Registered Psychotherapist
RP, CTP Dipl
I spent my early childhood in England living by a river in the beautiful green Surrey Hills and emigrated to Toronto with my family in 1964 at age 10. I am grateful for the move to Toronto as it led me to discovering Therafields, a psychoanalytically informed therapeutic community that developed in The Annex in the early 60’s. This communal living and intensive group therapy environment provided a crash course in learning about my own unconscious dynamics as well as understanding other peoples’ inner lives. Daily immersion in a loving, challenging engagement with others provided an emotionally profound foundation for my development as a psychotherapist.
I then trained as a therapist with The Centre For Training In Psychotherapy (CTP). I began working with clients in 1984 and started working as a group therapist in 1989. I have led groups for over twenty-five years and have been doing marital/couples therapy since 1995.
Working to unravel and comprehend the interior life is my true passion and calling. Our internal experience deeply informs how dissatisfied or fulfilled we are. I find nothing more worthwhile and creative than entering into a deep conversation and emotional exchange with another human being. I know from personal experience as a therapy client along with my 40 years as a practicing clinician that psychotherapy is an effective and powerful modality for emotional healing and psychological development.
Alongside my clinical work, I have been practicing the discipline of meditation for the last ten years and am a serious spiritual seeker, widely researching Buddhism, Vedanta, Esoteric Christianity along with Vasistha’s Yoga, to comprehend the nature of mind and reality.
Telephone Office: (416) 654-6179
My approach is psychoanalytic psychotherapy. This means the work is psychodynamic, focusing on your unconscious mental and emotional processes. You may not always understand your own actions or feelings, but in this therapy we engage the use of free association, interpretation, and dream analysis to allow you to begin the journey of connecting with the mysterious, sometimes hidden, true self within. It is my own unconscious that serves as the instrument to articulate your unrealized conflicts and repressed emotions. Within the crucible of a mutually informed relationship, radically new apprehensions of your way of being in the world are revealed.
I may be reached at: (416) 654-6179
I began my clinical practice in 1984 with men, women, and adolescents from all walks of life. I am deeply moved and inspired to witness how mental and emotional suffering ease with psychodynamic psychotherapy.
I am particularly fascinated by my studies in brain research and neural development, and their implications for the effectiveness of psychotherapy. The brain is a deeply complex mechanism, and our neural pathways are highly influenced by caretakers and partners. Many people did not receive the attuned parenting required to calibrate the limbic system and make sense of their emotional world. This is why deep attention from an empathic therapist serves to guide a person into psychic, neural resonance with themselves. We can alter the patterns of thought and mood in a lasting way. The cognitive and emotional changes that occur internally have a psychobiological basis, as the brain actually changes in the way neurons fire and connect. This casts light upon the interplay of brain functioning, cognition, and emotions, as new experiences of calm and attunement with others lessen our anxiety and impulsivity. A well-regulated nervous system plays a central role in our emotional health, whether it’s our capacity to choose and relate to a healthy love partner or to alter self-destructive patterns in work, family, or parenting.
Neurochemistry, spiritual disciplines, and emotional healing through the psychotherapeutic process are all converging into an integrative understanding of ways in which the human heart, mind, and soul are innately constituted to grow and transform.
Please telephone me at: (416) 654-6179 for an initial psychotherapy consultation free of charge. You may also e-mail me at: leah.lucas@sympatico.ca. We can then arrange for an appointment to begin therapy in my Toronto office. I may be reached any day of the week between the hours of 8:00am and 10:00pm. Individual session fee is $160.00. Couples/Marital Therapy fee is $180.00.
Free parking available onsite
Crang Avenue, Toronto, ON, M6E 2Z9