J.GORDON PSYCHOLOGY GROUP
Conditions We Help
Adjustment Disorders
ADHD
Do you or your child feel a sense of restlessness or find it difficult to stay focused on tasks? Are you or they forgetful, distracted, or struggling with time management or organization? ADHD can significantly impact the ability to function day-to-day. It can affect all areas of life, from social to academic to careers. Behavioural therapy can help clients gain practical skills and learn strategies to manage their ADHD symptoms.
Anxiety
Is anxiety stopping your child or teen from doing activities in their life or living to their fullest potential? Are you struggling with anxiety as an adult or in your parenting role? Anxiety symptoms can feel like excessive worry, dread, or fear. It can cause avoidance, a panic response, stomach aches, irritability, or trouble sleeping and eating. Therapy can help clients better understand how worry works and obtain strategies to help calm the physical, cognitive, and behavioural components of anxiety.
Attachment
Attachment starts in infancy and is the way children come to understand, trust, and thrive in their world. Research has consistently shown that a secure attachment between a child and an important adult in their life is foundational for positive child developmental outcomes, mental health, resilience, and well-being.
Disruptions in attachment can occur for those who have had parents who were unable to provide consistent care and support to meet their emotional and/or physical needs. This can lead to difficulties with emotional and behavioural regulation and impact their ability to form healthy relationships with themselves and others. At. J. Gordon Psychology Group, we offer caregiver and child therapy support to help facilitate more secure and healthy attachment patterns.
Boundary Setting & Communication Challenges
Does saying no make you uncomfortable or lead to ruminating thoughts? Setting boundaries can be challenging and overwhelming. It can feel uncomfortable to say ‘no’ or to establish limits with others. This is particularly common if you tend to avoid conflict and have people-pleasing tendencies.
When you fail to set boundaries, you are prioritizing the needs of others rather than yourself. This can lead to feelings of overwhelm and resentment. Boundaries are an important part of any healthy relationship, be it with yourself or others. Therapy can help you learn to set boundaries in a way you feel confident about. Together, we can explore the root causes of why it is difficult to set boundaries and develop skills and strategies to set healthy boundaries in the future.
Depression
Have you lost some or all of the joy you used to experience? Depression symptoms can manifest as feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and a lack of energy or interest in activities that were once enjoyable. Physical symptoms can include changes in appetite, fatigue, and sleep patterns. Emotionally, depression can leave you feeling disconnected, empty, and alone. Therapy can be helpful in treating depression by providing support, understanding, and coping strategies. Therapy can help you experience improved mood, increased motivation, and a greater sense of hope and well-being.
Dissociative Disorders
Do you or your child often feel disconnected from reality? Dissociative disorders can cause you to feel detached from yourself and your body. It can lead to a feeling that what is around you is unreal or distorted, cause confusion around your identity, or result in gaps in your memory. You may feel emotionally numb and have difficulty expressing your emotions. Although there are various causes of dissociation, it is commonly experienced in response to stressful situations, abuse, and trauma. Therapy can help you process traumatic experiences, provide you with the tools and skills to manage dissociation, and learn to identify your sense of self.
Eating and Mealtime Challenges
Does your child struggle to eat a range of food items, or avoid certain food textures? Is mealtime a constant source of stress for your family? Some children really struggle with food avoidance and may have underlying difficulties such as sensory sensitivities, cognitive rigidities (a need for sameness), and anxiety. A restricted diet can lead to nutritional deficiencies (e.g., iron and zinc) which can further decrease their appetite. The tendency to offer only the same foods that children prefer over time can also continue or worsen the cycle over time.
At J. Gordon Psychology Group, we can provide insight into underlying areas of difficulty that are contributing to their eating challenges and offer strategies to help your child gradually expand the range of foods in their diet.
Emotional and Behavioural Regulation
Does your child or teen struggle to “hold” big feelings? Do their feelings quickly spill over into negative behaviours such as outbursts and aggression? Or do they have a difficult time letting things go and calming down? This is one of our most common referral concerns. We offer many different supports for children and parents to help foster emotional and behavioural regulation skills. This may include psychoeducation and strategies for parents to better support their child at home, school support recommendations, therapy sessions for children/teens, and/or a consultation with our Occupational Therapist to discuss how to help calm their nervous system from a sensory perspective.
Grief and Loss
Are you or your child struggling to move forward after a loss or finding that your grief can feel like too much to handle on your own? Grief and loss can be overwhelming and can bring up many intense emotions, such as sadness, anger, guilt, and confusion. It’s common to feel withdrawn and disconnected from the people around you. Children may show anger and dysregulation when they are experiencing grief. Therapy can help clients express, feel, and process their emotions in a safe environment, develop good coping mechanisms, and take steps to move forward at a pace that is right for them. You don’t have to face emotional pain alone; we can help support you.
Navigating Life Transitions
Are you or your child facing a change in your life that is creating feelings of overwhelm, stress, or uncertainty? Navigating life transitions can be a turbulent and complex experience. Whether it is dealing with the pain of a divorce, a move, the birth of a child, or a loss, the emotional rollercoaster of these transitions can be overwhelming. With support, these experiences can be navigated with greater ease. Therapy can help clients process the emotions they are experiencing, manage their stress levels, and cope with the challenges associated with life changes. We can help you or your child feel more confident to navigate, adjust, and cope with life transitions.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Do you or your child experience intrusive and unwanted thoughts, images, or impulses? Do these lead to you or your child engaging in repetitive behaviours or mental acts to stop the anxiety? With OCD, people are compelled to perform specific behaviours in response to an intrusive thought that brings them anxiety. OCD is very diverse in its presentation, though common themes include contamination, health, harm, or needing things “just right” or even.
OCD can often result in feelings of guilt and shame, and so many try to hide their OCD behaviours from others. Therapy can help clients explore and challenge their problematic thought patterns and ultimately reduce their anxiety and need to complete compulsive actions.
Parenting Support
So many triggers get brought up in our daily caregiving experiences, which can make it challenging to meet our child’s and our own emotional needs. At. J. Gordon Psychology Group, we offer parents and caregivers their own therapeutic space to discuss their personal history and struggles, which can influence their parenting style and template, emotional presence, and the dynamics in their family system. In sessions, we explore parent triggers, discuss self-care and boundaries, and offer strategies to help parents respond in a way that fosters long-term resilience and well-being for children.
Phobias
Is an intense fear causing distress in your child’s life or stopping them from participating in certain activities or situations? Phobias create excessive and persistent anxiety and dread about a feared situation. It can cause avoidance, a panic response, stomach aches, irritability, or trouble sleeping and eating. Therapy can help clients better understand how phobias works, and gain strategies to help calm the physical, cognitive, and behavioural components of their anxiety so that they can manage feared situations better.
Physical, Emotional, or Sexual Abuse
The effects of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse can be devastating and far-reaching. Victims of trauma often experience feelings of guilt, shame, depression, anger, fear, and isolation. They may also have difficulty trusting others or forming close relationships. All these challenges can make it difficult to cope with day-to-day life. Therapy can be a powerful tool for helping you or your child heal from abuse. We provide a safe space to help clients process difficult feelings and experiences and offer strategies to foster coping, a more positive sense of self, and a foundation for healthier relationships.
Relationship Issues
Selective Mutism
Do you feel that your child’s refusal to speak outside of the home setting or beyond immediate family members is more than just “shyness”? Selective mutism is a child anxiety disorder that is characterized by a consistent failure to speak in specific social situations where there is an expectation to speak, despite speaking in other settings. It may be misinterpreted as shyness, stubbornness, and attention-seeking behaviour, which can delay proper assessment and intervention and can lead to social and academic concerns.
At. J. Gordon Psychology Group, we offer specialized support to help children with selective mutism manage their anxiety and gradually generalize their speech across settings. This support may include parent psychoeducation and strategies to help their child move forward, child therapy sessions, and consultation with their child’s school to develop a support plan.
Sensory Challenges
Does your child struggle with specific clothing or washing their hair? Do they react strongly to loud noises, visual commotion, or certain smells? Or maybe they underreact and struggle to attend to their name being called or to notice when they are hungry, wet, tired, or hurt. Difficulties such as tantrums, avoidance, clumsiness, inattention, overactivity, and picky eating can all point to difficulties in their ability to take in and process the world around them.
At J. Gordon Psychology Group, we offer occupational therapy services to help clarify a child’s sensory profile (using standardized tools to assess a child’s sensory processing patterns) and collaboratively develop a tailored support plan that aims to regulate and support their nervous system throughout the day. This support can lead to a decrease in the problematic behaviours that your child is showing.
Sleep Difficulties
Is it consistently difficult for your child to fall or stay asleep independently? Bedtime and sleep challenges are a common trouble spot for families, causing stress and exhaustion for all involved. A lack of good quality sleep in children can lead to difficulties with regulation, coping, learning, and attention during the day. Parent support sessions can help you better understand what is underlying your child’s sleep difficulties (e.g., anxiety or low iron) and can help you develop better sleep hygiene strategies with your child. Child therapy sessions are also helpful for children to obtain anxiety management skills so that they can master sleeping through the night independently.
Social Anxiety
Do you or your child experience a fear of being focused on, embarrassed, or negatively perceived by others? Social anxiety can cause you to dread and worry excessively in social and performance situations and may lead you to avoid these situations altogether. Therapy can help clients identify and challenge the negative thought patterns and beliefs that contribute to their social anxiety. We also provide clients with tools and strategies to calm their nervous system (fight-flight-freeze response) and to develop a more positive and confident sense of self.
Stress Management
Do you feel like there’s no end in sight to the list of things you need to manage or accomplish in the day—at home and at work? Or is your child struggling to keep up with their own life demands? Overwhelming stress can bring up a range of emotions, including anxiety, frustration, irritability, and burnout. Therapy can help clients to mindfully slow down, better manage their time, and develop healthier coping and boundaries so that they can manage their day-to-day with more ease. We can help you make changes, one step at a time.
Trauma - PTSD
Is a past event in your life keeping you or your child from moving forward? Trauma can cause symptoms such as intrusive memories, avoidance behaviours, hypervigilance, and feelings of anxiety, guilt, or shame. Emotional and physical responses to trauma can impact daily life and relationships. Therapy can help clients who have experienced trauma fully process their experiences and develop healthy coping patterns. With therapy, clients can experience less emotional distress and anxiety, a greater sense of control over their lives, greater self-worth, and a renewed sense of hope for the future.
J. Gordon Psychology Group
Helping resolve challenging life experiences and give space for healing.