Compassionate therapy for adult individuals and couples.
Mindful Empowerment Psychotherapy offers online and in-person services for adults with a wide range of mental wellness concerns and goals.
Janna Joseph, Registered Psychotherapist, specializes in working with trauma, grief, sex, and relationships.
​
Mental health is approached from a holistic and anti-oppressive point of view, where collaboration and client agency is emphasized. Exploring thoughts, emotion, and somatic experiences, clients are encouraged to develop personal insight that allows them to understand their past and present, and how that relates to their social world.
Janna Joseph,
Registered Psychotherapist
Nice to meet you!
I am a therapist for couples and individuals, with specialties in grief, trauma, sex, relationships, and EMDR.
I work with clients throughout Ontario, as well as in person in Toronto.
My approach emphasizes holistic mindfulness and trauma-informed interaction and interventions.
Challenges You May Be Experiencing
Depression & Anxiety
Burnout
Life Transitions
Relationship Issues
Neurodivergence
Trauma
Grief and Loss
Sex and Sexuality
Emotion Regulation
Self-Compassion
Themes Within My Practice
Mindfulness
Mindfulness refers to the skill of internal and external awareness within the present moment. Mindfulness can be in relation to your thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, and your interactions with your world. Mindfulness allows you to shift focus where you want to, rather than feeling trapped and distracted.
Acceptance
People often confuse mindful acceptance with conceding defeat or giving up. Acceptance is about being able to observe and acknowledge your circumstances, thoughts, and feelings in the present moment, without fighting with yourself about it. This allows you to consider your wants, needs, and choices for moving into the future.
Committed Action
Committed action is how we describe intentional efforts that move us towards the life we want. This is the opposite of when we are existing reflexively, on 'autopilot.'
Self-Compassion
Do you ever find that you tend to criticize yourself, take on complete blame, and belittle your own emotions? In comparison, you can easily find empathy and compassion for another person's experience of the exact same thing. We often lack empathy for ourselves, believing that we should somehow be flawless. Self-compassion allows us to give ourselves permission to feel our emotions, experience struggle, need help.
Attachment
Everyone has relationship needs: our attachment style describes patterns of behaviour that result from underlying worldviews about safety and reliability within relationships. Our patterns of behaviour in relationships often relate to a template that was created early on, based on our relationship with our original attachment figures (parents/guardians).
Fight-or-Flight Response
When our brains sense danger, the nervous system jumps into action: the fight-or-flight response is our body's way of preparing us for danger by either fighting, fleeing, freezing up, or shutting down. This response evolved in relation to literal threats to our physical safety, but we now often experience it when we interpret any kind of threat to our well-being. There's a disconnect between this response and our logical thoughts.
Window of Tolerance
When you are able to effectively cope with stressors and discomfort, this is considered existing within your window of tolerance. Once you surpass that window, the stressors and symptoms feel out of your control: this experience of distress causes avoidance of the stressor, which ends up decreasing your window of tolerance even further. We want to increase that window so you can feel more effective and capable.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence describes our ability to notice, identify, and articulate our emotions, as well as tune in to the emotions of the people around us. Emotional intelligence allows us to experience our emotions, while displaying them and managing them in adaptive ways. Emotion regulation skills often relate to one's emotional intelligence.
Frequently Asked Questions About Psychotherapy
Are my issues even important enough to go to therapy?
If it's important to you, then it matters! People often belittle their experiences by comparing themselves to others who are 'worse off.' Why should another person's well-being dictate whether or not you take care of your own?
What if I don't know what to talk about in our sessions?
It's common not to know where to start or feel like your mind has gone blank. No problem! I'm happy to prompt you with questions or potential themes previously mentioned as relevant. Ultimately, whatever feels present in your session is where we should start.
What does a first session look like?
First sessions are usually a deeper exploration into what's going on, combined with getting to know each other and getting comfortable. I may ask more questions in a first session than in following sessions. While I will sometimes start introducing in-session strategies, we're generally in a stage of understanding and planning. First sessions can feel heavy, so I always warn clients that they might feel fatigued later that day.
How is this different from just talking with a friend?
A conversation with a friend ideally involves shared support and reciprocated listening. A therapist is here to solely hold space for you, trained to offer empathy and validation while still challenging you with alternative perspectives. There's definitely a time and place for both types of support, but you might want to consider whether a friend has the emotional readiness and capacity to handle the content and needs that are generally more suited to a trained professional.
Are you going to judge me and tell me what to do?
Absolutely not! I am here to understand you and help you find confidence in your own decisions. I aim to develop genuine connections with all of my clients: I am only of benefit to you if you feel like there's trust and collaboration.
Will I be in therapy forever?
Although some people actually enjoy the idea of continual maintenance, we usually do get to a place of reasonable conclusion. Clients usually attend sessions on a consistent basis for a little while, but then start to taper off. With positive therapeutic change and skill development, clients hopefully start to feel like they can manage independently.
Should I have specific goals in mind?
It's definitely helpful to have an idea of what you're hoping to get out of your therapy journey, but it's not a requirement for getting started. Sometimes the goals formulate as we get into deeper exploration. Sometimes you just need some guidance in how to articulate your needs or hopes.
How do I know if we're a good fit?
It's often just a gut feeling, similar to when you meet a potential new friend. There are so many therapist options to choose from, so you have to decide for yourself: Can I connect with this therapist? Can I align with this therapist's style? Do our schedules line up? The best way to test your gut feeling is to give a first session a chance.