Start to finish
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You make contact
A phone call or an email. There is no form on this website and no online calendar. You do not have to explain why. “I would like to talk to someone” is a complete message.
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A short conversation, free
About fifteen minutes, in whichever of the four ways is easiest. It is not a session and it is not an assessment. It exists so you can hear a voice and decide.
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A first session, if it fits
Roughly an hour. Mostly you talking about what brought you, at whatever level of detail you choose, and some practical questions about safety and sleep.
The first hour
What actually happens in it
There is no couch. Nobody analyses you. You will not be asked to describe the worst thing that happened to you, and if you start to and want to stop, you stop.
The hour usually covers: what brought you now rather than last year; what you want to be different; what is currently working, because there is always something; whether you are safe; and how you are sleeping.
Near the end we talk straight about whether this is a good fit — including the possibility that it is not. A referral elsewhere is a good outcome, not a failed sale.
THE CLIENT’S CHAIR, photographed from where the client sits — the view they will actually have. This is the single most reassuring photograph a therapy site can carry and almost none of them do it.
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You can keep your coat on. You can keep the camera off. You can say “I do not want to talk about that” as many times as you need to, and it will not be treated as resistance to be worked around.
What to bring
Nothing. If you have a list of what you wanted to say, bring it — people forget everything the moment they sit down, and a piece of paper solves it.
How many sessions
Nobody can honestly say in advance, and anyone who does is guessing. Some people come for six weeks, some for two years, some for three sessions. Stopping is allowed and needs no reason.
A watercolour lettering piece reading “If you believe in yourself anything is possible”. Supplied by the client. SEE THE NOTE IN docs/PLACEHOLDERS.md before this goes live — it reads as an outcome promise.
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Square · supplied · REVIEW BEFORE LAUNCH
Confidentiality
What stays in the room, and the few things that cannot
What you say is confidential. That is the foundation of the whole thing and it is taken seriously. But “confidential” has limits in law, and you are told them before you start rather than discovering them afterwards — because finding out later that a rule existed is its own small betrayal, and this work cannot afford one.
In British Columbia the limits are, broadly:
- If there is a serious and imminent risk to your life, or to someone else’s.
- If a child or youth is being abused or neglected, or is at risk of it. In British Columbia the duty to report that is a legal duty on everyone, not a professional judgement call.
- If a court orders the release of records.
Outside those, nothing leaves the room without your consent — not to your family, not to your doctor, not to an employer, not to an immigration authority.
To be confirmed before launch
Ali’s own confidentiality and records statement. The summary above describes how these duties generally work in BC. It is not the practice’s actual written informed-consent document, which is what a client signs and which must be his own, checked against current CCPA requirements and BC law. What belongs here: exact wording, what goes in session notes, where they are stored, how long they are kept, and how a client requests their file.
Fees
What it costs, said up front
Money is one of the two things that stop people getting started, and hiding it wastes everybody’s time. It belongs on this page, in numbers, before anyone has to ask.
To be confirmed before launch
The fee, and everything attached to it. Nothing here has been invented — a made-up price on a counselling website is a straightforwardly harmful thing to publish.
What belongs here: the session fee and the session length; whether the fifteen-minute first conversation is free (it is described as free elsewhere on this site — confirm or change that); the cancellation notice period and what happens if it is missed; which payment methods are accepted; whether sliding-scale or reduced-fee places exist and how to ask for one without embarrassment; and which extended-health insurers reimburse a CCC in British Columbia, since coverage for counselling varies by plan and clients regularly get this wrong in both directions.
Two things worth knowing regardless: counselling in BC is generally not covered by MSP, and many extended-health plans do cover it — but which credentials a plan will reimburse varies from insurer to insurer. Check your own plan for the exact designation it lists.