Sam Kriviak Counselling

You don’t have to wait until things get ‘really bad’ before looking for help. Going to counselling is a bit like going to a doctor for your physical health – we all have mental health, and we can always check up on it, no matter how good or bad things feel like they are going.

That being said, counselling is often most effective when you have a clear goal that you want to work towards, you need some support, or you aren’t sure how to make changes on your own. And considering that counselling can be expensive and time consuming, clients usually choose to come to counselling only when they have something specific they need help with.

You might come to counselling following a specific event, like a recent loss or traumatic experience, or you might have bigger picture issues to work on, like patterns you have noticed in your relationships or with certain emotions. Some clients keep coming back for maintenance sessions – check-ins and debriefs to keep them on the right track. I will never tell you how often you should come to counselling – but I am always happy to see you if we have something we can work on productively together!

It is a counsellor’s job to keep what you share with them confidential, including that you are their client. This means I won’t say hi to you in public (unless you say hi first!), mention that I know you, or share any details from your sessions that could reveal your identity to anyone without your consent – with just a few exceptions.

I do have a duty to share confidential information to keep clients and community members safe in extreme situations:

• If I think that you or someone else is in immediate physical danger, I might have to take steps to get extra help. I always weigh the risks of involving emergency services, especially for marginalized clients (e.g., Indigenous and racialized clients, disabled or mentally ill clients, queer clients, etc.), and I always try to involve my clients in the process of finding the best ways to keep themselves and others safe.
• In certain cases, when I believe a minor or a vulnerable person (e.g., elderly folks, folks with developmental disabilities) is experiencing or witnessing abuse or harm, I have a legal duty to make a report.
• I also have a legal duty to make a report if a client reports sexual misconduct by another psychologist.

It is always up to you what you want to disclose in therapy, knowing that these are the steps I have to take.

Other exceptions to confidentiality:

• The administration staff I work with have access to clients’ forms, appointment schedule, and billing information. They also keep this information confidential. If you do not pay for a session, they may also share your billing information with a collections agency.
• Lyndsay Wright, the owner of Summit Counselling, the practice I work out of, has access to client files. This means you will always be able to access your file from Summit if you ever need it in the future. Lyndsay is a Registered Psychologist and keeps client information confidential just like I would.
• Counsellors do not have ‘privilege’ like lawyers do, and if your file is subpoenaed by a judge, we do have to follow this court order.
• For clients in Alberta: If you work for an employer that has Worker’s Compensation Board (WCB) coverage and you share with me that 1) you have been injured at work and 2) you will likely require time off from work as a result, I am legally required to make a first report to WCB. Workplace injuries include psychological injuries like a traumatic incident, but they don’t include general stress. You do not have to pursue the WCB claim after this first report, and, as always, it is up to you what you want to disclose in therapy, knowing that the first report is a step I have to take.

Counsellors also consult with other counsellors and experts to make sure we are offering good support to our clients. In these conversations, we talk about general topics, issues, and strategies for therapy, or share relevant but non-identifying details about our clients. For example, we might ask for ideas about how to better provide culturally-competent care to an immigrant teenager newly diagnosed with ADHD. These consults are one place where we might talk about clients without getting explicit consent, because we keep your identity hidden. We do need to get your explicit informed consent before any ‘formal consultations’ – these are any times that you might be identifiable because we share enough information, or we consult with people who know you (e.g., your doctor).

Counselling can often help to improve overall wellbeing and support you to work towards your personal goals. Some benefits you might experience include increased emotional awareness, tolerance, and regulation; emotional processing; feelings of support and understanding; more effective strategies for coping with struggles and navigating life; stronger relationships; and greater insights and self-awareness.

Counselling can also be hard. Making changes is challenging work, and exploring and processing emotions can be uncomfortable. You might feel tired, drained, or sad after some sessions. Changing ourselves can sometimes impact our relationships and our current ‘status quo’, which can be scary. There are also some things that counselling can’t change, like other people’s behaviour or that life includes tough times and hard emotions. As well, no therapist can make a client change who doesn’t want to, and no therapist can do all the work in therapy for their client.

Counselling also comes with the general risks of being open and vulnerable with another person. I try my best to be anti-oppressive, non-judgmental, compassionate, and supportive; but, like all humans, I sometimes make mistakes. If I do make a mistake, I deeply value engaging in genuine repair. It can feel healing for some clients to work with someone who wants to be accountable and fix what went wrong – but it is always up to you whether you are willing to go through the repair process with me.

I only offer virtual therapy (phone or video) – this works great for some folks, and is a dealbreaker for other people. If virtual therapy isn’t for you, check out my Resources page for referrals to other counsellors.

Research has shown that, overall, video therapy is just as effective as in-person services (check out this meta-analysis by Fernandez et al. from 2021 in the Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy journal), but there are lots of reasons why a specific person might prefer one or the other. After all, these two types of therapy have some pretty obvious differences!

Virtual therapy gives you access to therapy anywhere in Alberta or the Northwest Territories which means there is no commuting to a therapy office, you can work with me even if we don’t live in the same city, and you have control over your therapy environment. Doing therapy from your own chosen space – whether its your home, car, office, or public library – can be great, or less great, depending on your comfort and privacy in these spaces. Some people feel safer, more comfortable, and just find it easier to access therapy from their own space. Others might not have a private space for virtual counselling, or prefer the ‘container’ that a therapy office can offer and a little bit of distance from their own spaces when doing counselling.

Another factor to consider is how you feel connecting to another person virtually. I am a lot smaller on your screen than in person, and much less 3D! Some clients say this is nice and less overwhelming, some clients have said this doesn’t make a big difference, and some clients find it more difficult to feel connected to me.

Finally, virtual therapy has some different risks than in-person counselling. Some things to consider:

• No Office: Virtual therapy can reduce the risks of coming into an office – no commute, no exposure to viruses, and no risk that your needs for a safe, comfortable, and accessible counselling space won’t be met. However, a therapy office is usually guaranteed to be private, while therapy in your own space relies on your own ability to ensure privacy.
• Technology: While I strive to ensure that all of our virtual communication is protected and private, all transmitted communication has an inherently higher risk of privacy breaches than in-person conversations. As well, virtual communication can be interrupted due to outages or other technical issues, which can be jarring, annoying, stressful, or upsetting.
• Therapeutic Differences: As a therapist, some of the information I learn about my clients is different virtually than it would be in person. For instance, I learn more about the personal space you choose to connect from, but I also see less body language than I would in person. I get to see you in your ‘natural habitat’, but I also can’t ensure your physical safety during session in the same way I could in person. These aspects of virtual therapy aren’t necessarily better or worse, but something to keep in mind.

Some counsellors are quite structured in their session, while I am much more organic. This works great for some clients, and isn’t the right fit for others. Because of my approach, I don’t have a standard blueprint for what each session might look like, but here are some general “guideposts” that you can expect:

• First sessions are usually ‘intake sessions’ where we get a chance to get to know each other and explore what brings you to counselling. These sessions typically start with a conversation about confidentiality and informed consent, to make sure we are on the same page before going any further. Then it is up to you whether you want to just start telling your story or if you’d like me to ask questions to explore both your background and your counselling goals. You are always welcome to ask me questions – if there is something I am not comfortable sharing, I will let you know. Usually we don’t get a lot of time to ‘work’ on the issues you bring up in the first session, and the deeper exploration begins in the second session.
• In next sessions, I check in with you to see what you have on your agenda and what feels like the most important thing to start with. I trust that ‘all roads lead to Rome’ – in other words, I believe that whatever comes up organically for you in each session is important and connected to the root causes that have led you to counselling. I also trust that working with what feels most present and relevant each session is the best way to connect to your emotional experience and make transformative changes in the here and now. As you get more used to counselling, you might gain a really clear sense of what works best for you and what to ask for or focus on each time we meet.
• I don’t give a lot of traditional “homework”. I am happy to send along resources, strategies, and reading material that help meet your goals in a way that meshes well with your learning style if you want me to. But I also believe that, sometimes, you just need some time in between sessions to let the work you have done percolate, integrate, and bring up new questions.

If this ‘organic’ approach doesn’t feel quite right for you, check out my Resources page for other counselling referrals.

There are a lot of factors that impact the speed of counselling. I encourage clients to set their own pace and schedule for counselling based on their availability, energy, financial limitations, and comfort. In addition to pace, the speed of change depends a lot on what we are changing, what your existing strategies are, the social and community support you have, and how safe your nervous system feels with this change.

Sometimes a one-off session is enough to meet your goals. This might be the case if you have good social support and mental health strategies in general, but you need some help navigating or processing a recent loss or traumatic event, or just some reassurances that you are on the right track.

More commonly, regular sessions over a few months is enough to get into the root causes of the issue that brought you to counselling, and experiment with changing old patterns or adding new strategies. Most clients notice some new insights and changes within the first 3-4 sessions.

Other times, if you are looking for check-ins, maintenance, or some regular co-regulation, counselling might be a longer term engagement. Counselling might also take a lot longer if we are working on attachment or relational issues or complex or childhood trauma. If it has been a long, bumpy journey to get to where you are today, it will likely take some time to get to somewhere new. I am always honored when a client chooses me to be by their side on these marathon adventures! I am really passionate about forming long-term counselling relationships.

I encourage clients to set their own pace and schedule for counselling based on their availability, energy, financial limitations, and comfort. I will never tell you exactly how often you should come to counselling, and I will never hold it against you if you ‘drop off the map’ for a bit or need to take a step back from counselling for awhile.

That being said, sometimes folks new to counselling appreciate some guidance about what frequency of sessions work best!

Most clients seem to find anywhere between weekly and monthly sessions the most helpful as these schedules give some time between sessions to reflect and integrate whatever we are working on, but also provides some continuity, consistency, and forward momentum to our work. If you aren’t quite sure what counselling schedule would feel best, I recommend starting with whatever feels most manageable and checking in a lot with yourself and your counsellor in the early stages to see if any adjustments are needed. Keep in mind that an ‘ebb-and-flow’ schedule is also a solid option as our priorities, focus, motivation, and time and financial pressures aren’t always the same.

Because every client has different goals, needs, and topics for counselling, as well as different lives, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all schedule that will work for every client.

Oof, yes. The cost of private mental healthcare is a big barrier for most people, and insurance plans rarely provide enough coverage to access ongoing support. So why do counsellors charge these high fees?

As a private practice counsellor, I am not paid a salary or wage outside of session fees. That means that any work I do outside of sessions, including professional development, case planning, peer consults, advocacy work, resource development, community engagement, and between-session support is covered by session fees. Session fees also cover:

• Office overhead costs such as administrative staff, record keeping, scheduling and video call software, and advertising and web maintenance.
• Required yearly registration fees with licensing bodies, professional insurance, income taxes and CPP deductions, accounting, and legal fees.
• Continuing competency costs like workshops and courses, books, additional licensing, conferences, and supervision and consultation with other experts.
• The process of becoming a psychologist which includes undergraduate and graduate university tuition, an unpaid year-long practicum placement, licensing exams, and hiring a supervisor. These costs in particular are one of the barriers to greater diversity and representation in the field. This is also a reason why Registered Psychologists tend to have higher fees than other mental health professionals.

For these reasons, session fees do not represent an ‘hourly wage’. Income from session fees also ebbs and flows throughout the year as caseloads fluctuate. From my session fees, I am able to pay myself a living wage on a work schedule that is safe and sustainable for me. I am also able to offer sliding scale fees and some pro bono counselling. My session fees are aligned with the current recommended fee schedule from the Psychologists’ Association of Alberta.

If fees are a barrier to accessing counselling for you, please check out my Resources page for affordable mental health support options.

These words are often used interchangeably. The title of ‘psychologist’ is restricted, which means only Registered Psychologists and Registered Provisional Psychologists are allowed to use it, while anyone can call themself a therapist or counsellor. Therapists and counsellors might have a wide range of certifications, licenses, and training.

In Alberta and the Northwest Territories, in addition to Registered Psychologists (R. Psych.), you are most likely to see Registered Social Workers (RSW) and Canadian Certified Counsellors (CCC) providing mental health services, as well as folks with more specific titles like licensed Play Therapists, Animal-Assisted Therapists, or Art Therapists. These titles and licenses impact who we are regulated by and sometimes whether services are covered by insurance. Registered Psychologists are the most likely to be covered by insurance, but counsellors with other designations may be covered as well.

As a Registered Psychologist, my licensing body is the College of Alberta Psychologists which is guided in part by the Canadian Psychological Association. I am also licensed in the Northwest Territories by their Professional Licensing Office. Licenses in one jurisdiction are not valid in other jurisdictions, and the qualifications and process to become a Registered Psychologist are different across provinces, territories, and countries.

Even though I am a Registered Psychologist, I tend to call myself a counsellor for a few reasons. I hold a Master of Counselling degree, which means counselling is what I specifically trained in. I also identify more with the language of counselling than of psychology. Counselling is a broad field of healing and guidance, while psychology is the scientific study of the human mind and behaviour – I feel more at home describing my work as relational healing and support, than as clinical assessment and treatment. However, I sometimes refer to myself as a counsellor, therapist, psychotherapist, or psychologist in different circumstances.

Counsellors can fill different roles – they can offer expert skills and information to support mental health, they can provide co-regulation and a “safe adult” for folks who missed this experience, they can hold space and offer grounding for really big and overwhelming feelings and experiences, and they can guide and create space for reflection that doesn’t exist anywhere else in your life. No matter what role a counsellor fills, though, our focus is always on our client’s needs and goals, and on facilitating change.

Much like with other health professionals, counsellors aren’t the same as a friend. Your partner might give great foot massages, but they don’t offer the same specific services or expertise as a massage therapist, or the same boundaries. Similarly, your mom might be a really good listener, but she will always be your mom, not a licensed health professional with expertise in mental health who can offer an outside perspective.

Unlike friendships, counselling relationships aren’t characterized by companionship, reciprocal sharing and support, shared interests and activities, or a heavy focus on liking each other. A good rule of thumb is: if you can get it in your friendships, it shouldn’t be the focus of a counselling session (but know that this will be different for different clients!). Of course, counselling is a lot more enjoyable when you get along with your therapist, but it is even more important that you can trust they are acting in your best interest to facilitate your change goals based on their expert knowledge.

There are some important boundaries that help differentiate between a friendship and a therapeutic relationship. Counsellors are responsible for staying focused on their client’s needs and holding space for whatever big emotions might come up in therapy. Counsellors have our own needs for support and regulation too – but we make sure we get them met outside our sessions, so that clients never have to feel like it is their job to help us. That doesn’t mean we never share about ourselves, but we only share with the purpose of helping you. It also doesn’t mean that we never set boundaries, because boundaries are how we clearly communicate what we can help with and how we can help.

Counsellors also don’t engage in dual relationships with our clients (except in some rare circumstances) – we are only ever your counsellor (not your client, boss, teacher, contractor, friend, or teammate) and we only ever meet in sessions or for agreed upon between-session support. As a result, you can count on your counsellor to always be in your corner, and focused on your goals for therapy, every time you meet with them.

If you are ever unclear on the boundaries or roles of a counselling relationship, just ask! After all, one of our areas of expertise as counsellors is clear, open communication and boundary setting.

It depends! If your relationship or shared experiences are likely going to come up in therapy, then I will refer you on to another counsellor. This is always the case with a partner, an immediate family member, best friend, or someone you have an uneven power dynamic with (like a current student or boss). I want to make sure you feel like I’m fully in your corner and focused on you, and that I’m not hearing other information about you from someone else. I also want to make sure I can always act in my clients’ best interests – and that one client’s best interest is never in conflict with another’s.

For folks who know each other, but aren’t close supports, and who are very unlikely to mention one another in session, I am open to working with both of you if there is a reason why you want to see me in particular. This group might include classmates/coworkers, acquaintances, or someone in your general social circle. In these cases, I ask both clients to sign a Release of Information form that allows me to acknowledge that I see both of you, in case we ever need to talk about this overlap. This also lets me check with both clients about any questions or concerns you each might have about the arrangement. I don’t share any other information between the two of you except that you are both my clients.

Different counsellors have different boundaries outside of session, so if it’s likely that you might run into your counsellor, it is always helpful to have a conversation ahead of time about what to expect. Some of the reasons a counsellor might not want to be approached outside of sessions include: personal work/life boundaries, concerns about being able to be ‘professional’ (e.g., they might be intoxicated or wearing clothes they wouldn’t wear to work), or protecting the privacy of others (e.g., they might do walk-and-talk sessions with other clients, or they might not want clients to meet their children).

With me, I am happy for current or former clients to say ‘hi’ to me in public. If I am with other people I might step away from them so they aren’t involved in our conversation. I also won’t provide any ‘therapy’ outside of session, and I will try to keep our conversation short.

Saying ‘hi’ is always your decision – I will never say ‘hi’ first to clients in public. The main reason for this is to protect your confidentiality and honour your boundaries – I don’t know who you are with, whether you might know someone that I am with, whether the space we are in is safe and private for you, or if you are comfortable talking to me at that moment. I also can’t reliably keep mental track of every current and former client’s preferences for unplanned run-ins, so I play it safe and let my clients decide in the moment what they would like to do.

If you see me ‘in the wild’ and aren’t comfortable saying ‘hi’ for any reason, I won’t be offended! My hope is that it also isn’t hurtful if I ‘ignore’ you outside of session – there is a good chance that I haven’t noticed you (I’m a bit oblivious), or, if I have, I’m waiting to see what you’d like to do.

Those times when we know ahead of time that we are likely to run into each other (e.g., at an event or because of an overlap in our day-to-day lives), we can make a more specific plan for what might work best.