Who We Are
Psychotherapy Practice
My experience enables me to offer effective outpatient, individualized psychological care. I treat a number of mental health disorders, and provide a neutral, safe space for individuals to engage in self-exploration and healing.
Treatment Focus
My focus is to help individuals draw on their inner strengths and work collaboratively to achieve greater insight and healing. We will attain this by working in a neutral safe space, exploring your concerns, building a strong relationship, and customizing a treatment plan for you.
Patient Promise
I promise to be there for you every step of your journey, and to work alongside you towards your own goals. My objective is to help you grow from your struggles, heal from your pain, and move forward to where you want to be.
What We Do
Anxiety and Stress
Anxiety and stress are some of the most common and uncomfortable emotions that we can experience. You may be feeling tired, overwhelmed, tense, worried, or physically unwell. Through psychotherapy, we are able to help you to recover motivation, perspective, and joy, to improve your quality of life.
Trauma
Many people can experience symptoms associated with painful and traumatic experiences in their past. Anxiety, fear, and hopelessness are a few emotions that can linger after traumatic events. Trauma can be from a single incident, or from longterm exposure to difficult circumstances. Together we can help you overcome these symptoms and guide you through the process of grief and healing.
Relationships
Psychotherapy can be beneficial to individuals who are looking to strengthen their emotional connections, in all stages and types of relationships. Therapy sessions are currently offered on an individual basis exclusively. Therapy is a supportive place to discuss issues and solutions to better strengthen your relationships.
About Me
Jenna Pattison, MEd. Registered Psychotherapist
I am a Registered Psychotherapist, and received my Master’s in Counselling Psychology from the University of Toronto. I receive regular clinical supervision from a Registered Psychotherapist.
I am registered with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO) and am a general member of the Ontario Association of Mental Health Professionals (OAMHP). I am governed by both the CRPO and the OAMHP's Code of Ethics.
I have worked in mental health for the past 6 years, in Counselling Centres, The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Distress Lines, and University Settings. My areas of special training and experience include working with survivors of trauma, relationship issues, and anxiety.
I am described by others as warm, supportive, and professional. I am deeply passionate about helping others to gain the skills and insight they need to improve their quality of life. Through my personal and professional experiences in the mental health field, I have gained respect and understanding for the power of psychotherapy in enacting change and personal development.
I am particularly drawn to helping those who have a history of trauma, anxiety, and relationship issues. I am committed to professional development, and continuing to learn and grow my expertise.
Our Treatment Approaches
The Integrative Approach
Integrative Therapy is a philosophy of psychotherapy which draws on several different approaches when treating clients, depending on the specific needs and context. The therapeutic approaches I draw on the most are Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT), Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Narrative Therapy, and Mindfulness.
Emotion-Focused Therapy
Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) uses methods designed to help people accept, express, regulate, make sense of and transform emotion. EFT focuses on the development of emotional intelligence and on the importance of secure relationships. Learning about emotions is not enough; instead, what is needed is for clients to experience those emotions as they arise in the safety of the therapy session.
With the help of the therapist's empathic understanding and the use of experiential methods, clients learn how to make healthy contact with feelings, memories, thoughts, and physical sensations that have been ignored or feared and avoided. By accessing adaptive emotions such as healthy grief, empowering anger, and compassion, people are able to use these as resources to transform maladaptive emotions such as fear, sadness of abandonment and shame of inadequacy that have developed from past negative learning or traumatic experiences.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) helps people to develop skills and strategies for becoming and staying healthy. It focuses on the here-and-now, on the problems that come up in day-to-day life. CBT helps people to examine how they make sense of what is happening around them and how these perceptions affect the way they feel.
CBT is structured, is problem-focused and goal-oriented, teaches strategies and skills, is based on a proactive, shared therapeutic relationship between therapist and client. In CBT, clients learn to identify, question and change the thoughts, attitudes and beliefs related to the emotional and behavioural reactions that cause them difficulty. By monitoring and recording thoughts during upsetting situations, people learn that how they think can contribute to emotional problems such as depression and anxiety.
Narrative Therapy
Narrative therapy is a collaborative and non-pathologizing approach to psychotherapy, which considers people to be the experts of their own lives. A narrative approach views problems as separate from people, and assumes people have many skills, abilities, values, commitments, beliefs and competencies that will assist them to change their relationship with the problems influencing their lives. It considers the broader context of people's lives particularly in the various dimensions of diversity including class, race, gender, sexual orientation and ability.
We work together in resisting the effects and influences of problem stories. The focus is on co-discovering the hopeful, preferred, and previously unrecognized and hidden possibilities and unseen story-lines, collaborating in ‘re-authoring’ the stories of your life.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is based on Buddhist principles, and can help you learn to quiet your mind. It can help you learn to accept your feelings without being overwhelmed by them. It can help you stay focused in the moment so that you can appreciate and enjoy the richness of your experience. When you learn and practice mindfulness skills your calmness and mental control can improve significantly.
Mindfulness therapy can involve learning and practicing various meditation or breathing techniques that can help with distressing thoughts or feelings, or learning about different philosophies that can help get us out of “stuck” mindsets, improving self-esteem and our interpersonal relationships. Mindfulness is often combined with CBT as part of a larger treatment plan.