My Services
Freedom Associates Therapy
Barry Johnston-Spooner, M. Ed.
Some explanations, overviews about my services:
I do not provide emergency services. If you need help immediately the
best thing to do would be to go to the emergency department of your
local community hospital. I am an accredited Clinical Member of the
Ontario Society of Psychotherapists who set high standards
of personal and professional practice.

A good idea before undertaking coming to any therapist is to make
sure there is not a physical underlying cause for your present dilemma.
If your nutritional state is out of whack or something like your thyroid
is low (or high) these conditions can have you feeling significantly out
of sorts. Having them checked by your family doctor may reveal
something that can be helped in that way. Also, if you are anxious,
depressed or having other symptoms that may be helped by
medication, they can then help you with that. I cannot.

Psychotherapy is not for everyone, nor is it for someone who is
looking for a magic pill... It requires emotional work and the
psychological strength to at least attempt that. See this excellent
overview by another therapist. What's more, to make it explicit: I am
not a psychiatrist or physician (and also not covered under OHIP) so I
am not legally allowed to diagnose, provide medications or
prescriptions for anyone. I am also not a psychologist. I will, in most
cases, be charging you directly for services. See more about that here.
All I will be doing with any person, couple or family who come to see
me will be talking with them. The provincial government has guidelines
about professional practise issues and is presently establishing a
governing College, a format for regulating psychotherapists in Ontario.
Click here for more information.

Some advantages:
I have been doing this a long time and have often been able to help
couples, for instance, who have not found relief from their conflict
through other therapists. I worked in the Mental Health Program of
Richmond Hill's York Central Hospital as a psychotherapist from 1986
until taking early retirement at the end of 2009. I was consistently
evaluated by my clients as providing above average therapy services. I
supervised over 15 Masters level counselling students from both
McGill University as well as the Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education of the University of Toronto. I work on an informal basis
(see About Me) and welcome your queries. You can contact me in a
variety of ways here. I openly invite your questions about who I am,
how I look to assist you and what my experience has been. I do not
believe that a therapist should be a distant Parental type figure who sits
there and tells you how it is and what you Should Do.. I have a deep
sense of wanting to honour each of us as autonomous entities. (See
some of my formulations about that here.) Consequently
my style is humorous and open but respectful.

I will also definitely tell you if I feel that I will not be able to help you
because my skills do not match what I understand you to be needing.
In those cases I would attempt to assist you to find a more appropriate
resource. In other words I am directly honest about what I can suggest
is the possible workability: both for your situation as well as whether I
feel I can be of some assistance. To clarify that further: I am only
offering opinions and my best ideas - I have neither
your truth nor The Truth!

All the same, a considerable advantage I think I offer is that I am not
only emotionally, psychologically or 'mental health' oriented. I feel
decidedly that there are layers to our walk through the world... We
may well do ourselves a disservice if we do not include such larger,
depth issues in our sense of health. Exploring a sense of purpose,
finding our capacity to shift states of consciousness and claiming our
potential to feel an expansive sense of self are all parts of the antidotes
we need to help us move beyond feeling anxious, depressed or
stressed. Thus, if it is part of what you would like, my style of therapy
will include the spiritual and the metaphysical.  So, as well as having
extensive experience in the more hard edged fields of psychiatry,
mental health and psychology, I offer the addition of those spiritual
perspectives if you want them included. Frankly, I have often found
that the addition of the Transpersonal, the numinous, the Integrative -
the thinking and feeling outside The Box type of exploration is
extremely helpful as someone seeks to move past their pain. If you
Google a term like transpersonal as above you may find
some further sense of what I am meaning.

A small sampling of other terms, frameworks and authors you could
include in such searches: Psychosynthesis, Jungian Psychology,
Taoism, Peak Experience, Spiritual Growth, Meditation, Mind Body
Integration, Self Realization, Personal Harmony, Dan Millman, Hank
Wesselmann, George Leonard, Alan Watts, Richard Bach, James
Redfield, Robert S. De Ropp, Gary Zukov.