Dr. Adi Aviram is a registered Clinical Psychologist with the College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario. Her area of specialization is adult mental health, and she is committed to providing a safe, compassionate, and collaborative therapeutic environment where clients can foster meaningful growth and lasting change. Clients consistently describe her as steady in the hardest moments, and as someone who can hold difficult material without flinching while still making the room feel human.
Dr. Aviram’s approach is empathic and highly attuned to the experiences of the individuals with whom she works, while deeply rooted in the recognition that each individual is the best expert on their own experience. She strives to create a safe space for clients to explore, confront, and work through difficult experiences and emotions in an environment that emphasizes individual strengths and autonomy. Dr. Aviram seeks to promote clients’ contact with their inner experiences and personal values, with the intent of improving clients’ self-awareness and understanding, resolving internal conflict, developing resiliency, and facilitating personally meaningful therapeutic change. She places strong emphasis on evocation, curiosity, and reframing in helping people get unstuck, improve their ability to cope with life challenges, strengthen their self-image and improve the quality of their relationships.
Dr. Aviram works collaboratively with a diverse range of client concerns, including mood and anxiety disorders, trauma, grief, emotional ambivalence and/or dysregulation, as well as difficult life transitions and adjustment-related issues. She has a special interest in supporting individuals who are navigating interpersonal and relationship difficulties, including separation, divorce, infidelity and rebuilding trust, as well as complex family dynamics. This is often the work other clinicians shy away from, and it is exactly where she does some of her best work, willing to go into the messiest parts of a relationship with a client rather than around them.
Her therapeutic approach is inherently client-centered and integrative, drawing on her extensive experience in evidence-based treatment approaches, including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy. Her approach is highly individualized, based on the belief that treatment should be tailored to the client and not the other way around. To that end, Dr. Aviram actively seeks to evoke her clients’ perspectives, preferences, and ideas with respect to accomplishing their therapeutic goals.
Dr. Aviram completed her Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Clinical Psychology at York University in Toronto. She undertook her pre-doctoral internship at SUNY Upstate Medical University in the Adult Psychiatry Outpatient Clinic, with rotations in the Inpatient Psychiatry Unit, Inpatient Rehabilitation Unit, and Dialectical Behavioural Therapy Unit. She has also held positions at North York General Hospital (Branson and Leslie sites) in the Adult Mental Health Unit, as well as at the York University Student Counseling Centre.
Dr. Aviram has authored several peer-reviewed publications among the highest-impact clinical psychology journals and presented at both national and international psychology conferences. She has co-authored the chapter on integrating motivational interviewing into the treatment of anxiety in the book “Motivational Interviewing in the Treatment of Psychological Problems,” which clinicians reach for when they encounter clients who present as stuck, wanting to change but behaving in ways that are not consistent with their goals. Her research on mechanisms of change that help predict positive outcomes in psychotherapy has informed her ability to work particularly well in the presence of resistance to change. Dr. Aviram views resistance as valuable information to be understood rather than opposed, and strives to sit with clients through uncertainty and difficulty, moving flexibly to meet clients where they are rather than rushing the therapeutic process.
Dr. Aviram continues to engage in regular professional development activities and is a member of the Canadian Psychological Association and the Ontario Psychological Association. She provides comprehensive assessment and therapy services to individuals while also supervising psychologists during their supervised practice year with the College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario and offering peer consultation to colleagues. Her clients leave sessions not just feeling heard but equipped, with the sense of someone genuinely capable in their corner.