Laura Sontrop MA, Clin. Psych, ORSC.C.

Coaching, Counselling, & Consulting

Laura holds a Masters in Clinical Psychology, is a Registered Psychotherapist and a member of the Ontario Association of Mental Health Professionals. She has worked as a business consultant and executive coach for professional services firms prior to starting a private psychotherapy practice with individuals, couples, families and businesses where she has worked for over 15 years.

Laura provides psychotherapy, coaching, and consulting to a wide range of clients addressing unique and complex life situations.  Her expertise is grounded in formal education, extensive training, and experience working in the business sector and working with families. Laura recognizes that personal and professional success, along with family wellness, is inter-related and is guided by numerous factors; most importantly, healthy relationships. This integrated and comprehensive framework gives her the ability to support business owners, couples, and families to personally and professionally address relationship impasses and high conflict, in transformative ways that are effective for creating resolution. 

Laura works with clients in Ontario and across Canada doing in-person and video conference sessions, as well as multi-day intensives. Intensives give clients the opportunity to work with her ranging from two days to one week to successfully align their personal and/or professional goals in a collaborative, focused, and timely manner. Additionally, she has been an invited guest lecturer at the University of Western Ontario regarding couples and family therapy, emotionally focused therapy, attachment styles, and conflict resolution. Grounded in humanistic ideology that is client centred and collaborative, the core frameworks utilized are family systems, attachment science and current neurobiological and physiological frameworks.

Laura’s cross-disciplinary approach involves working with Individuals, couples and families on their relationships systems. This includes expertise in family systems, couples therapy, parenting, as well as the more challenging circumstances of separation, divorce and co-parenting to support resolutions.  To help clients create stability, positive change and be a healthy example for their children, a skills-based approach is utilized for managing worry, anxiety, fear, anger, stress and grief. Additional skills and practical strategies are taught for interpersonal-effectiveness and solution focused communication that is present and future oriented, supporting the health and balance of the family. Laura is a New Ways for Families Co-Parenting Provider, trained by Bill Eddy, Co-founder of the High Conflict Institute.

Based on individual client needs, Laura works collaboratively and is informed by her training, consulting, and supervision in the following therapeutic modalities: Family Systems, Relationship Systems Intelligence, Emotional Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples and families, New Ways for Families and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and core practices for emotional regulation and management. Within her clinical private practice these theoretical and applied approaches are utilized in the context of trauma, PTSD, anxiety, depression, emotional dysregulation, grief and loss, complex mental health concerns, attachment concerns, addictive behaviour patterns, crisis intervention and life transitions.

To support a client-centred approach, she has also trained in a number of additional modalities, some of which include: Psychodynamic, Cognitive-Behavioural and Humanistic-Existential Therapy, Narrative Therapy, Somatic therapy, Time-line and Parts Therapy, Neuro-linguistic Psychology, Organizational and Relationship Systems, Hypnotherapy and Mindfulness. Laura’s overall perspective on the therapeutic process is guided by the belief that individuals’ histories are the roots that provide a foundation of strength and resilience. While often a source of strength, individual histories can also hold the stories that cause pain, insecurity, and challenges. It is Laura’s belief that the best therapy comes from helping to heal the roots that cause those entrenched patterns, where possible, as well as skills and practices to create stronger relationships, emotional well-being and resiliency which can then help create lasting change.