Sessions

Appointment

To set up a meeting appointment contact Sam by phone, text, or email.

Free Initial Meeting

The most important element in this process is a therapeutic relationship where you can trust and honestly share. The best relationships, whether personal or professional, often come down to an innate sense of “fit.”

Sam believes that a free initial meeting—not a working session—is the best way for you find that “fit”—to ask questions, share your needs, and for him to discover your situation and intentions. A meeting without the pressures of fees and expectations is a chance for you to experience Sam as a person and a therapist as well as the session environment itself. From this meeting better decisions can be made about how to proceed.

Format

Sessions occur in person at Sam Turton's quiet neighbourhood session space, or virtually via Zoom or telephone. The choice is yours.

Range of Modalities

Everyone seeking assistance has a problem or need, whether it is an upsetting issue or a desire to improve. In order to facilitate your unique issue, Sam does not restrict himself to any one modality or technique. He meets you as you are, and follows the process that will best suit your particular problems and strengths.

This experience may involve some or all of these options: Therapy, Counselling, Coaching,

Parenting, and Zen.

Therapy (or psychotherapy) generally refers to ways of dealing with more emotional issues such as anxiety, depression, grief, anger, and shame. These states are often driven by early original causes and and require careful exploration, expression, insight, and active resolution.

Counselling usually refers to working on more practical and relational problems, with sharing, mediation, understanding, and action.

Coaching engages problems, plans, solutions, and success in self-improvement, creative development, career direction, and executive/business management. This usually requires discussion, assessment, action, and regular review.

Parenting guidance gives a focus to the many issues parents face through pregnancy, birth, infancy, childhood, teenworld, the “empty nest,” and adult children. In addition, modern children are confronted with challenges and mental stimulation/influences never seen in human history—cell phones, laptops, social media, online games, digital porn—not to mention over-sexualization, targeted advertising, and ideological propaganda. Navigating these wide-ranging and emotion-filled issues often requires aspects of therapy, counselling, and coaching.

Zen provides a simple, streamlined method for clarifying awareness. To Sam, modern society is experiencing an epidemic of excess/negative thinking and dysfunction. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a relatively new approach to negative thinking, but Sam believes that Zen attention—after thousands of years—is a much more effective and trusted tool. Zen awareness can be applied to any aspect of our lives—including processes such as therapy, counselling, coaching, or parenting.

In conclusion, you or Sam are not expected to choose one method or approach. Your issues, needs and process will naturally evolve to engage one, more, or all of these areas. Sam presents this range of modalities to further your understanding.

Your Biography

All problems have a history—and that thread of situations and events is a network that can reach back into early life. To understand, engage, and resolve a problem we need to know the mechanisms that drive it now and the complex of forces that caused it to begin.

Sharing the history of a problem and earlier life often happens spontaneously in session, but it can also be helpful to create a more detailed account. Compiling a short biography of this type can be fascinating for some and very challenging for others, but it is often extremely useful.

Understanding the complex connections of personal history, and the power driving present problems (trauma, family patterns, conditioning) can shed light on your confusion, allow greater understanding and personal empowerment. To Sam, a biography is an important map that shows the sources of problems, the power they have, the pitfalls to avoid, as well as your personal strengths. This “map” allows him to support and guide the process in the most effective manner, especially if the problems have deep and challenging roots.

If a biography is agreed upon, you will receive a set of questions and complete it at your own pace. It can be a rough list or a detailed account—it's up to you.

Informed Consent

If you decide to begin session work with Sam, you will have the opportunity to read and sign an informed consent document stating that you understand and agree with the therapeutic process and can engage or decline at any time. Sam will also need your contact details for his confidential files.

Typical Session

After an initial meeting and mutual decision to begin, a typical session usually begins with an opportunity to share thoughts and feelings.

You may wish to focus on a situation or event (past or present) or you may explore your emotions and any bodily awareness or discomfort.

Sam offers safe, non-judgmental support. He will encourage your sharing and offer suggestions or exercises to help your exploration. If you feel emotional, stuck, flat, upset, or confused, Sam will accept, listen, support, and guide you toward release, insight, and resolution.

Depending on the issue you are engaging, Sam may suggest exercises, actions, and other “homework” to continue the process between sessions. His overall intention is to encourage the empowerment and leadership of your own process.

Days and Times

Sam books sessions Monday to Thursday from 9:30 am to 8:00 pm, and Friday from 9:30 am to 5:00 pm EST.

Frequency and Duration

Your unique needs and resources will inform decisions about the length, frequency, and duration of sessions. Most people prefer 1 hour, though others require 75, 90 minutes or more to fully share and explore.

You may want 1 or 2 sessions a week, 1 session every 2 weeks, or start frequently and taper off as you progress. Some people need only a few sessions to resolve a specific issue while others commit to an extended course of sessions either to provide a guiding influence or to achieve a deeper personal transformation.

Those who are working on deeper trauma resolution and significant personal transformation sometimes find it helpful to schedule intensive session packages of one or two daily sessions for a consecutive number of days or weeks. The exact arrangement is custom-designed and priced to your needs. Distance clients wanting some in-person sessions may find these arrangements useful and arrange local accommodation for their visit.

Intensive Session Packages

Fees

Session fees follow a sliding scale from $110-$135 Canadian per hour. The amount is yours to choose. Sam charges much less than most psychotherapists because he wants self-improvement available to as many people as possible.

Sessions are not a “50-minute hour,” but a full 60 minutes—and sometimes more— because Sam prefers to follow a natural conclusion to sessions. He never books sessions back-to-back in order to accommodate this natural flow and allow time for note-taking and personal balance.

Most prefer to pay for sessions by etransfer, and insurance is honoured for those covered. If you need receipts they are produced for any requested time.

Clients from outside Canada most often pay via PayPal, in intervals that are most convenient—per session, or a set number of sessions on your account.

Appointment - "Sessions"

Free Initial Meeting - "Sessions"

Format - "Sessions"

Range of Modalities - "Sessions"

Your Biography - "Sessions"

Informed Consent - "Sessions"

Typical Session - "Sessions"

Days and Times - "Sessions"

Frequency and Duration - "Sessions"

Intensive Session Packages - "Sessions"

Fees - "Sessions"

top anchor - "Sessions"