Helen Reilly MSW, RSW
Welcome to my page and thanks for taking the time to explore it. I am a seasoned and experienced psychotherapist who has been in the chair as a client, and now occupy the chair as a Gestalt psychotherapist. Both experiences continue to be challenging, exhilarating, frightening and above all satisfying. The process of healing is not a linear one which means it can often elicit many – often opposing – emotions. This can look like joy and grief co-existing in the same moment, anger and love, hurt and longing. It is human and normal to try to make sense of that which is confusing.
I am a therapist who will encourage you to lean less on cognition and meaning making and more on your felt experience of life, trauma, and healing as an ongoing practice rather than a place to ‘arrive’ or a goal for oneself.
You're here because something in life feels off or unsatisfying. Maybe you need support or guidance through a challenging transition or struggle to express yourself with authenticity. Perhaps you've been through life experiences that keep you stuck in your defences which had value and purpose at the time but are no longer serving you – in fact they may be getting in the way of getting what you want out of life. That's where I come in.
My role as a psychotherapist is to guide a process of exploration and investigation into how you can re-connect with your inner life that offers a rich tapestry of valuable information, guidance and support. Working from a perspective of prioritizing connection as a process towards healing, I believe our feelings are our information about what we're experiencing in the environment, what our boundaries are with ourselves and others and what steps we want to take next in life towards our goals and dreams.
People often creatively take measures to cut themselves off from their feeling to cope and even to survive their circumstances, due to unpleasant, dehumanizing, or even horrific experiences. What often gets lost once the initial threat is long gone is that the measures we took to protect ourselves initially to survive are measures we continue to engage in, even though they are no longer needed. In fact, our defenses often profoundly impact our capacity to connect with the self and the other and our capacity to respond to challenging situations with responsivity rather than reactivity. Reactivity impacts our capacity to sustain healthy and satisfying relationships with ourselves and the people around us.
I work as a Gestalt Psychotherapist – an experiential holistic approach to therapy that challenges the client to learn to tolerate uncomfortable feelings engaging mindfulness and experimenting with creative new ways of engaging when our present ways aren't working anymore. I have close to two decades in both private practice as well as community psychotherapy and social work.
My style is warm, humorous, down to earth with an emphasis on the relational nature of humanity and our innate need for one another. My goal as your therapist is to model and bring your awareness to how you may be getting in your own way of getting what you want out of life and to support you In experimenting with new and creative ways of expressing yourself authentically by taking emotional risks, processing and grieving trauma and strengthening relational boundaries in order to find new and exciting ways of finding comfort in one's own skin.
Feel free to contact here on the site (through email at helen@therapytoronto.ca) for a free consultation discussion of your needs. My physical office is readily accessible in Guelph here and I work actively on on-line using the internet with a private and secure connection.