Online therapy in Eastern Ontario

I work in English

Early rather than late. Much of this part of the province is served in both English and French, and in Ottawa, through Prescott and Russell, and along the river towards Cornwall you may be used to being asked which you would prefer. I work in English only. If French is the language you want for this, that is a reasonable thing to want, and you will be better served by a therapist who offers it. The College keeps a public register of everyone registered in Ontario, which is a sound place to start looking.

Therapy in a second language is harder than people expect. The words for what happened to you are often in the language you were a child in, and translating while you are feeling it costs something. If English is the language you think in, or one you are entirely comfortable in, we are fine.

Confidentiality when you hold a clearance

Ottawa’s working population is thick with public servants, contractors and people attached to the military, and Pembroke sits next door to Garrison Petawawa. The reason people here put therapy off is often neither the money nor the stigma. It is the file. The worry is that a record exists somewhere, that someone can pull it, and that it will come back at the next renewal.

I can tell you what I control. Your record is mine, kept to the College’s requirements. Sessions are by secure video and are not recorded. I do not report to your employer, and I will not confirm to anyone who asks that you are a client of mine. Nothing leaves here without your written consent, with the narrow exceptions every regulated therapist in Ontario works under: a risk of serious harm, a child at risk, a court order, an inspection by the College. I go through those with you at the start instead of leaving them buried in a form.

What I cannot tell you is how your own organisation handles self-reporting, because that is their policy and not mine. If a condition of your clearance requires you to declare something, read the wording yourself and ask your own people. In the meantime, do not let an unanswered question about paperwork be the reason you go another year without help.

Kingston is a city people pass through

Queen’s, St. Lawrence College, the Royal Military College, the hospitals and the federal institutions: a great deal of Kingston is here for a degree, a posting or a contract. Therapy that depends on being physically in Kingston ends when the posting does. That is a genuine reason people start this work here and then stop, often part way through the part that was going to help.

Inside Ontario that problem disappears. If you move from Kingston to Ottawa, or out to Belleville, nothing about the sessions changes. You do have to be physically in Ontario while a session is running, so if you are posted out of the province, tell me the date as soon as you know it and we will shape the work around it rather than stopping in the middle.

The towns along the river

Brockville, Cornwall, Belleville and Pembroke are each their own place, and the thing they have in common is that a trauma-trained therapist may be an hour of highway away. General counselling exists locally. Weekly EMDR or somatic work sustained over months is thinner, and the people who do it fill up. Working online widens the choice from whoever has a room in your county to everyone registered in the province.

It is also worth checking what your benefits actually cover before you book anything. Plans in this part of the province are often better than people assume and go unused for years. Read the wording for the profession rather than for the word therapy: some plans cover a Registered Psychotherapist, and some only cover a psychologist.