How therapy helps:
Therapy helps you understand what triggers your anxiety and develop tools to respond differently. You’ll learn to recognize when your nervous system is reacting to perceived threats versus actual danger, and practice techniques to calm your body and challenge anxious thoughts. We work on building tolerance for uncertainty, reducing avoidance behaviors, and creating a life that isn’t controlled by worry. The goal isn’t to eliminate anxiety completely – it’s to change your relationship with it so it doesn’t run your life
This might resonate if you:
- Experience constant worry that’s hard to turn off
- Avoid certain situations, places, or people because of anxiety
- Notice physical symptoms like racing heart, shortness of breath, or tension
- Struggle with perfectionism or fear of making mistakes
- Have panic attacks or intense waves of fear
- Find yourself overthinking decisions or seeking constant reassurance
Approaches that can help: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) | Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) | EMDR Therapy | Attachment Therapy
BURNOUT & CAREER CHALLENGES
Burnout happens when you’ve been running on empty for too long, and career challenges can leave you questioning your path, your worth, or what you’re working toward.
What it looks like:
Burnout often creeps up gradually – you might notice you’re exhausted even after rest, cynical about work that used to matter to you, or feeling ineffective despite working harder than ever. Career challenges can include feeling stuck in the wrong role, struggling with difficult workplace dynamics, dealing with imposter syndrome, or facing major decisions about your professional direction. Many high-achievers describe feeling like they “should” be grateful or successful, which makes the dissatisfaction even harder to admit.
How therapy helps:
Therapy creates space to examine what’s actually happening beneath the surface – whether that’s boundary issues, perfectionism, misalignment with your values, or unresolved patterns from past experiences. You’ll work on identifying what needs to change (which might be your situation, your approach, or both), setting boundaries that protect your wellbeing, and reconnecting with what actually matters to you. For career transitions or decisions, we help you clarify your values and navigate uncertainty without getting paralyzed by it.
This might resonate if you:
- Feel emotionally and physically exhausted despite “doing everything right”
- Notice you’ve become cynical or detached from work you used to care about
- Struggle with imposter syndrome or feeling like a fraud
- Have difficulty setting boundaries between work and personal life
- Feel trapped in your current role but unsure how to move forward
- Experience Sunday night dread or anxiety about the week ahead
Approaches that can help: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) | Motivational Interviewing | Internal Family Systems (IFS)
DEPRESSION
Depression is more than just sadness – it’s a persistent heaviness that affects how you experience everything, from your energy levels to your sense of hope.
What it looks like:
Depression can feel like moving through mud, where even small tasks require enormous effort. You might notice changes in sleep (too much or too little), appetite, or ability to feel pleasure in things that used to bring joy. Many people describe feeling numb, empty, or disconnected rather than traditionally “sad.” Negative thoughts about yourself, your life, or your future can become constant background noise. Some days might feel manageable while others feel impossible, and the unpredictability itself can be exhausting.
How therapy helps:
Therapy for depression addresses both the symptoms you’re experiencing now and the underlying patterns keeping you stuck. You’ll work on challenging the negative thought cycles, rebuilding activities that create meaning or pleasure, and understanding what might be contributing to your depression – whether that’s past experiences, current stressors, relationship dynamics, or brain chemistry. We help you develop tools to manage difficult days while also working toward deeper shifts in how you relate to yourself and your life.
This might resonate if you:
- Feel persistently sad, empty, or hopeless
- Have lost interest in activities you used to enjoy
- Experience changes in sleep, appetite, or energy levels
- Struggle with feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt
- Find it hard to concentrate or make decisions
- Have thoughts about not wanting to be here anymore (if you’re in crisis, please call 988 or go to your nearest emergency room)
Approaches that can help: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) | Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) | Attachment Therapy | Internal Family Systems (IFS)
FAMILY DYNAMICS
Family dynamics shape how you relate to others, handle conflict, and see yourself – and sometimes those patterns need examining or shifting.
What it looks like:
Difficult family dynamics can include feeling responsible for everyone’s emotions, struggling with boundaries between yourself and family members, navigating toxic or narcissistic behavior, or dealing with the aftermath of growing up in a dysfunctional household. You might find yourself falling into old roles when you’re around family – the caretaker, the peacekeeper, the scapegoat – even when you’ve built a different life elsewhere. Adult children often grapple with how to maintain relationships with family members while protecting their own wellbeing.
How therapy helps:
Therapy helps you understand the patterns you learned in your family of origin and how they show up in your current life. You’ll work on setting boundaries that feel right for you (which might range from closer engagement with better limits to creating distance for self-preservation), processing complicated feelings about family members, and breaking cycles you don’t want to repeat. We create space for the reality that you can love your family and still need to protect yourself from them, or that grieving what you didn’t get doesn’t mean you’re ungrateful for what you did.
This might resonate if you:
- Feel drained or anxious after family interactions
- Struggle to set or maintain boundaries with family members
- Notice you fall into old patterns or roles around family
- Grew up in a household with addiction, mental illness, or dysfunction
- Feel caught between your own needs and family expectations
- Want to break patterns before starting your own family
Approaches that can help: Attachment Therapy | Internal Family Systems (IFS) | Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) | Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
GRIEF & LOSS
Grief isn’t linear, and it’s not just about death – it’s about any significant loss that changes the landscape of your life.
What it looks like:
Grief can show up as waves of intense emotion that hit when you least expect them, numbness that makes you wonder if you’re “doing it wrong,” or a persistent ache that colors everything. You might be grieving the death of someone you love, the end of a relationship, a miscarriage or infertility, the loss of a job or identity, or even the life you thought you’d have. People around you might expect you to “move on” or “get closure,” but grief doesn’t follow a timeline or neat stages. Some days you function fine; other days even breathing feels hard.
How therapy helps:
Therapy provides a space where your grief doesn’t have to be neat or resolved. We help you navigate the complicated emotions that come with loss – not just sadness, but anger, guilt, relief, confusion, or even numbness. You’ll work on making meaning of your loss without rushing to “get over it,” finding ways to honor what you’ve lost while still engaging with life, and processing the ways grief has changed you. For complicated grief (including ambiguous loss or grief that feels stuck), we use approaches that help you move through what’s keeping you frozen.
This might resonate if you:
- Experience waves of intense emotion related to a loss
- Feel guilty about moving forward or finding moments of joy
- Notice grief is affecting your ability to function in daily life
- Are grieving a loss others don’t recognize or validate
- Feel stuck in your grief or unable to process what happened
- Struggle with the anniversary of a loss or specific triggers
Approaches that can help: EMDR Therapy | Internal Family Systems (IFS) | Attachment Therapy | Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
LIFE TRANSITIONS
Even positive changes can be disorienting – transitions force you to let go of one version of your life before you’re fully settled into the next.
What it looks like:
Life transitions might include becoming a parent, navigating empty nest, career changes, moving to a new city, retirement, divorce, or major health changes. Even when these transitions are chosen and wanted, they often come with unexpected grief, identity questions, or stress. You might feel like you “should” be handling it better, especially if the change was something you pursued. The gap between who you were and who you’re becoming can feel uncomfortable, even when you’re moving in the right direction.
How therapy helps:
Therapy helps you navigate the in-between space of transitions without rushing through it or getting stuck. You’ll work on processing what you’re leaving behind (even the parts you wanted to leave), exploring who you’re becoming, and building skills for the challenges this new phase brings. We create room for mixed feelings – excitement and grief, relief and anxiety – without needing to resolve them into one neat emotion. You’ll also identify patterns from past transitions that might be showing up now and develop strategies that serve you better.
This might resonate if you:
- Feel disoriented or unsettled despite choosing this change
- Notice your identity feels unclear or in flux
- Grieve aspects of your old life even while embracing the new
- Feel pressure to adapt faster than feels natural
- Struggle with the loss of familiar routines or relationships
- Question decisions you’ve made about major life changes
Approaches that can help: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) | Motivational Interviewing | Attachment Therapy | Internal Family Systems (IFS)
PARENTING
Parenting brings up everything – your own childhood, your fears, your capacity for patience, and questions about what kind of parent you want to be.
What it looks like:
Parenting challenges can include feeling overwhelmed by the constant demands, struggling with anger or guilt about how you’re showing up, navigating your child’s behavioral or emotional difficulties, co-parenting conflicts, or noticing you’re repeating patterns from your own upbringing that you swore you’d never repeat. You might feel isolated, judged, or like everyone else has it figured out while you’re barely holding it together. Many parents describe the gap between the parent they want to be and the parent they are on hard days, and that gap can feel devastating.
How therapy helps:
Therapy helps you understand what’s triggering your reactions, develop tools for regulation when you’re at your limit, and break cycles you don’t want to pass on. We work on realistic expectations (because Instagram parenting isn’t real), boundaries that protect your wellbeing while meeting your children’s needs, and strategies for specific challenges you’re facing. If you’re healing from your own childhood while trying to parent, we create space for both – processing your experiences while building the parenting approach you want. You’ll also work on self-compassion, because beating yourself up doesn’t help anyone.
This might resonate if you:
- Feel triggered by your children’s behavior in ways that surprise you
- Struggle with anger, yelling, or reactions you later regret
- Notice patterns from your own childhood showing up in your parenting
- Feel overwhelmed, isolated, or like you’re failing
- Want to parent differently than you were parented but aren’t sure how
- Experience conflicts with a co-parent about approaches or boundaries
Approaches that can help: Attachment Therapy | Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) | Internal Family Systems (IFS) | Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
RELATIONSHIP ISSUES
Relationship struggles aren’t a sign you’ve chosen the wrong person – they’re often invitations to understand yourself and your patterns more deeply.
What it looks like:
Relationship issues can show up as recurring arguments that never get resolved, feeling disconnected even when you’re together, struggling with trust or intimacy, patterns of pursuing or withdrawing, resentment that’s built up over time, or discovering you keep choosing similar partners with similar problems. You might feel stuck between staying and leaving, exhausted by conflict, or lonely despite being in a relationship. Some relationship struggles are about the partnership itself; others are about patterns you bring from past experiences or your family of origin.
How therapy helps:
Therapy helps you understand the patterns driving your relationship struggles – whether those are communication issues, unmet attachment needs, unresolved past experiences showing up in present dynamics, or incompatibilities that need addressing. For couples, we work on understanding your negative cycles, expressing needs more effectively, and rebuilding connection and trust. For individuals navigating relationship questions, therapy creates clarity about what you want, what’s workable, and what patterns you need to shift regardless of whether you stay or go.
This might resonate if you:
- Feel stuck in the same arguments or patterns
- Notice one person pursuing while the other withdraws
- Struggle with trust, jealousy, or insecurity in relationships
- Find yourself attracted to emotionally unavailable people
- Feel more like roommates than partners
- Question whether to stay in or leave a relationship
Approaches that can help: Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) | Gottman Method | Attachment Therapy | Internal Family Systems (IFS)
TRAUMA
Trauma isn’t just about what happened – it’s about what’s still happening inside you because of what happened.
What it looks like:
Trauma can stem from a single incident (like an assault, accident, or sudden loss) or from ongoing experiences (like childhood abuse, neglect, domestic violence, or living in unsafe conditions). It shows up as flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance, emotional numbness, difficulty trusting others, or feeling disconnected from your body. You might avoid reminders of what happened, experience intense reactions to triggers, or notice your nervous system is stuck in survival mode even when you’re physically safe. Trauma also affects your sense of self – many people describe feeling fundamentally changed by what they experienced.
How therapy helps:
Trauma therapy focuses on helping your nervous system understand that the danger has passed, processing memories so they’re less intrusive, and rebuilding a sense of safety in your body and relationships. We use approaches specifically designed for trauma that don’t require you to relive experiences in detail. You’ll work on grounding techniques for managing triggers, understanding how trauma has affected your life and relationships, and gradually reclaiming parts of yourself that got lost or frozen. Healing from trauma isn’t about forgetting – it’s about integrating what happened so it doesn’t control your present.
This might resonate if you:
- Experience flashbacks, nightmares, or intrusive thoughts about past events
- Feel hypervigilant or constantly on edge
- Have difficulty trusting others or forming close relationships
- Notice you dissociate, zone out, or disconnect from your body
- Avoid places, people, or situations that remind you of trauma
- Experienced childhood abuse, neglect, or other adverse experiences that still affect you
Approaches that can help: EMDR Therapy | Internal Family Systems (IFS) | Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) | Attachment Therapy