Support for ages 12-17
Teen Therapy in Thornhill-Markham
More ways to express and feel understood.
Talking about feelings isn’t always easy. We help teenagers express themselves through conversation, music, arts, and creativity, along with parents as valued partners in their care.
What We Treat
When Your Teenager Can Benefit From Therapy
Anxiety, School Pressure and Self-Confidence
Worries, perfectionism, academic stress, or harsh self-criticism. Your teen may feel overwhelmed by expectations or afraid of disappointing others.
Big Emotions and Self-Harm
Intense feelings, emotional outbursts, shutting down, or hurting themselves to cope with distress. Therapy offers space to understand these experiences and work toward safer ways to cope.
Risky Decisions and Accountability
Impulsive choices, safety concerns, missed check-ins, or difficulty following through on agreed plans. You may want support with communication, trust, and growing independence.
Isolation, Friendships and Belonging
Withdrawing from others, peer conflict, bullying, or uncertainty about identity and fitting in. Your teen may benefit from someone they feel comfortable opening up to.
Neurodivergence and Daily Demands
The youth may encounter challenges in sensory overwhelm, masking or meeting expectations that do not fit their needs, when navigating ADHD, Autism, Learning Disabilities, and Giftedness, etc.
Family Changes and Difficult Experiences
Your teen may need support to process the challenges of parents' separation, grief, bullying, trauma, or recurring family conflict and expressing how these experiences affect them.
How Teen Therapy Can Help
Therapy for teenagers supports emotional well-being, growing independence, and stronger relationships. Together, we choose goals that matter to your teen and family.
Manage Emotions, Anxiety and Stress
Build emotional regulation and coping skills for anxiety, school pressure, anger, or overwhelm, including working toward safer alternatives to self-harm.
Build Self-Esteem and Connection
Explore identity and strengths, develop self-confidence, and navigate friendships. Therapy offers a supportive space to feel understood and less alone.
Make Thoughtful Decisions
Practise managing impulses, considering consequences, following through on plans, and building responsibility and independence with support.
Strengthen Parent–Teen Communication
Learn to express needs, share plans, and work through disagreements. Family involvement can support clearer expectations, mutual understanding, and trust.
You may be worried about your child’s choices, feel unsure how to reach them, or simply want them to have a trusted professional to talk to. You do not need to wait for a crisis to seek support.
Behaviour, shut down or isolation are often a way for the adolescents of saying, "Something feels hard." Therapy begins with curiosity, care, and a wish to understand what the youth may need.
— Our Philosophy
How Teen Therapy Works Beyond Words
Your teen does not need the right words to begin.
Sitting face-to-face and answering questions can feel like a lot. Sharing a song, drawing, or doing something alongside the therapist may make it easier to connect and gradually open up.
Begin With What Feels Familiar
A favourite interest, game, or piece of music can offer a comfortable starting point before exploring something more personal.
Explore Feelings in Different Ways
An image, lyric, or sandtray scene may help your teen express what is difficult to say aloud. They choose what they want to share and how.
Make Space for Quiet Moments
When your teen becomes quiet or shuts down, we offer drawing, colouring, sandtray, or grounding exercises with music to help painful emotions feel less overwhelming.
— Different Pathways Into a Teenager's World
Play Therapy, Music Therapy and Creative Expression
Creative approaches give therapy for adolescents more than one starting point. Activities reflect your teenager’s interests, developmental needs, and comfort. No musical or artistic experience is needed.
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Play Therapy
Boardgames, cardgames, sandtray, storytelling, and symbolic activities offer teenagers ways to explore relationships, practice communication and cognitive flexibility, and work through challenges without explaining everything directly.
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Music Therapy and Music Psychotherapy
Meaningful songs, instruments playing, singing songwriting, and making music can offer ways to express and explore emotions. Your teenager’s musical interests including songs from their playlists help guide the experience.
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Creative Expression
Drawing, collage, writing, and movement can help adolescents explore feelings and experiences at their own pace. The focus is on expression and meaning, rather than artistic skill.
Evidence-Based Psychotherapy
Other Approaches Used in Child Therapy at Healing Notes Therapy
Talking remains an option in sessions at Healing Notes Therapy. Conversation and creative activities can be combined in ways to benefit your teenager the most. We draw from other evidence-based psychotherapy approaches and adapt them to the teenager’s developmental stage, communication style, and sensory needs.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Helps adolescents notice connections among thoughts, feelings, body signals, and actions in ways they can understand.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy
Builds practical ways to notice emotions, tolerate difficult moments, cope with crisis, and return to regulation.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Helps the youth make room for difficult thoughts and feelings while choosing actions guided by exploration of their values and identity.
Emotionally Focused Family Therapy
Helps family members understand relationship patterns and create safer, more connected ways of reaching one another.
— Seeing the Whole Teenager
A Holistic, Developmentally Informed Approach
Your teenager is more than their age, diagnosis, or a list of concerning behaviours. Adolescents can be growing at different speeds in different areas when puberty hits. We look at where your teenager stands across each area of development, including their sensory profile and learning needs. With your permission, we can include insights from your child's occupational therapist, speech and language pathologist, psychologist, doctor, or school team.
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Thinking and Learning
A teenager may understand complex ideas and still need help with impulsivity, flexibility, social skills, or coping with failure. Every intervention is designed to meet your child’s learning needs and pace.
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Sensory Needs and Regulation
Each teenager has their unique sensory needs and sensitivity towards sound, movement, clothing, taste, etc. We tailor every intervention to fit with their sensory profile.
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Development and Communication
Adolescents with developmental delays or non-verbal autistic youth may need help across several areas to support their development and communication. We tailor our treatment to meet their communication needs.
— Family-Centred Care
How Parents & Caregivers are Included
No one knows your child quite like you do.
You may be balancing respect for your teenager’s independence with worries about their safety, decisions, or follow-through. We welcome these concerns and work to understand your teen’s perspective alongside your own. Together, we explore ways to strengthen communication, set clear expectations, and support responsibility while protecting connection.
At the beginning
Starting Together
Some teens feel more comfortable with a parent beside them. You can join to help your teen feel supported as they get to know the therapist.
Along the way
Support for Parents and Caregivers
A lot of adolescents welcome separate parent meetings between the therapist and parents. We offer caregiver coaching and psychotherapy to help you navigate parenting challenges, strengthen connection, and address burnout.
When helpful
Connecting as a Family
Joint sessions offer space to practise listening, express needs, and work through misunderstandings. Together, parents and teens can build more connected ways of communicating.
From the beginning, we discuss with the teenager and parent regarding parent involvement in psychotherapy, confidentiality, and information and feedback provided to parents together.
— Getting Started
How Teen Therapy Begins
Before booking
Free 15-minute Consultation
No forms. No commitment.
Tell us what has been on your mind, ask your questions, and get a sense of whether Healing Notes Therapy may be a comfortable fit.
Phone or secure video call · Weekday evenings and Saturdays available
Your first appointment
Choose Your Starting Point
Both pathways begin with a conversation.
Adolescent Assessment Session
Getting to Know the Youth
The therapist gets to know how your child connects, communicates and expresses their thoughts and feelings. Caregivers may join as needed per request from the youth.
Together, we discuss therapeutic goals, session format, caregiver involvement, and approaches that feel fitting and realistic.
Personalized Treatment
A Plan that Fits the Youth
We share a plan and begin sessions using a holistic and developmentally informed approach.
Parenting support and family session are available to fit the needs of your family, along with tools you can use at home between appointments.
The plan can adapt as we learn more about the teenager.
Convenient In-Person Sessions in Thornhill-Markham
Located inside Times Square at the intersection of Richmond Hill and Thornhill-Markham, our cozy clinic space is easily reachable for individuals and busy families from surrounding areas including Markham, North York, Scarborough, Vaughan, Aurora and Stouffville. To fit the family’s busy schedules, we also provide secure virtual video sessions for clients located anywhere across Ontario.
Learn more about the location and directions of Healing Notes Therapy →
Frequently Asked Questions
Still have questions? Take a look at the FAQ or reach out anytime.
Learn more about our FAQ page to answer any of your further questions.
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You do not have to wait for a crisis to reach out. Here are some signs it may be time to seek support:
More moody, irritable, or emotionally reactive than usual
Frequent meltdowns and mental health crisis that are hard to soothe
Needing significantly more energy to get through daily routines
Increased difficulty with transitions
Loss of interest in hobbies, or activities they used to enjoy
Changes in appetite, sleep, or energy levels
Withdrawing from friends, family, or social situations
If several of these feel familiar, it may be worth reaching out. Early support can make a meaningful difference.
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Fees vary depending on the type of service and session duration. For more information, please visit our fees and payment policy.
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Yes, we offer a limited number of sliding scale spots for individuals and families who are experiencing financial hardship. Availability is assessed on a case-by-case basis, and proof of income may be required.
For more information about our standard fees, please visit our fees and payment policy. If you would like to inquire about sliding scale availability, we invite you to leave your information through our contact form, and our team will follow up with you.
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Yes, in-home sessions are available on a very limited basis. Please note the following conditions apply:
Available within a limited geographic radius of our Richmond Hill office
Latest session start time is 2:00 PM
Not available on weekends
Subject to clinician availability
A virtual or in-person office meeting is required prior to any in-home session. This initial meeting allows us to get to know your family, understand your needs, and ensure that in-home support is the right fit before we visit your home.
If you are interested in in-home support, please reach out through our contact form to confirm whether your location and scheduling needs are a match before booking.
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Music Therapy
Music therapy uses music to help your child grow, communicate, and feel better. Your child do not need to be "good at music" or know how to play an instrument to benefit from it. Instead of just sitting and talking, we use simple musical experiences, like listening to a favourite song, writing down thoughts as lyrics, or playing with rhythms and melodies, to help manage stress, express heavy feelings, and build new skills. It is a proven, research-backed practice tailored entirely to what feels comfortable for you.
Music Psychotherapy
Music psychotherapy takes those same creative music tools and brings them directly into a mental health therapy framework. Simply put, it is the intentional use of music therapy activities inside a psychotherapy treatment. When talking about tough experiences or big emotions feels overwhelming, exhausting, or impossible, we blend music and talk therapy together. This helps your child safely explore their inner world, process deep challenges, and heal in a way that words alone cannot always reach.
For more information about music therapy, please visit the website of Canadian Association of Music Therapists.
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Yes, the music therapy service within the scope of psychotherapy will be eligible for reimbursement of OAP Funding. It will be under the category of Mental Health Service. The music therapist at Healing Notes Therapy is also a registered psychotherapist in good standing.
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No, many adolescents we work with demonstrate a spectrum of their language ability, from non-verbal, still developing spoken language to fully verbally. No diagnosis is required.
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No, a referral is not required. You are welcome to book directly through our online booking system or contact us through our contact form or email at info@healingnotes.ca without a referral from your family doctor or any other healthcare provider.
However, if you feel it would be beneficial for another member of your child's care team (e.g. family doctor, pediatrician, psychologist, speech and language pathologist or occupational therapist) to initiate or coordinate the referral process, they are welcome to complete our referral form and submit it directly to info@healingnotes.ca.
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As your child is 12 years old or older, their own consent to participate in psychotherapy treatment is the most important pieces to obtain before the 1st appointment.
Every family's situation is different and we value involvement of both parents in the youth’s care. It depends on your family's decision-making arrangements, and it is something we take seriously. Decision-making responsibility (formerly known as custody) determines who can legally consent to a child's healthcare, including therapy. We cannot accept a parent's self-claim of sole decision-making responsibility. Documentation such as a separation/divorce agreement or court order is required during intake.
If you have questions before booking, feel free to leave a message on our contact form. You can also reach out at info@healingnotes.ca or call (647)779-5216.
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First Session (including the parent intake session and the “trial session”): 60 Minutes
Individual session / Caregiver Coaching & Psychotherapy session*: 50 minutes
Children aged 6 and under for any types of session: 30 minutes, unless your child shows a need for longer session
Sessions with 2 or more attendees (Caregiver Coaching & Psychotherapy, or Family Therapy): 60–90 minutes recommended
*Longer individual sessions are available based on the needs. Please discuss with the clinician if you feel a longer session would be beneficial.
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It varies by the child, depending on the pace the child build trust with the therapist. Some families notice small shifts after the child attending few treatment sessions. Other changes take longer.
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We offer weekday evening and Saturday appointments to accommodate the busy schedules of families and individuals.
For the most up-to-date availability, please visit our online booking system directly at healingnotes.janeapp.com. If you do not see a time that works for your schedule, please contact us through our contact form or email us at info@healingnotes.ca and we will do our best to accommodate your needs.
Begin with a Conversation
Book a Free Consultation
A free consultation is a simple first step when you are considering child therapy at Healing Notes Therapy. You do not need to know exactly what kind of therapy your child needs. Tell us what you have been noticing, and we will brainstorm it through with you. There is no pressure and no commitment.