Nicole Toner, PhD

Nicole Toner View Specialties

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At Consilience, the overarching goal is for you to build inner capacity to enjoy life, regulate your major organ systems, attract and keep the relationships you want, improve the ones you have, and to be less and less bothered by the things that brought you to therapy. 
 
The gentle yet powerful therapy at Consilience excels at treating current issues such as:
  • overwhelm, feeling stressed out, irritable, FOMO, procrastination, adulting, people pleasing, perfectionism, inner critic, low self-worth, relationship break-down, life transitions, extreme emotional ups and downs, grief, loss, cutting, overusing substances, over-dependance on pornography and gaming & Corona related distress. 
  • Relational sexual issues and functional sexual issues. 
Consilience is equally effective in offering long term healing for problems such as:
  • depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and insomnia. 
 
I specialize in processing the effects of:
  • trauma (shock, complex, & developmental traumas), unresolved relational injuries, and difficult or abusive past attachment relationships. *I am dually trained in sexual assault trauma processing and somatic sex therapy.
  • I offer two main trauma treatment modalities: Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and Somatic Integration for Regulation through Touch, Interoception & Awareness.

I sub-specialize in trauma experienced by:
  • mountain guide professionals, medical providers, and rescue personnel. And in trauma occurring in recreational mountain pursuits.

I offer a specialized program called SMART therapy, where therapy is delivered in a specially designed room for Children and Adolescents. Sensory Motor Arousal Regulation Treatment (SMART) is an innovative mental health treatment that is used to treat:
  • depression, anxiety (social & general), OCD, ADHD, PAD, video game and smart phone overuse and addiction, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, derealization, ODD, behavioral and emotional dysregulation and in adjusting to parental divorce, separation and death. 
  • SMART is helpful for both neuro-divergent and neuro-typical people. 

How do I get started?

Please contact me through the contact link on this website, by email, or text and I will respond to you as soon as possible.

Who do I work with?

Everyone is invited and welcomed at Consilience.
 
Couples for relational somatic sexual counselling.
 
Individuals: adult, children and adolescents for the integrated Consilience approach to therapy.

How does the introductory telephone consultation work?

I will call you and we will discuss your goals and how Consilience might help. All questions are welcome. Our conversation at this point, is to ensure I really understand what you want and expect from therapy. If Consilience does not seem to be the right fit I am more than happy to offer you other referral sources.

What is my general approach to therapy? Great question! 
I offer an integrative approach to healing that is rooted in neuroscience, attachment, somatics and trauma research. My approach is active and directive. We won’t end up just sitting and staring at each other, I promise. We will work to discover the undercurrent of what is getting in your way or your child’s way, not spend our time in conversations that can easily be had with your friends.

I help you or your child heal from the inside out, rather than only teach you skills. We will discover the ‘who and what got you to who and where you are’. Not only will you better understand what you are going through, we will ensure that you have actionable ‘solutions’ that you take from each session to use outside of the therapy bubble.

It is extremely important to this process that you and your child feel safe enough to say what you need, want, and feel. An overarching goal in our work together is to create the right atmosphere and employ the best therapy for everyone’s personal needs. I am your well educated and experienced guide but your voice is THE voice in session.

Therapy will feel friendly at Consilience. Therapy is not an interrogation and should not feel like one. I am approachable, encouraging, and real. We will laugh, you can curse. You can trust that I will keep us on track by actively but gently bringing the work back to where you need it to be, in order to feel better.
 
The office: A unique cutting edge SMART based Sensorimotor designed room with things such as ariel swings, weighted blankets, balance beams, fitness balls, person sized pea-pod pillows, body socks, swings, dolphin pillows, safe cubby holes, large cushions, crash pads and shared play to support natural ways of regulating bodies and emotions, facilitate attachment-building and allow for embodied processing of hurtful and traumatic experiences.
 
Children & Adolescents SMART Therapy- Sensorimotor Arousal Regulation Treatment:

Sensory Motor Arousal Regulation Treatment or SMART therapy was designed as a somatic based treatment for children and adolescents to address behavioral & emotional regulation and as needed, trauma processing. Children & Adolescents LOVE IT! They even look forward to it.

In a SMART therapy room Children and Adolescents REGULATE through MOVEMENT and as a result START TALKING so problem solving and healing can happen. SMART does not rely on talk therapy, insight, language skills, or social awareness as an entry point. Talking and expressing what is happening for them on the inside results from being given the space to regulate. This, more than anything, gets them talking.
 
What to Expect

I believe in educating you with accurate information so you understand more about therapy, attachment styles, trauma and memory, procedural patterns, and why you struggle in particular areas of your life. The who and what got you to who and where you are.

Enhancing resilience through relationship and regulation in children and teens is guided by developmental attachment theory. Consilience emphasizes relationship, respect, dignity for all, and bringing joy and playfulness back to family life. Parent Coaching is geared towards improving parent-child relationships and co-parenting relationships. This is based on the premise that improving parent-child relational connection, security and safety is the most powerful mental health intervention known to human families.

Neuroscience and Polyvagal theory directs us in mapping your nervous system. This mapping is instrumental in guiding you to become more resilient at moving through stress, anxiety, and depression related or unrelated to childhood wounding, relational injury, or single event trauma. Most people, once they become adept at using their personal nervous system map, spend much more time in a state of calm and safe social connection. They feel connected even when alone. A rare gift in a time of pandemic.

In trauma work, you will not be asked to recount every terrible life story in exhaustive detail. At all turns we will attend to your inner safety. Often, only a few sentences are needed to get us on our way. We work both bottom up and top down.

Your brain, heart, and nervous system will benefit from the embodied mindfulness that occurs naturally in our sessions.

Yoga Nidra is a guided meditation practice of deep relaxation. I have found that incorporating this type of meditation into therapy deepens change and brings your whole physiological, emotional and spiritual self into a calm and peaceful state that becomes more and more accessible off the matt. If you are interested in starting a yoga nidra or another meditation practice and exploring your inner landscape, I’d be happy to explore and support you in the type of practice that fits for you. I will personally write and record a guided mediation script specifically for you, in alignment with your goals.

When clinically helpful, and only when fully comfortable with doing so, we may integrate Somatic Regulating Touch into our sessions. Somatic Touch is not a massage and is done fully clothed either sitting in a chair or lying down. Somatic Touch can be a very effective way to help the body find its way into more ease and build capacity to track sensations. Developed in part by Kathy Kain, Somatic Touch supports the restoration, stabilization, and integration of sustainable states of wellbeing. The goal of Somatic Touch is to support clients in stabilizing the restorative physiology in the body so that the full range of the human condition can be experienced. Somatic Touch utilizes the attention and intention of mindful attuned contact to support a safe and relational container in which the client can integrate movement from stress, overwhelm, or fright towards regulation and resiliency.

Somatic Touch can be especially supportive in working with symptoms of early childhood, developmental and relational trauma. Oftentimes, these symptoms occurred from adverse experiences pre-verbally; before we learned to talk. Somatic Touch offers a safe and relational way to make sense of sensations, symptoms, pain and injury, that might have happened when we were very young and still wiring neurologically.

“Touch is as vital to our existence as food. It is the first sense we develop, our first and most primal communication, and the only sense without which we cannot survive.” Alaine Duncan, Tao of Trauma

Through Somatic Touch, we will focus on regulating your major organ systems and I will teach you how to energetically balance your systems so that you are empowered and confident in caring for the body systems that work hard to care for you.

See the Sensorimotor & SMART Model Psychotherapy page on the website for more about the Consilience approach.
 
My Counselling Specialties:
 Sensorimotor Psychotherapy levels 1 & 2 for trauma and complex developmental trauma 

SMART: Sensory Motor Arousal Regulation Treatment for children and adolescents

Somatic Skills Integrative Therapist- regulation of your kidney-adrenal, brain and digestive systems through touch, interoception and directed mindful awareness.

Trauma Integration & Attachment Treatment Model Clinician for children & adults

Trauma informed Yoga Nidra meditation

Polyvagal Informed Therapy- Rhythm of Regulation

Coherence Therapy and Memory Reconsolidation

Interpersonal Neurobiology

Somatic informed Internal Family Systems Therapy

Somatic Sexual Health Educator and Integrative Sex Therapist in training

Emotionally Focused Therapy

Narrative Therapy

Developmental Attachment Informed Therapy

Critical Incident Management for Individuals, Groups & Workplaces


 What is the investment in my growth per session?

In-Person Adult:

185.00 for a 75 minute in-person session.

Zoom & Telephone:

185.00 for a 75-minute virtual session.

SMART assessment and treatment includes at minimum one parent session and typically four child based treatment sessions:

200.00 for a 90 minute treatment session.

SMART investment in your child’s and family’s well-being is: $1000.00


Dr. Nicole Toner Reaches

Canmore AB