FAQs

Most insurance plans provide some coverage for counselling, but they often specify which set of credentials they will cover. Check with your insurance plan to see whether you are covered for a Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC) or Canadian Certified Counsellor (CCC). Make sure you find out what is your total coverage for the year. Do they pay for the full session fee or is there a limit to what they will cover for each session? Do your benefits renew on January 1st or on another date?

If you can’t make your appointment time, please let me know within 24 hours of your appointment time. This will allow someone else to potentially fill that slot. If you cancel with less than 24 hours, you will be responsible for paying for that session.

In most cases, no. There are lots of roads that lead to Rome, but if we try to take two of them at once, we’ll never get there. If you are working on your mental and emotional health with two practitioners at the same time, not only might you end up really tired, you might end up confused and eventually prefer one over the other. If you are also engaging in different types of therapy at this time, make sure that you discuss this with your counsellor to see if it’s a conflict.

Oooh, that’s the million-dollar question. The therapist answer is “as long as it takes.” But that’s kind of a cheap answer, isn’t it? Many counsellors will talk about therapy lasting for 8-10 sessions. Perhaps, just maybe we’ll only see each other for that long. Some issues can work that way. But for most, it will probably take longer than that. It seems a little rosy to me to think that most people can make a deep, lasting, meaningful shift in their lives in just a little over two months. Right? We use excellent trauma tools, which are powerful and faster than most therapies, but they are still not magical.

Plan to spend at least three months with your therapist, coming for weekly or bi-weekly appointments. By then, you and your therapist should have a decent idea of how deeply you want to work and how much longer therapy might take. If you have a sense that you did not get what you needed from your parents in terms of nurturing and emotional or physical safety, then therapy might take closer to 12 months or more. I know that can seem really long, but compared to the number of years you will have left to finally enjoy life, it’s just a drop in the bucket.

There are also lots of people who need to come and just sit with their therapist for months before they really begin to look at the pain. This is legit. Some pain is actually that big. No one is making it up. If this is you, no worries. We’ll take whatever time you need. It’s going to be better when we can hold that pain together, and you deserve time to trust that your therapist will stick with you in it.