Nadia Capone DCTP

Psychotherapy provides a safe vehicle with an experienced guide to journey to those places within our selves that no other place in life provides in quite the same way.

It gives us the chance to ask questions about ourselves, identify patterns of behaviour that keep us from moving more deeply into relationships with ourselves and others, experiencing true intimacy and living life more fully.

The people I work with have sought out psychotherapy for a variety of reasons:

• Career change
• Alcohol and drug addiction
• Relationship difficulties
• Anxiety
• Compulsive behaviours
• Issues of self-esteem
• Sexual issues
• Depression
• Body issues
• Spiritual issues
• The challenges of living with cancer

It has been my experience that everyone can benefit from psychotherapy. No matter your reason for starting therapy, that decision is a commitment to care for oneself and a sign of readiness to examine your life issues more deeply.

It is my belief that our unconscious feelings influence, and often control, our lives and our behaviours in negative ways. By having a chance to see how we developed certain patterns of behaviour and defences, in the presence of a caring therapist, we not only gain an understanding, but also compassion, for ourselves. We begin to see the remarkable capacity we had to protect ourselves during some of the most vulnerable stages of our development. We also begin to see that some of the defences that may have been appropriate at one stage of our lives no longer serve us. In therapy we have a chance to work through the pains and traumas we have built walls around allowing us to free up enormous amounts of energy to be better used towards one's well being.

Exploring issues and feelings more closely in a safe, caring and non-judgmental environment leads to greater self- understanding. We begin to see how powerful, unexpressed, unconscious feelings get translated into difficult and often destructive behaviours, and how to alter them.

Within a safe therapeutic environment you will be able to identify, express and work through such highly charged feelings thus developing an awareness of the connections between these feelings and the behaviours they lead to.

Such self-exploration and expression lead to reduced levels of stress, greater intimacy in relationships with oneself and others, reducing and eliminating reacting out of anxiety. A greater sense of self-esteem and self worth leads to an increased ability to make healthy choices and set appropriate boundaries. A new sense of personal space and inner calm, a stronger personal voice and the courage and self-esteem to use it arise.

The foundation from which I work is deeply influenced by the years of my own self-exploration in psychotherapy. I provide a compassionate and non-judgmental environment in which you can tell your story. In this environment you may find oneself truly heard and understood for the first time. This in itself is profoundly healing. It is from this foundation that the deepest work can occur and real, lasting healing can happen.

My Training

I graduated from the Center for Training in Psychotherapy (CTP). CTP provided me with a very thorough training that allowed me to develop my own strengths and style as a therapist, while giving me a solid foundation of knowledge and practice. The rigorous requirements of this program that I have found most useful have been the hours of participation in group and individual therapy. I draw most intimately from this experiential aspect of the program in my own practice today. It is through the experience of my own personal change and healing that I have come to fully respect and trust the process of psychotherapy and all it can do.

My therapy training as a therapist is supported by twenty years of working as a professional actor and in the last few years as an acting coach. I have benefitted greatly from my studies in the Sanford Misener technique. As many of my clients are artists, from actors, to painters, to musicians and singers, I have found a common language and understanding that has been invaluable to working with them more deeply. It has also provided me with a long history of examining the human character.

I have also had the opportunity to study with Gurucharan Singh Khalsa, Ph.D., a world renowned psychotherapist and Kundalini Yogi, and the director of training at the Kundalini Research Institute. Gurucharan introduced the use of Kundalini yoga in the practice of psychotherapy. This type of yoga focuses primarily on breathing and meditation. Where it is appropriate and clients are open to it I have found the use of this style of yogic breathing to be an excellent tool for decreasing stress, reaching feelings more deeply and developing an awareness of how and where our bodies store tension. Clients have also found it an excellent tool to use on their own as a healthy way of managing stress and anxiety.

My deep spiritual practice, influenced by both eastern and western beliefs, provides me with a solid grounding in holding a space for clients. It influences my practice by providing a calm and deep belief in the healing ability of every individual that seeks it.

Please feel free to contact me for a free consultation. Here's a map to my office in the Broadview-Danforth area close to the subway.