Clayre Sessoms

There is something that happens when a person stops performing and simply arrives.

The breath changes. The room changes. Something that has been waiting a long time finally gets to rest.

I know this moment from both sides of the screen; the relief of it, and the long road it sometimes takes to get there. Many of the people I work with have spent years learning how to manage themselves carefully. To anticipate, adapt, hold things together, or make sure others are comfortable. At some point, that way of being begins to feel costly. Not wrong, but no longer sustainable.

Therapy, as I practice it, is a place to begin loosening that effort.

We start with what is here. Not what should be happening, but what is actually happening in your body, in your thoughts, in your relationships, and in the wider context of your life. This might include anxiety that doesn’t settle, grief that continues to move in waves, relational patterns that repeat despite your best intentions, or a sense of disconnection that is difficult to name but impossible to ignore.

Rather than moving quickly to solutions, I focus on helping you understand how your experience has taken shape. Together, we pay attention to patterns as meaningful adaptations—ways your system has learned to respond in order to protect, belong, or survive. This shift often creates space for something new to emerge, not through force, but through recognition and support.

My approach is psychodynamic, relational, and body-aware. I draw from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST), Focusing Oriented Therapy, and expressive arts therapy. This means we are working not only with what you can explain, but with what is felt, sensed, and sometimes difficult to put into words.

At times, this looks like conversation following a thread, making connections, noticing what stands out. At other times, we might slow things down and attend more directly to your internal experience. This could include tracking sensation, working with parts of yourself, or using an image, metaphor, or creative process to explore something that doesn’t yet have language. There is no single way to do this work. We follow what feels most alive and accessible to you.

My background shapes this approach in important ways. Before becoming a psychotherapist, I spent many years working as a massage therapist and yoga teacher, learning how to listen through the body. That orientation continues to guide my work now. It allows us to include the nervous system, the breath, and the subtle cues of experience that often get left out of more purely cognitive approaches.

I work with adults and older teens navigating a wide range of experiences, including burnout, trauma, grief, relationship challenges, chronic pain or illness, identity exploration, and life transitions. I also offer gender-affirming care, including support around social and medical transition, and assessment processes where needed. My approach remains the same across these areas: relational, collaborative, and grounded in your lived experience.

I hold a justice-informed and non-pathologizing perspective. I understand that many of the struggles people carry are shaped by larger systems—family, culture, oppression, access, and the conditions people are asked to live within. Rather than locating the problem solely within you, we make space to consider the broader context of your experience. This often allows for a different kind of compassion to emerge, one that is not about fixing yourself, but about understanding how you have come to be who you are.

I also pay attention to the ways identity is lived in the body and in relationships. This includes how safety, belonging, and visibility are negotiated over time. Therapy can become a place to explore these experiences more fully, without needing to reduce or simplify them.

Alongside my individual work, I remain connected to a small, collaborative team. I work closely with Laura Hoge, RSW, and clinical practicum student therapist Laith Eskandar, and we stay in conversation about our work in ways that support continuity and care. As a team, we offer sessions in multiple languages and share a commitment to relational, experiential practice.

In practical terms, sessions are held online. Many people find that working from their own space allows for a different kind of ease and continuity. It can make it easier to settle, to access what is real, and to integrate what emerges in therapy into everyday life.

What you can expect from me is steadiness, honesty, and a willingness to stay with what is difficult without rushing it. I will meet you with care and curiosity, and I will also be direct when it feels useful. There is room here for humour, for uncertainty, and for the parts of you that may not have had space elsewhere.

Over time, therapy often becomes less about managing yourself and more about relating to yourself differently. This can mean greater clarity, more choice in how you respond, and a deeper sense of trust in your own experience. Not because everything is resolved, but because you are no longer navigating it alone.

If you’re considering reaching out, you don’t need to have everything figured out first. We can begin wherever you are.