frequently asked questions

“Fit” is important any time you begin working with a new therapist. At Transforming Emotions, our intake processes are intentionally designed to help us match you with the team member best suited to your unique needs. We take into account the nature of what brings you in to seek assistance, the severity of any symptoms you may be experiencing, your wishes related to the intersecting identities of your therapist, and a given therapist’s training and years of experience.

If you do not feel comfortable speaking frankly with your care provider in the first few sessions, the fit may not be right for you. If, however, you begin to feel uncomfortable after a period of working well with your care provider, it is important to name and address this discomfort directly. Doing so is likely to create opportunities to identify and change patterns in how you manage emotions within relationships.

Yes we do!

We believe that the fit between client and therapist is a central part of getting the help you need and deserve.

During the complimentary consultation, the following concerns will be addressed:

• The reasons you are seeking therapy and your hopes for treatment,
• Fees,
• Screening questions related to certain kinds of past experiences, current symptoms, and behaviours to assist us in recommending the most appropriate match with a therapist. If you prefer not to speak to a team member by phone, we can send you a password-protected questionnaire to assist us in finding the best match.

• Whether you are coming in as an individual, or as a couple, we will talk in-depth about your current challenges and the experiences that have led to this point in your life. We will work with you to develop a shared understanding of what is happening in your life, how your current situation has come to be, and our plan to help you to move forward. Then, we will begin to actively address the concerns that have brought you into therapy, aiming to begin processes of transformation.
• It is not uncommon for clients to feel a bit worse before they feel better – after all, facing difficult emotions seldom feels good. However, in our experience, facing our challenges and difficulties head on is where we need to begin to work towards helping you make sustainable changes in your life.

The duration of therapy varies widely depending upon an individual’s or couple’s concerns and desired outcomes. Therapy duration can vary from a few sessions for challenges that have arisen recently, to one or more years for symptoms stemming from significant neglect or trauma earlier in life. In research settings, treatments of 16 sessions have resulted in improvements in depression, anxiety, and trauma symptoms in the majority of clients.

Yes! TE was founded by a queer therapist, and we have counsellors who self-identify as members of the 2SLGBT2QIA+ communities. All therapists providing services through Transforming Emotions are committed to respectful and responsible queer-positive service care.

Yes! We do have counsellors who self-identify as members of racialized communities providing services.

Given realities of anti-Black racism, racism towards Indigenous community members, and the impacts on lived experience of systemic racism, racial microaggressions, and colonialism, we are committed to increasing the diversity of our counselling team.

All therapists providing services through Transforming Emotions are committed to working in ways that are mindful, respectful, and validating of diverse and intersecting identities and to creating safe space to explore and address the negative impacts of systemic racism.

Our two in-person spaces do require navigation of short flights of stairs. All counsellors also provide virtual care. If you require specific accommodation, please notify our administrative assistant so that way may respond to your specific inquiry.

All of us will feel stressed, a little down, ‘blue’, tired, burnt out, or fatigued from time to time. These are important signals that we are out of balance and may need more rest, more time with loved ones, more of some foods or beverages and less of others, or more movement for our bodies. While people often say they are depressed during stressful periods, true depression is very different from life’s typical ups and downs.

You may be depressed if you feel sad, guilty, or irritable most of the day every day for a period of two weeks or more and this is happening outside a period mourning. Depression also typically involves changes in how your body is responding on a daily basis. You might notice changes in appetite (either higher or lower), changes in sleep (a lot more or a lot less), lower sex drive, or a noticeable loss of interest in activities you used to find pleasurable. You might experience a significant loss of energy, or feel guilty or worthless much of the time. In more serious cases, you may notice that your speech or movements are slower, may have trouble with memory or concentration, or may have thoughts of ending your life.

You may notice that many of the above symptoms can also be caused by other conditions. If you think you may be depressed, the first step is to reach out to your physical healthcare provider for a check up to rule out any underlying physical causes for changes in mood, behaviour, or physical functioning. Typically, your doctor will request some bloodwork to rule out challenges with blood sugar, thyroid, heart-related concerns, and possibly hormones. If there no underlying physical causes for the changes your are experiencing are found, it’s time for a mental health check-up.

Whether you are experiencing an increase in stress, a period of low mood, or true depression, psychologists are trained to assess for and diagnose depression. Psychologists, social workers, and psychotherapists are all trained to use psychotherapy to treat conditions including depression.

If you have more serious symptoms, clinician training matters. We recommend that you look for a psychologist, a mental healthcare provider with five or more years of experience following the end of their Master’s degree, or a more recent graduate who routinely meets with a registered or licenced clinical supervisor.

We all get nervous or stressed from time to time. In fact, stress is a natural and often healthy response to our environment and helps us to know what most needs our attention.

While there are many forms of anxiety, they tend to have a few features in common. These include:

• A focus on future events that have not happened yet. These might be worries about the future, fears of how others may judge me when I see them or if I do something, or fears that bad things may happen if I don’t follow prescribed rituals or routines.
• Changes in heartbeat, breathing, muscle tension, and thought patterns when the anxiety is active.
• You may feel nervous, restless, tense, or like your heart is pounding.
• You may have sense of dread, panic, or impending danger.
• In some cases, you may notice sweating, shaking, or trouble with your digestive system.
• It may be hard to concentrate on anything other than your present worries. Racing thoughts may even make it hard to sleep.
• You may want to avoid the things that make you anxious, even if the cost of avoiding those things is high.
• Symptoms of anxiety tends to linger – even if the content of the specific thoughts change.

For example, a common stress response might include an increase in thoughts of an upcoming interview as the deadline comes closer. I might realize how much I want this job, and understand that to maximize my performance, I need to research the company, anticipate interview questions, and prepare for possible answers. I may feel less stress when actively preparing for the interview because I’m attending to the stressor and am preparing appropriately. After the interview, I may expect to feel more relaxed – whatever the outcome, the stressor has come to an end.

In anxiety, when one stressor ends, another one tends to begin immediately with a common pattern of worry or fear across different areas of my life. For example, I might feel terribly anxious that I’ll humiliate myself at a future interview. While trying to prepare, I may be distracted by assumptions that I will fail. After the interview, I may begin to notice worries about the quality of my marriage, an aspect of my health, what my children are up to, or whether or not my friends and family actually love me. In anxiety, it is the process of fear-inducing thoughts that is a constant. It’s also a sign that help is needed.

If you think you may be suffering from persistent anxiety, the first step is to reach out to your physical healthcare provider for a check up to rule out any underlying physical causes for changes in stress, thoughts, behaviour, or physical functioning. Typically, your doctor will request some bloodwork to rule out challenges with thyroid, lung- or heart-related concerns, and possibly hormones. If no underlying physical causes for the changes you are experiencing are found, it’s time for a mental health check-up.

Whether you are experiencing an increase in stress or symptoms of an anxiety disorder, psychologists are trained to assess for and diagnose a wide range of conditions including generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), social anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and others. Psychologists, social workers, and psychotherapists are all trained to use psychotherapy to treat conditions including anxiety.

If you have more serious symptoms, clinician training matters. We recommend that you look for a psychologist, a mental healthcare provider with five or more years of experience following the end of their Master’s degree, or a more recent graduate who routinely meets with a registered or licenced clinical supervisor.

In our opinion, it’s never too early to see a couple’s therapist! Some couples wait until their relationship is in crisis to ask for help. While marriage or couples counselling can certainly be helpful in a crisis, the work is harder.

Think of a ship crossing the ocean. If the ship starts its journey slightly off course, by the time it travels 1000s of kilometers, it may arrive in a completely different country than was intended. Correcting course at the end is like travelling from Ireland to Portugal. It takes a lot more energy to travel that additional distance than it would have to just turn the bow of the boat a few degrees when leaving the shores of Canada!

Early in a relationship, a marriage or couples counsellor can help explore topics that tend to be important in many relationships: how to divide labour at home, where you wish to live long-term, how to make financial decisions, when or whether to have children, child-rearing practices, the importance of faith, and a variety of other issues. A good couple’s therapist can also help couples build strong bonds, develop effective communication skills, and understand how each partner’s past informs their present so that partners learn to come together rather than pulling apart during periods of challenge. A short course of couple’s counselling at the beginning of a serious relationship can help make sure you are charting the right course!

If you have been in a long-term relationship and are now feeling unhappy, unloved, resentful, have experienced a betrayal in the relationship, or are contemplating separation or divorce, it’s not too late to ask for help! If this describes your relationship, we believe it is important to work with an experienced couple’s or marriage therapist, or one who meets regularly with an experienced supervisor. Making sustained changes to improve your relationship or to heal old wounds also takes time. While many couples will begin to notice changes within a few sessions, the duration of couples counselling tends to be related to how motivated and engaged each partner is in working to make the relationship better.

Psychological care is not covered by OHIP. Fees range according to a practitioner’s training and experience:

• $80-120/hour for a therapist in their first or second year of training in a Master’s degree program. All students are supervised by an experienced psychologist or social worker.
• $175-$200/hour for therapists completing their doctoral degree in psychology. All students are supervised by a registered psychologist.
• $165-$215/hour for registered psychotherapists or registered social workers depending upon their years of experience.
• $235-$285/hour for clinical psychologists depending upon their years of experience.

All therapists have some capacity for sliding scale fees.

Many private extended health insurance plans cover meetings with a registered psychologist, social worker, or psychotherapist, up to a defined limit. If you are unclear about your coverage, contact your insurance provider to ask about details for your coverage including if there is a fee cap (in total, or per session), and to clarify whether coverage extends to:

• Registered psychologists, social workers, or psychotherapists
• Student therapists who are being supervised by a registered health care provider.

Since alternative bookings are unlikely at short notice, our policy is to charge full fees for missed appointments and cancellations made with less than 24 hours notice.

Payment is expected at the end of each session and may be made by e-transfer to welcome@transformingemotions.ca or by credit card. You may upload a credit card to your client account on OWL Practice Solutions at any time if you wish your card to be automatically charged for sessions.

You will be provided with a receipt that may be used to access extended healthcare coverage. Please note that if you use up the amount of money allotted for psychological services by your plan, further therapy expenses may be eligible to be claimed on your income tax, as a medical expense.

In the province of Ontario, Psychologists, Psychological Associates, and Social Workers are not required to collect HST for their services. Registered Psychotherapists are required to collect and remit HST, although this is expected to change in 2024.

Stripe and OWL Practice Solutions have partnered to ensure that your personal information is protected when you use your credit card to make payments at Transforming Emotions.

We do not store your credit card information outside of our OWL Practice Solutions health record. The credit card details are submitted to Stripe via secure real-time API call. Not even our team members have access to your credit card details in full. The team only can see the last 4 digits of the number you provide.

For further details, visit:
https://knowledge.owlpractice.ca/knowledge/stripe-integrated-payments-with-owl

Info coming soon!

Sessions are typically 50-55 minutes long and are billed at an hourly rate. This allows your therapist to have some time to complete required clinical notes following their session with you.

85-minute sessions are available during periods of more intensive psychotherapy work.

David McNeill, MSW, RSW, (Bloor and Euclid, Toronto) and Scott Pope, MA, RP (Cabbagetown, Toronto) offer in-person sessions at this time. While all other clinicians remain virtual at this time, we are seeking to open additional in-person offices in Fall 2024. Stay tuned for updates!

Yes we do!

To attend a virtual session, you will require access to a private space where you can be alone for your session, an internet connection with sufficient bandwidth to allow a video call, and a device with a camera and microphone.

Our video platform, OWL Practice Solutions, performs best using Chrome as your browser.

To maximize your privacy during an online session, please consider the following:

• Situating yourself in a room with a closed door.
• If others are present in your home, consider playing music or TV outside the room you are in to mask the sound of your voice.
• Using headphones will prevent others from hearing your therapist’s responses.
• All therapists will be working from a space where your voice will not be overheard by others in their vicinity.
• If it is avoidable that others are in your physical space during your session, please notify your therapist. Your therapist may recommend changes in your typical format or topics of discussion in order to support your well-being while taking into account the well-being of those in your environment.

We welcome any questions you may have about our policies and practices in maintaining your privacy and confidentiality.

We provide virtual sessions through a platform called Owl Video Therapy, with servers located exclusively in Canada. Owl Video Therapy is compliant with PHIPA (the Personal Health Information Protection Act) and uses encryption to protect your data while it is being transmitted and stored.

We respect your privacy and the confidentiality of all material that you share with your counsellor. We gather and store information related to your care, including identifying information and session notes describing our work together in order to provide you with the highest quality of care. All personal health information is collected, stored, and destroyed in compliance with Ontario’s Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA).

In some situations, we may need to be in contact with your health care providers in order to establish a Circle of Care and provide you with coordinated services. In these circumstances, and in accordance with PHIPA, we will share with your health care provider(s) only such information as is necessary for your assessment or treatment. However, you may at any time expressly request that we not share specific information with a particular care provider.
There are exceptions when we may need to breach confidentiality:

1) If you advise us that you intend to harm yourself or another person in the immediate future.

2) If there is a reasonable suspicion that a child (any individual up to their 16th birthday) is at risk of emotional and/or physical neglect or emotional, physical and/or sexual abuse, we are required by law to report this to the Children’s Aid Society immediately.

3) If you are involved in a court case and the judge thinks that counselling history is relevant to the case, your file may be subpoenaed.

4) If you have a complaint about a regulated health professional (including, but not limited to: doctor, nurse, psychologist, chiropractor, or massage therapist) with respect to inappropriate sexual behaviour towards you, and you provide us with that individual’s name, we are required to report this complaint to their regulatory body.

5) The Long Term Homes Act, Retirement Homes Act, and Residential Homes Act require mandatory reporting of all suspected physical, sexual, emotional, verbal, and financial abuse of a resident.

6) The Missing Persons Act gives police the ability to obtain information about a missing person after reasonable efforts have not enabled them to locate the person. If the police present an Order or a Search Warrant from a judge or justice of the peace or an Urgent Demand in writing, a Psychologist is required to provide file information about that missing person.

You have the right to access your own file. Should you wish to do so, or should you have questions or complaints related to how your personal information is managed at Transforming Emotions, you may contact Dr. Sarah Thompson via welcome.transformingemotions@gmail.com to express your concerns, or to request a time to speak. You may also contact the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario at https://www.ipc.on.ca/privacy-individuals/filing-a-privacy-complaint/.