Emotion Regulation Therapy in Toronto Doctoral-Level Psychological Care

Therapy to help understand and regulate emotions at Laksman Doell Psychology is delivered by doctoral-level registered psychologists, both in person at our office in the Annex neighbourhood of Toronto and virtually across Ontario.

What it Looks Like to Understand and Regulate Our Emotions

“Difficult feelings are information, not enemies. Our emotions are our body and brain telling us that something matters.”

Humans have evolved to have emotions. We have lots of them. Some of them are positive, and they are here to tell us more about the things that matter to us and the things that we need and want more of in our life. Happiness, joy, excitement, pride and contentment fit in this category. These are emotions that often arise in response to the things that we want to move towards. Negative emotions on the other hand can be a little trickier. While they still carry important information, they are also often experienced as aversive, and so the initial urge that we have may be to turn away from them. Emotions like sadness, fear, anger, disgust, guilt and shame are common emotions that fit this category. And because the urge to turn away from them is often so quick, and so strong, we often don’t learn the language that we need in order to understand these emotions or to respond to them constructively.

Emotion dysregulation occurs when our feelings come fast, big, and hard to ride, and we end up doing things that we did not mean to do, or we wind up shutting down in order to manage the intensity. Either pattern leaves you cut off from yourself and often from the people that you care about.

Emotion regulation is a set of skills. It is the ability to feel something without being run by it. To recognize what is rising, to name it, to sit with it, to understand it, and to respond from a place that lines up with who you want to be. It is also one of the most common reasons that individuals first present for therapy.

The skills are teachable. The patterns are workable. The change shows up in concrete places. The fight that does not happen because you noticed the wave and named it. The conversation that you were able to stay in because shutting down was no longer the only available move. The afternoon where the feeling came, did its thing, and passed without taking the day with it.

IF YOU ARE READING THIS

You may not be sure what you need, but something brought you here…

The feeling comes faster than you can ride it. The reaction is out of your mouth before the thinking has caught up. You apologize. You promise yourself it will not happen again. It happens again. The shame loop is louder than the original feeling.
You shut down. The emotion is too big, so the system goes offline. People around you notice. They ask if you are okay and you say “yes” because the answer that is actually true is too long and feels too complicated to explain. You do not know how to come back, and the longer you remain shut down, the harder it gets.
You feel things deeply, and that has been called both a gift and a problem. You do not want a personality transplant. You want skills. You want to be able to feel what you feel without it running the day, the relationship, or the meeting.

This is what has brought you here. And you are in the right place

EMOTION REGULATION THERAPY IN TORONTO

The emotions that people often struggle to regulate:

At Laksman Doell Psychology, we provide psychological treatment to individuals who are looking to better understand and to respond more intentionally to their emotions. We work with individuals who are under-regulated and who have large emotional reactions that leave them feeling overwhelmed and out of control. We also work with individuals who are over-regulated and who have trouble feeling, naming and responding to their emotions at all. Our doctoral-level psychologists help individuals to understand the range of human emotions, but the ones that tend to get the most focus often include:

Sadness

Sadness is the emotion that we are meant to feel when we have experienced the loss of something that matters to us. That something might include the loss of a relationship, an opportunity, or anything that we care deeply about. It can also show up as feeling bad about ourselves when we perceive a loss that involves our sense of self-worth or belonging. When we feel sad, the natural urge may be to retreat and hide, but what we actually need is more often about learning to face the sadness and to seek the comfort and connection that allows us to regulate.

Fear and Anxiety

Fear and anxiety are both emotions that contribute to our ability to survive. Fear protects us from danger in the moment, and anxiety prepares us for the unknown. However, when fear and anxiety become excessive or persistent, they can hijack our lives in important ways. Dysregulated anxiety has a tendency to send us into loops of unproductive worry, and it drives us to avoid situations that might allow us to learn that the feared events are not so scary after all. Anxiety is a particularly sticky emotion for many of us – but it is also one that we know a lot about how to regulate.

Guilt and Shame

Guilt and shame are emotions that, at their core, are about helping us to recognize when we have done something wrong or when we feel badly about ourselves, so that we take steps to protect our relationships and to minimize the risk of rejection from others. However, dysregulated guilt and shame are often experienced as a form of brutal and unrelenting self-attack that both erodes our sense of self-worth and identity and that can ultimately lead us to retreat from the very relationships that they were meant to protect.

Loneliness

Loneliness is another emotion that evolved to help us stay connected to others. In theory, when we feel lonely, it is a sign that we need to reach out to other people. However, in practice, dysregulated loneliness has been linked to issues related to poor physical health, depression, substance abuse, and problematic or risky interpersonal behaviours. Learning to respond intentionally to signs of loneliness, rather than reaching out reactively and indiscriminately to avoid it, is key.

Anger

Anger is often seen as the emotion with the worst reputation. Anger can be scary and destructive, particularly when it comes out in a more dysregulated form. As a result, many people see anger as something bad or as something to be avoided. However, anger is the emotion that we are meant to feel in response to unfairness or injustice. It helps us to speak up when we are being hurt, it moves us to action when there are wrongs that need to be addressed, and it allows us to defend ourselves when we need to.

Grief

Grief is not actually an emotion. Rather, it is a process to be moved through. That said, one of the most important keys to moving through grief is often about being open to the emotions that arise, in whatever order they come. The sadness, anger, guilt, fear, regret and loneliness have a way of finding us, and unless we can allow space for them, and space to process the underlying needs that they each entail, they have a way of sticking around.

OUR APPROACH

Treatment that starts with understanding you.

At Laksman Doell Psychology, our doctoral-level psychologists work with adult individuals and couples in order to help you better understand the patterns that drive emotional flooding, shutdown, reactivity, and the loops that follow. We use evidence-based approaches that are matched to what is actually showing up, and that are designed to help you build the skills that will allow you to respond more intentionally to the emotions that you experience.

The plan is built around you, not pulled off a shelf. The first few sessions are about assessing and understanding both you and your experience of your emotions: the early lessons that you learned about which emotions were safe to express and how they ought to be handled, the experiences that you have had that allowed you to better understand your internal emotional landscape and the ones that shut you down, and the ways that your emotions are showing up in the present, for better and for worse. Some people benefit from a structured skills phase that directly works on regulating and expressing the emotions that arise. Some need to do more work on understanding the emotions that lie underneath. Most need both. We will be honest about what we see, and we will move at the pace that your system can hold.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is often the foundation of this work, and allows us to understand the ways that our emotions drive predictable, and often unhelpful, patterns of thinking and behaviour. Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) helps us to identify, accept and transform emotions, to understand our underlying needs, and to communicate these more completely. Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) is another evidence-based approach, and was built specifically for emotion regulation in order to provide us with concrete skills for the moments when our feelings are loudest. Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) is brought in to help us understand and respond to our emotions with care and compassion, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) can help us to act on what matters most, even when the inner weather is intense.

This work is about shifting your relationship with your own emotional life. The fear of feeling something starts to soften. The sense that emotions are dangerous, or shameful, or proof of weakness, gives way to the experience of emotions as information that you can actually work with. That shift is foundational. It changes how you parent, how you partner, how you lead, how you fall asleep at night, and how you treat the version of yourself that previously did not have these skills.

OUR DIFFERENCE

Specialist training.
Private practice access.

Every clinician at Laksman Doell Psychology is a doctoral-level psychologist who is registered with, or working toward registration with, the College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario (CPBAO). We help adult individuals and couples to build the skills to feel what they are feeling, and to act from a more grounded place. Our team has trained at sites including, but limited to, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Sunnybrook Health Science Centre, St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto General, North York General, Cleveland Clinic Canada, and the University of Toronto.

Our team has particular depth of training in the patterns that show up when the intensity of your emotional experience has started to cost you something. Sessions are available in person at 27 Prince Arthur Avenue in the Annex neighbourhood of Toronto, or virtually across Ontario via PHIPA-compliant video. All services are available virtually to any Ontario resident. No referral required.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Are all negative emotions problematic?

We would argue that no emotions, whether positive or negative, are inherently problematic. Rather they are signals that something important has happened and that we need to take action. The “problems” sometimes lie in the intensity of the emotions, the understandable but maladaptive behavioural urges that come with the emotions, or in our lack of understanding and skill in responding to these emotions. These are the dimensions that we target in therapy that is designed to help us both to understand and to respond more intentionally to our emotions.

Why do I find it so difficult to regulate my emotions?

This is a difficult question to answer, because it varies so much from person to person. But the shorter answer is usually just “because you never learned to regulate them”. Some of us are born as big feelers, but we aren’t born with the skills to regulate our emotions. In theory, we learn those from our primary caregivers and our early environments. However, in practice, many of us are actually taught to minimize or to ignore our emotional experience, and we wind up needing to actively seek out emotion regulation skills when we experience our emotions as confusing or overwhelming as adults.

Why do I sometimes shut down in response to intense emotions?

Shutting down is something that happens when the autonomic nervous system is responding to acute emotional distress as though it is an immediate threat to safety. This is an involuntary hypoarousal or freeze response that involves your body trying to protect you from further risk by cutting off communication and processing. Once we learn that emotional distress is not a threat, then we can learn to stay present and grounded.

Does your practice offer Dialectical Behavior Therapy?

A number of our doctoral-level psychologists do have extensive training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and they incorporate aspects of DBT into their practice. This includes work with distress tolerance, emotion regulation skills, mindfulness and interpersonal effectiveness. However, Laksman Doell Psychology does not offer comprehensive DBT that includes individual therapy, group therapy and telephone coaching. If you are looking for a more comprehensive DBT program in Toronto, then feel free to reach out to us and we are happy to provide you with the names of some other practices that offer this.

Do I need a referral for emotion regulation therapy in Toronto?

No. You can contact us directly. No referral from a physician or psychiatrist is required.

Is emotion regulation therapy at your practice covered by OHIP?

Private practice services are not covered by OHIP. Coverage may be available through extended health benefits, as many plans cover the services of a registered psychologist. We recommend confirming with your provider before commencing treatment.

Can I be seen virtually?

Yes. All services are available virtually via PHIPA-compliant video for any Ontario resident.

Life is complicated. We give you clarity.

The first step is a brief consultation to help understand what you are looking for. Email us at [email protected] or complete our contact form online.