Dr. Karma Guindon, RSW & Associates
Anxiety, depression, stress, substance misuse, or relationship problems often trace back to distressing or overwhelming experiences from the past. By addressing the root causes of mental health problems, individual psychotherapy helps you heal deeply and create lasting well-being.
What is Individual Psychotherapy?
Individual psychotherapy is a collaborative process where you meet one-on-one with a trained therapist in a safe, compassionate, and non-judgmental environment.
Together, you’ll explore your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to uncover patterns, heal emotional wounds, and build healthier ways of coping and thriving.
Unlike self-help strategies or advice from friends, therapy offers a structured and personalized space, tailored to your unique needs and goals. With the guidance of a skilled therapist, you can experience deeper insight, lasting change, and a renewed sense of well-being.
Key Benefits of Individual Psychotherapy
Improved Self-Awareness
Therapy helps you better understand the roots of your emotions, behaviors, and thought patterns, empowering you to make more intentional choices and changes.
Emotional Regulation
With the support of therapy, you can develop practical coping strategies and skills to manage overwhelming emotions, reduce anxiety, and enhance overall emotional well-being.
Healing from Trauma
Individual therapy sometimes uncovers hidden trauma wounds. Unresolved experiences from childhood, adolescence, or adulthood can surface as mental health challenges, persistent negative thoughts, emotional pain, destructive behaviors, or relationship struggles. In a safe and structured space, individual therapy can heal the root of psychological and relationship problems because it provides the support needed to process these experiences, release their impact, and move toward genuine healing and growth.
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Building Healthy Relationships
By exploring your attachment style, communication patterns, and emotional triggers, therapy can strengthen your ability to form and maintain healthier, more fulfilling connections in romantic, family, and workplace relationships.
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Support During Life Transitions
Therapy provides guidance and stability during times of significant change—such as career shifts, relationship transitions, grief, or illness - helping you navigate uncertainty with greater clarity and confidence.
What To Expect
Therapy sessions are personalized to support your unique goals and needs. At the start, you and your therapist work together to identify areas for healing, growth, and change. Depending on your needs, sessions may include:
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Exploring challenges: Talking through emotions, thoughts, and experiences, gaining insight, problem-solving, and finding new solutions.
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Building coping skills: Learning practical strategies tailored to your situation to manage stress, emotions, and everyday challenges.
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Processing trauma and difficult experiences: Using evidence-based, approaches, such as DBR and EMDR, to safely reprocess difficult memories and shift how the brain and body respond to present-day triggers.
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Mindfulness and relaxation practices: Developing grounding tools to reduce stress and anxiety, strengthen resilience, and improve relationships.​​
Therapeutic Approaches to Support Healing, Growth, and Well-Being
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DBR (Deep Brain Reorienting): Addresses deep-seated trauma and physiological responses in the brainstem. Structures in the brainstem are the first to register and be impacted by threat and danger in the environment.
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EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing): Effective for trauma processing at the neural-network level of the brain.
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IFS (Internal Family Systems): Explores internal conflicts and helps individuals heal "parts" of themselves.
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CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy): Focuses on identifying and altering unhelpful thought and behaviour patterns.
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ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy): Combines mindfulness with behavior change strategies.
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DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy): Offers skills in emotional regulation, distress tolerance, interpersonal relationships, and mindfulness.