I do not have space for new individual therapy clients at this time. Please consult my links page for the names of therapists who may be accepting new clients.

For relational counselling and clinical supervision, I can be reached at alisoncarpentertherapy@gmail.com

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.”
Anais Nin

I grew up in Montreal and have spent time living in Toronto, Nova Scotia, Pennsylvania, Stockholm and New York.  On two occasions I have moved back to Montreal from somewhere else.  I love this city and have made my long-term home in the Plateau since 1997.

Very important influences on my road towards being a therapist:

• a first adult job at the pioneering feminist Bay Centre for Birth Control in Toronto, informally trained in being an empowering counsellor by the nurse-practitioners there.
• a very positive experience with a therapist in early adulthood
• a lifetime of connection with social justice movement
• an education focused on the study of oppression, gender, sexuality and power at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, and,
• a Master’s degree which allowed me to develop my sexuality-oriented therapy work through extensive individual and group counselling experience and a thesis entitled Toward Sexual Empowerment: the development of women’s critical self-consciousness in groupwork.

There are some other practices and influences over the years that enrich my work as a therapist:

• in-depth training towards in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFT)
• in-depth training in Developmental Couple Therapy (ongoing)
• being a sessional instructor for the Couple and Family Therapy Program at the McGill School of Social Work since 2020: Adult Mental Health, Couple Therapy, Trauma and Resilience and Anti-Oppressive Practice
• regular supervision and peer supervision
• relentless curiosity and a deep commitment to continuing education
• being a clinical supervisor for therapists in private practice and CFT interns
• being a mother of two adults
• meditation—buddhist/mindfulness, transcendental, yoga and 5Rhythms movement therapy
• benefitting from complementary health care: physio, osteopathy, homeopathy, chiropractic, many kinds of massage, acupuncture and Chinese medicine and many kinds of psychotherapy over the years
• being a part-time musician and performer–violin, voice, theatre, solo-shows, choral creator
  

“Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon

realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”― Eckhart Tolle

Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world
so worthy of rescue.

Martha Postlethwaite