kingston & across ontario
Virtual Therapy
FOR helping professionals & ADULTS healing trauma, RELATIONships & anxiety
You are not broken. You are having a normal response to a human experience.
Maybe you learnt to suppress your feelings to feel accepted as a child. Maybe you had to override your bodily instincts to get through a challenging experience. But past ‘solutions’ often become present ‘problems’; what was once a brilliant survival mechanism can become a cyclonic pattern that we do not know how to escape. It can leave us feeling either overwhelmed or completely numb, alone in our suffering and disconnected from our ‘true’ self.
Attachment research has taught us that deep healing happens in safe, caring relationships with a wise other. That is my role in your life: to hold hope, to care unconditionally, to lead and guide you through your healing journey. When we do not receive this from our parents, partners, or friends, it can impact how you we see ourselves, others and the world. The therapeutic relationship is fertile soil where healing and new beginnings can take root and grow.
My Specialities
Trauma & PTSD
Trauma is often stored in the body, and not something we can just think our way out of. Through a mind-body approach, experiential therapy can help you find relief from fear and limiting thoughts, build healthier relationships, and feel safe in your body again. The wound of trauma runs deep, yet the potential for healing can profoundly liberate us.
Anxiety
If it feels like your life is being hijacked by anxiety, I can help you get underneath your symptoms to the root cause of your anxiety. By understanding why your nervous system is being activated in the first place, we can untangle those patterns through practical techniques and deep self-compassion, so that you can enjoy more peace, ease, and agency.
Relational Issues
Relationships have the power to bring out the best and the worst in us. They can reopen our earliest wounds, leading to intense conflict and loneliness. Experiential therapy can uncover how our childhood attachments impact our current relationships, along with helping us set boundaries, build trust, and create healthier, more fulfilling connections.
Helping Professionals
I strive to support those who give so much of themselves in the service of others, be it as educators, first responders, health care providers, or military veterans. If you are experiencing burnout, emotional strain, self-doubt, or compassion fatigue, know that this is a safe space to share without judgement while taking care of yourself.
My Approach
I use an experiential approach to therapy.
In contrast to more cognitive-behavioural approaches, experiential therapy goes beyond the thinking mind into the hidden chambers of the psyche, where old stories, unprocessed emotions, and forgotten needs still live. By slowing down and entering these visceral layers of sensation, memory, and emotion, we can return to formative moments in our life, and repair on a neurobiological level. We can begin to rewire our brain-mind-body, and in turn, rewrite our life stories.
Within my experiential approach to therapy, I integrate the following modalities and practices to create a therapeutic experience that is personalized, collaborative, and embodied:
-
Accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP) is a therapy firmly grounded in neuroscience and trauma theory. As a relational emotion-based therapy, it focuses on healing in the presence of others to undo aloneness, shame and isolation.
Interventions are used to titrate emotions the client may be avoiding to help them feel a deeper connection to themselves and others. The work taps into our innate emotional resilience and capacity for healing, encouraging neuroplasticity and long-lasting positive change.
-
Many of us have a complicated relationship with our emotions. You may struggle to feel your feelings, they may hijack your rational mind, or you may have been emotionally manipulated by others.
Our emotions are powerful and impact our choices and actions more than we might realize. Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) helps you learn how to catch, notice and listen to your emotions as a normal and healthy source of information, which is in direct connection to your inner world.
In therapy, we attend to the sense of your body, because emotions live in the body the same way that thoughts exists in your mind.
-
Coherence therapy (CT) aims to help people understand how life “problems” are often well-designed “solutions” for pain or suffering that is rooted in the past. Thus, our problematic thoughts, feelings and behaviours are functional and adaptive, serving some kind of protective purpose, even if that function is unconscious.
Through deep exploration, we work to identify and understand the origins of emotional struggles, giving insights into the deep-seated learnings governing one’s life. A neurobiological process of memory reconsolidation is used to transform negative, limiting beliefs into adaptive and empowering narratives.
-
Internal family systems (IFS) is a non-pathologizing approach to therapy that focuses on the natural multiplicity of the mind. The model recognizes that the mind contains myriad parts, often operating in harmony but sometimes in conflict. IFS is designed to promote psychological well-being by addressing the dynamics of internal parts and our true authentic self.
-
Early attachment experiences with our primary caregivers shape the adults we become. The goals of attachment-based therapy are to address the limiting effects of negative early attachment experiences while strengthening one’s capacity for secure connection.
How we experience connection, love, community, and aloneness is integral to our overall wellbeing. Therapy can help uncover unhelpful behaviour patterns, find a new way of interacting with others and heal emotional pain.
-
Somatic-based therapy is body-centered to address memories and experiences stored in our bodies. It helps us move beyond the cognitive processes and into our bodies to find relief, nervous system regulation and balance within.
-
Neurobiologically informed therapy integrates current neuroscience findings into psychotherapy practice to understand how the brain, mind, and body process experiences and regulate emotions.
-
Mindfulness helps us become aware of our emotions and move through them with curiosity and compassion. When we do this, we discover our inner self and what we need to heal and grow.
“There is a conversation happening inside of you. Pay deep attention to what your inner world is saying.”
— Rupi Kaur
Our Journey
Initial Session
In the first session, we will go through the process of informed consent, confidentiality and what to expect in therapy. The initial session is an opportunity for you to share some of your journey and the process leading you to seek therapy. At the end of this session, you will have the opportunity to check for “fit,” meaning that you decide if you want to begin the process of therapy with me. The relationship you develop with your therapist is vital, so it is important that you get the sense that we can work together.
01
The Therapy Journey
In the sessions that follow, we will collaborate towards accomplishing your goals. The process involves your active participation and is, in so many ways, client directed. As the therapist, I will be the guide and sometimes an illuminator of ideas, thoughts or revelations that might be just out of reach to the client. Throughout the course of therapy, we periodically and collaboratively review progress toward your goals and adjust them as needed.
02
Closing our Journey
Therapy is voluntary and your autonomy will always be respected. You can choose to end your work together at any time. Typically, the end of a therapeutic journey is decided by both the client and therapist once therapeutic goals have been met. Clients are always welcome to return to therapy at a later time, should the need arise.
03
Virtual Therapy
Cost
$250 / 50 min session
My services are covered by most extended health plans, and I am a registered provider with Veterans Affair and Blue Cross.
Location
virtually, Ontario
We will use a secure Telehealth platform for added privacy (Jane App), from the convenience of your own home, or wherever comfortable.
Frequency
FLEXIBLE
Sessions can occur weekly, bi-weekly or monthly, depending on your needs and preferences.
FAQs
-
I offer virtual sessions exclusively across Ontario.
-
No, a referral from your family physician is not necessary in order to receive services. Contact the practice directly at 343-308-0545 or by email at info@jennyneilpsychology.com to schedule an appointment.
-
Yes, my work entails individuals aged 18 and older. I do not offer couples therapy or family therapy.
-
I offer free 15-min consultation calls, during which you will have a chance to talk about what you are hoping to work on in therapy, and ask me any questions you may have. More importantly, this is a time for you to get a sense of whether you will be able to feel safe enough with me to work together in therapy. The feeling of a fit between therapist and client is important, so please trust how you feel.
-
There is no single answer to this question. Sometimes people start to feel better quite quickly, and sometimes deep transformation happens suddenly. More often, however, deep change takes time.
-
The fee for services at Jenny Neil Psychology Professional Corporation are $250 for a 50-minute session, which is consistent with the guidelines outlined by the Ontario Psychological Association (OPA).
-
My service is covered by most extended health plans. Given coverage varies among providers, please check directly with yours to see if you are covered for therapy with a Registered Psychologist belonging to the College of Psychologist and Applied Behavioural Analysis of Ontario. I am also a registered provider with Veterans Affair and Blue Cross.
-
Payments are made by credit card or e-transfer at the end of each appointment. Invoices are generated and provided to the client immediately following payment.
-
If you need to cancel or reschedule an appointment, please give at least 24 hours notice. This allows the offering of your appointment to others who may need it. Cancellations made with less than 24 hours notice will be charged a half a session fee. If you fail to notify of need to cancel and do not show up to a scheduled appointment, a full session fee will be charged. I understand that life happens, so if you’re facing an emergency or unexpected situation, please let me know, and I will review your case individually. I am here to support you through it.
-
Please note that I do not provide crisis services. If you need urgent assistance or support please call the Kingston & Frontenac Crisis Line at 613-544-4229. In the case of an emergency please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency department.