Philip Ames BA, RPC

Welcome and congratulations!

To seek emotional freedom is to be willing to face what stands in our way and recruit the help we need to get past it. Most people who seek psychotherapy come to it in pain. That may be your situation and I hope that if it is, you can give yourself credit for your courage in looking for help.

Therapy can be an immense opportunity. This work is not about pain, it’s about liberating the incredible creativity we’re all gifted with and having it shine brilliantly.

Something about me

I began as a client myself in 1970 and then began training in 1973. I’ve been involved in this work ever since, opening my own practice in 1990 as well as serving in several counselling jobs, including being head of a trauma therapy department and supervising therapists in 3 cities.

Over the years as I volunteered and then began to work as a therapist I gradually realized it was my purpose in life and that I do this work to feel complete.

It’s an enormously fulfilling thing to carry on the work of those who gave so much to me. Therapy taught me about being a man, a husband and a father.  In fact the work I do with others is almost always derived from the lessons learned in my own healing; natural enough since we learn how to heal through being helped.

I am conducting an ongoing series of workshops designed to help people understand how to get help with their issues. To find out more just e-mail or call me for information.

My Understanding of Therapy

I believe that relationship heals. It’s a connection with another and the forming of a team to do the work together that makes the difference. In my own healing it was the sense that the therapists I worked with cared deeply about working with me and I knew it. I knew that while I was going inside to face scary places inside me, I always had company.

I divide the focus of the work I offer into two stages.

In Stage One therapy, we focus on helping to alleviate, learn from and heal the pain using an array of the many skills and ‘tools’ that have been developed in the past century in this work. This starts with listening to you. It can come as a wonderful shock to feel really heard from "where the action actually is", perhaps for the first time in one’s life. There are a number of other tools I use as well, including breath work, one of the most powerful tools for managing and understanding emotions.

There is also the development of a deliberate, positive relationship with yourself, much as you would in a friendship you want to nurture with someone else, where you notice over time that your image of yourself is changing and you’re actually coming to like and love the one you see in the mirror.

Next, learning that taking 100% responsibility for your life does not mean blaming yourself but that you are becoming able to respond to it more fully and are able to re-create it the way you choose. This process may very well result in coming to see life as a vast friendly plot designed to help you succeed!

If you’re willing to accept the support of others, group work may also speed up your growth.

If you are experiencing anxiety there are a number of ways to alleviate it. I teach breathwork and relaxation work but also recommend exploring the anxiety to see what its triggers are, as anxiety is often a message that there are emotional issues involved.

I also work with trauma and especially post-traumatic stress disorder through various methods such as traumatic incident reduction work.

I work on healing the relationship process, especially with couples to help people understand the forces that are tearing at their relationships.

Many come who are being affected by depression and there are ways to ease that by trying to decipher the message that is coming through the body’s signals.

Stage Two- for those who want it- is a gradual exploration towards finding, releasing and enjoying the new purpose and conscious direction you may choose for your life through the insights gained in therapy. This is about clarity of your life direction and may well mean feeling clear about launching out in new directions to feel more fulfilled, such as a new career or business, an art form or lifestyle change. You do the work and get the credit; the right therapist is there as a guide, support and safety net so you know you have company you can count on.

Among the things you may want to consider when looking for a therapist:

(a)  Has this person successfully managed issues like my own? Will what they say about themselves make them likely to understand me? Will they disclose enough about themselves to help me answer these two questions? Can they remain sufficiently impartial to see me as myself without judgment?

(b)  Is the emotional chemistry good? Do I feel I can talk to them and be heard?

I look forward to meeting you. Feel free to email me or to phone me for a free consultation. Here's a map to my office in The Upper Beach close to the subway at Main Street on Danforth.