Dr. Zoë Laksman is a Registered Clinical and Health Psychologist and Clinical Director at Laksman Doell Psychology. She works with exceptional individuals who care deeply about creating meaningful impact in their world and with the people they value most, helping them develop comprehensive strategies for sustained fulfillment while navigating complex challenges and emerging with renewed clarity and purpose. Her practice encompasses stress and anxiety management (including panic attacks, social anxiety, chronic worry, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, burnout, and obsessive compulsive disorder), depression, relationship dynamics, and personal optimization. She also works with individuals at the intersection of psychological wellbeing and physical health, provides grief counseling, and offers couples therapy.
Dr. Laksman works with thoughtful individuals and couples who want to understand themselves more deeply and create lasting change. Her approach is active, compassionate, and tailored to each person, combining evidence-based methods with a genuine belief in your capacity for growth. She helps clients identify what truly matters to them, build self-awareness, and use their natural strengths to move past obstacles. Together, you’ll explore how your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors shape your relationships and professional life, understanding that these patterns affect your physical health and overall well-being. Dr. Laksman sees strength in adversity and possibility in challenging moments. She believes transformation isn’t just about managing symptoms but about nurturing your whole self. Her work embraces the full range of human emotion, recognizing that difficult feelings aren’t obstacles to overcome but information to understand. She helps clients develop emotional agility, learning to be with their experiences rather than being controlled by them. Her conviction remains unwavering: you have the innate ability to overcome challenges, get out of your own way, and create new opportunities. No one else’s predictions should define your story. While her foundation is cognitive behavioral therapy, she draws from complementary approaches to create a truly individualized experience for each client and couple.
In her work with couples, Dr. Laksman understands that desire and connection require both security and mystery, helping partners maintain their individuality while deepening intimacy. She creates space for vulnerability, knowing that showing up authentically, even when it feels uncomfortable, is where real connection begins. Her couples work focuses on helping partners understand each other more deeply while building the skills needed for lasting intimacy and mutual support.
Dr. Laksman provides compassionate support to those facing chronic health conditions, cancer diagnoses, adjustment to illness, and health behavior change, as well as the family members and loved ones who support them. A core focus is nurturing resilience during life’s most challenging moments, gently empowering both clients and their support systems to find strength, discover hope, and maintain a sense of control and meaning throughout their health journey. Understanding that health challenges affect entire families, she provides warm support for caregivers facing unique pressures, including exhaustion, relationship changes, and the difficulty of watching a loved one struggle.
Dr. Laksman earned both her Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Clinical Psychology at Adler University in Chicago, Illinois, complemented by clinical training at the York University Counseling and Development Centre. She pursued additional training at the CBT Unit and Anxiety Disorders Clinics at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada’s premier mental health and addiction teaching hospital. Her professional journey included serving as a Staff Psychologist at Cleveland Clinic Canada, a groundbreaking integrative healthcare facility in Toronto, where she contributed to specialty programs in executive health, stress and anxiety management, women’s health, cardiac prevention, and weight and lifestyle management. Following thirteen years in private practice with adults in individual and couples counselling, Dr. Laksman co-founded Laksman Doell Psychology.
Dr. Laksman provides comprehensive assessment and therapy services to individuals and couples 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. She extends her expertise beyond the clinic through on site services, presentations, and professional workshops focused on emotional health and stress management at the Boston Consulting Group’s Toronto office, one of the world’s leading global consulting firms. She is a preferred psychology provider for the National Hockey League Players’ Association, serving both individual players and couples.