Mikayla Johnson

A lot of the families who find me are carrying something that’s been heavier for longer than anyone has said out loud. Maybe it’s a child who keeps coming apart at the same moments every day and can’t explain why. Maybe it’s a teen who used to seem okay and now isn’t. Maybe it’s a parent who has been holding everyone else together and is finally noticing the cost of it. Wherever you’re starting from, this doesn’t have to keep being only yours.

I work with young children, teens, adults, and families. I see the whole family system as part of the work, even in one-on-one sessions, because what works for one person in a family is almost never only about that one person. With young children, we use play-based and creative approaches, since kids show us what they’re feeling long before they have the vocabulary for it. With teens, a lot of the work is about feeling less alone with what they’ve been experiencing. With adults, I work with grief, life transitions, trauma, and the specific kind of exhaustion that comes from being the one everyone else leans on. I also bring a strong focus on family work, drawing from Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT), an attachment-based approach that helps families understand the patterns of disconnection underneath their conflicts and rebuild the safety, communication, and connection the family was actually looking for. Depending on what you need, our work might draw from cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), emotion-focused therapy (EFT), and mindfulness and somatic approaches, because real regulation often happens in the body before it happens in the head.

Before this practice, I worked at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, which is Canada’s largest children’s rehab hospital, and at Lakeridge Health Ajax Pickering. Those years shaped the way I work now. I’ve sat with families moving through developmental differences, neurodiversity (including ADHD and autism), chronic illness, medical complexity, and the kinds of high-stress life circumstances that can reshape what a family thought their life would look like. If you’re coming into therapy carrying that kind of weight, you won’t need to explain the basics. I also support families in navigating the complex systems that come with all of this, from healthcare appointments to school accommodations to community supports, helping you feel more confident advocating for what your family actually needs.

Every therapy relationship I build is tailored to the person in front of me. What works for a seven-year-old learning to name a big feeling is not what works for a forty-year-old relearning that their feelings are allowed to take up space. What I keep consistent is the way I try to hold the room: warm, unhurried, grounded in trauma-informed and anti-oppressive practice. I also pay close attention to what’s happening in the body, because the breath you can’t quite catch and the shoulders that don’t come down until Friday are telling us something real about what your system has been carrying. Learning to listen to that, gently, changes things. At the heart of all of it is the same goal: helping clients and families move from overwhelm and disconnection toward emotional safety, understanding, and the kind of relationships that feel genuinely secure.

If any of this feels close to something you’ve been carrying, I’d love to meet you. I offer a free 20-minute consultation, available in person in Pickering or virtually anywhere in Ontario. If it’s for your child or teen, you’re welcome to join them for the consult or have them come on their own, whichever feels right. It’s a low-pressure way to ask questions, see how I work, and get a feel for whether we might be a good fit.