Online anxiety therapy
Online therapy for anxiety in Ontario
For the racing thoughts, the tight chest, the to-do list that never lets you rest — anxiety lives in the body and the mind, and we work with both.
What might bring you here
How anxiety actually shows up.
Anxiety often doesn't announce itself. It's the chest that's been a little tight since morning. The to-do list that follows you to bed and is waiting when you wake up. The sleep that takes hours to come, or comes briefly and then leaves at 3 a.m. with the feeling you've forgotten something important.
It might be racing thoughts, or thoughts on loop — the same conversation replayed, the same worst-case rehearsed. It might be the always-on feeling of never quite landing, like part of your attention is permanently watching for the next thing. The body keeps track too: shallow breath, a stomach that knots before you consciously know something's wrong, shoulders that don't unclench.
A lot of people normalize this. It becomes “I've always been like this” or “that's just how I am.” Sometimes that framing is fine. Sometimes the quiet cost of running on alert adds up to more than it should.
What therapy can look like
Understanding it, not just managing it.
Working with anxiety in therapy isn't about willing it to stop. It's about understanding what's keeping it active and slowly building a different relationship with it.
The work often involves looking at the loops — the thoughts that fuel a spike, the behaviours that bring relief in the short term (avoiding, over-checking, perfectionism) but quietly reinforce the pattern over time. We might explore the body's part in it: anxiety is physiological as much as cognitive, and noticing it earlier — in the breath, in the shoulders — opens room to respond before it escalates.
We can also examine the beliefs underneath. Things like “if I stop worrying, something bad will happen,” or “my worth depends on never dropping anything.” These often aren't conscious until we name them. Once they're on the table, they get a lot easier to question.
What we work toward isn't a life with zero anxiety — some anxiety is a normal signal, worth keeping. What we work toward is anxiety that's proportionate, that informs without running the show, and a self that can sit with uncertainty without having to eliminate it first.
How I approach this work
Anxiety as a signal worth listening to.
Anxiety work is paced work. Pushing too fast can backfire — the nervous system reads pressure as more pressure, and the body braces. We move at a speed your system can tolerate, which is sometimes faster than you expect and sometimes slower.
I work with the whole context, not just the symptom. Anxiety is almost always doing a job — protecting you against something, responding to real pressure, or carrying forward a pattern learned earlier. Treating it like a problem to crush usually adds another layer of pressure on top. Treating it as a signal worth listening to opens different ground.
For clients from immigrant or high-expectation families, anxiety often layers with inherited beliefs about achievement and worth — about what a good daughter or son does, what failure means, what you're allowed to need. That's part of the work if it's relevant to your story.
The work is collaborative. You're not handed a worksheet — you're in the room with me, figuring it out together. I'm a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) registered with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO).
Approaches I draw on
How the modalities show up in anxiety work.
I draw on four core modalities, woven based on what someone needs in the room.
- Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)
- Identifying and working with the thought-feeling-behaviour loops that keep anxiety self-reinforcing — and gently testing anxious predictions against what actually tends to happen.
- Acceptance & commitment therapy (ACT)
- Building room for uncertainty and uncomfortable feelings rather than fighting them, while staying connected to what actually matters to you.
- Person-centered therapy
- Your anxiety makes sense in the context of your life. The work starts from understanding, not correction.
- Mindfulness
- Noticing the body's early signals and the present moment — a way of interrupting the loop before it escalates.
When it helps, I draw on DBT-informed skills for the moments anxiety spikes to ten out of ten and you need something concrete and immediate — as well as gentle, body-based approaches when anxiety lives more in the body than in words.
Common questions
Things people often want to know before they book.
Is online therapy effective for anxiety?
Research on virtual psychotherapy for anxiety is encouraging, and many people find the format works well — sessions from a space where you already feel safe, no commute adding to the day. That said, fit matters more than format. A free 15-minute consult is a way to feel out whether working together makes sense before committing.
Will I have to do exposure exercises or homework?
The work is collaborative and paced to you — nothing is imposed. Some people find between-session practices useful and we build those together; others do the work primarily in session. We figure out what actually fits your life rather than following a fixed protocol.
I've had anxiety my whole life. Can therapy still help?
Long-standing anxiety is common and it doesn't mean the work can't be useful. Sometimes anxiety that's been part of your life for a long time has simply never been looked at directly — it got normalized or worked around. Therapy is a chance to understand it rather than just manage it.
Anxiety doesn't have to run the show.
If this sounds familiar, a free 15-minute consult is a low-pressure way to see whether the way I work feels useful to you. No paperwork, no commitment to continue.