about
Hi, I’m Jim! This is my face!
rates & availability
rates
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My fee is $150 per session. In circumstances of financial hardship, I can offer a reduced fee, but my lowest rate is $80 per session, for a six month period (which can be renewed if still necessary).
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I offer a free 30 min consultation.
I accept e-transfer or credit card. A receipt will automatically be issued to you after every session.
availability
My practice is fully online, virtual-only. My regular working hours are Tuesdays (1pm-5pm) and Wednesdays (10am-1:30pm) EST.
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You can leave a voicemail message or email at any time but please know that I am not immediately available by telephone. I will do my best to return your call or respond to email on the day I receive it but there is no guarantee, and it may take me 1-2 days to respond.
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Because of my limited availability, I'm not able to work with people under 18 or people in acute crisis, but I'd be glad to refer you to someone who does.
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the human things
I believe
deeply in interconnectedness, in the unconditional worth of each person, in our human need to be seen, genuinely and without judgment, and to belong. I tend to use plain, 'real' language and I’m not offended by swearing—my job isn’t to judge you or give advice, it’s to create a space where you can let your guard down and just be yourself.
I see counselling as coming face-to-face with some of the deepest elements of the human condition: conflict, grief, transition, hard questions, existential questions. There’s a reason these all show up in our stories and mythologies. You can draw on whatever is most meaningful for you and speaks to you most deeply, from Star Wars to fungi. I am comfortable providing a structured, goal-oriented approach, more open-ended and exploratory, or a mix.
I am here for you and how you see and experience the world.
the official things
I have a Masters in Science in Couple and Family Therapy (2019), an honours degree in Political Science and Sociology, and a Bachelor of Education in Adult Education.
My graduate degree required me to complete 500 hours of supervised psychotherapy with clients, including an internship, where I worked primarily with LGBTQ+ children, youth, and families. However, I do not practice psychotherapy and I am not a member of the College of Regulated Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO). This also means my services are not covered by third party insurance (private or public) or employee benefits.
I practice counselling, which is different than psychotherapy in both method and scope. I am a member in good standing of the Ontario Association for Mental Health Professionals (OAMHP) and carry commercial liability insurance with McFarlan Rowlands, as a mental health practitioner.
Most recently (2023), I completed a fantastic program called the “Mental Health & Autism Training Program” (run by Children’s Mental Health Ontario, Autism Ontario, and Dr. Jonathan Weiss of York University) to better support autistic people with mental health challenges. You can read more about that training here.
https://cmho.org/autism-mental-health/ .
My graduate training included trauma-informed therapy, sex therapy training, and a few different approaches (narrative, dialogic, etc.) but ultimately, I came away disillusioned with the professionalizing of mental health I was taught there and felt I had to unlearn a lot of the language and mindset, which often felt deeply colonizing to me. Healing from that experience took me five years.
What stayed with me were the humans who shared themselves and their lives with me. I never stopped being in awe of how complex, resilient and profoundly uncategorizable they were. Some people wanted a lot of structure, some people wanted to direct the process. Some people just needed a place to cry for an hour without being told what to do.
I wanted to be like Samwise, because the work I saw people doing was no less of a journey than Frodo’s and ultimately, it was their journey.
I take a relational approach to counselling.
What that means to me includes the relationship with ourselves and all our parts, as well as wider relationships with family (including chosen family), culture, society, ancestral and ecological relationships.
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Right now, I work with one person at a time, but I'm looking forward in the future to working with more than one person at a time, in a wide range of relationships (polycules, couples, families, colleagues, friends, etc.)
My goal as a counsellor is to give you a consistently safe and supportive experience of human connection, in the areas of your life that are hardest to share. It’s transformative both ways and that’s why I love this work.
The people who tend to seek me out
are those who want their experience to feel seen and understood in a way that’s been hard to find in their life, including with other professionals. Sometimes, they’ve had negative experiences with the mental health system. This has often included people who are:
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Non-monogamous/in polyamorous relationships
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Kinky/BDSM identities and relationships
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Autistic/autism-questioning
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Asexuality/ace spectrum (including questioning)
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Survivors of religious and political trauma and high-demand groups
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Gifted/polymathic individuals
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Caregivers and caregiver-spouses
I love working with people who’ve had these experiences, and I have personal, professional (and in many cases both) experience in each of these areas:
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I am trans, non-binary, queer, and on the ace spectrum.
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I am mixed (Indigenous and settler), and can empathize with the complexity and pressures of growing up between two racial and cultural worlds.
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I have been a full-time caregiver for a loved one for many years and have lived experience with these unique relationships.
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I have been openly and proudly ethically non-monogamous for the last thirteen years and I still feel like a beginner sometimes!
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I am a kink-knowledgeable and kink-affirming counsellor, and a member of the BDSM community. I am listed in the Kink and Polyamory Aware Professional Directory (KAP) here, and I follow these Clinical Practice Guidelines.
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I am sex worker and sex work affirming, have taken this sex worker bias prevention training, and have applied to be listed in the Sex Worker Ally Directory. I am committed to working for the decriminalization of sex work.
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I am a second generation survivor of a white evangelical Christian church and a survivor of institutional violence in the French Catholic educational system. I’m part of several online support communities for ex-christians, and have also written about healing from religious and political trauma. I'm open to working with people from all faiths and recognize the diversity of peoples' experience with religious and spiritual traditions.
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I am neurodivergent (autistic, and a stroke survivor, and I live with depression). I grew up in the disability community, and have close personal and professional relationships there. I’m committed to respecting all peoples’ body autonomy, including a safer and more accessible world for fat people and ending anti-fat bias.
my weaknesses & blindspots
It's my job to be genuine with you,
including where I don't have lived experience, advantages I've had in life, training or education I haven’t taken, etc. These are areas where I likely have 'blindspots' and may make assumptions and mistakes without realizing it.
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Sometimes, blindspots can come from shared experiences too. I don’t ever want to assume that because we’re both _____, that your experience is exactly like mine, or that because I’ve taken a training about _____ or read about something, that makes me some kind of expert in it.
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I want to give you the kind of space and credence that your experience deserves.
I think being upfront about my imperfections helps set the tone that getting it wrong and making mistakes is okay and welcome here. How can I expect you to be vulnerable if I’m pretending to be perfect and know everything?
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It’s also unlikely to come up naturally, so I like to put it out there early on. I also hope this saves you some guesswork if you’re looking for someone with specific lived experience, training, or availability that I don’t have.
This is also by no means a complete list. These are also the areas that I’m committed most to learning about, so it changes/gets added to regularly.
This is a list of things I don’t have
personal lived experience with.
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• I'm mixed and lighter-skinned and I don’t experience racism based on the colour of my skin. One of my parents is a white settler, and my mom is also mixed and lighter-skinned. I am non-status and grew up in a small town. No one in my immediate or extended family of origin went to a residential school.
• My disabilities are (mostly) invisible.
• I have Canadian citizenship and don't have a recent family history or lived experience of global migration.
• I live in a country that has a relatively healthy social security net.
• I have never had to rely exclusively on sex work to make a living. I have not experienced the consequences of criminalization on the basis of being a sex worker.
• I was only homeless periodically (for less than five years) and did not have to rely on substances to cope with that.
• I was able to consistently attend elementary, secondary, undergraduate, and graduate school and my disabilities didn’t interfere with that in the ways that so often blocks many neurodiverse and disabled students from formal education (such as ADHD, dyslexia, life-threatening allergies, etc.)
• I speak English fluently and with a Canadian accent.
• I’ve never had to single-parent (or double-parent, for that matter!) and from what I’ve heard, that means I am generally less sleep-deprived.
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• I was thin most of my life, and I don't have a lifelong experience of fatness. I’m not forced to advocate for (or more often go without) the kind of accommodations (on airplanes, stores, restaurants) that are necessary for fat people, or physically disabled people.
