PTSD & CPTSD · Virtual · Six provinces
PTSD and CPTSD Therapy, Online
Some people can name the day it happened. Others just grew up bracing.
Online trauma therapy in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Newfoundland & Labrador. EMDR with the clinicians trained in it. Evenings and weekends.
In immediate danger, or not sure you can keep yourself safe tonight? You can call or text 9-8-8 (Canada, 24/7), or call 911 in an emergency. Therapy is not a crisis service. Full list of crisis lines →
Functioning, with something running underneath
PTSD and CPTSD therapy, at a glance. TEO Counselling provides trauma therapy online in six provinces: EMDR, IFS and CBT for trauma. Sessions are with Mohamad Shabib, MACP, CCC (#11249205, CCPA), with advanced EMDR training through an EMDRIA-approved programme and IFS Levels 1–2, in six provinces; Alison Shaji, MA, a Registered Clinical Counsellor (BCACC #22608), EMDR-trained, in British Columbia; or Rola Shbib, BSW (Hons), RSW (Ontario), OCSWSSW #866715, for trauma-informed grief and crisis work (no EMDR), in six provinces. Individual sessions are $150 and couples sessions $175, each 60 minutes. No provincial health plan covers counselling in private practice; every session comes with an insurance-ready receipt, and direct billing is available with Mohamad and Alison for Pacific Blue Cross and TELUS eClaims plans (Canada Life, Manulife). The first step is a free 15-minute consultation on a video call or a scheduled phone call, no referral needed.
Not everyone searching for a trauma therapist is in the middle of a collapse. Some are functioning. They hold jobs, raise children, answer email on time. Something is just running underneath all of it, and it has been running a long time.
It can show up as some combination of these:
- Sleep that breaks at three in the morning for no reason you can name
- Reacting to something small with a force that surprises you afterward
- Scanning a room for exits, or a face for mood, before you have consciously decided to
- Going flat or numb, sometimes when things are finally calm
- Avoiding a place, a person, a conversation, a date on the calendar
- A sense of being permanently behind everyone else at being a person
- The same relationship pattern arriving again with a new person
None of this is a diagnosis, and recognizing yourself in a list is not the same as being assessed. None of it needs a dramatic origin story to be worth attention. Some people come in after one identifiable event. Others cannot point to an event at all, because the harm was in the ordinary weather of a house.
PTSD vs CPTSD — what’s the difference?
The short version: PTSD tends to follow a specific event, or a defined period of events. CPTSD — complex PTSD — tends to follow trauma that was prolonged, repeated, and difficult or impossible to escape. Childhood abuse or neglect, years of domestic violence, captivity, war, displacement.
Shared by both
The PTSD core
ICD-11 describes PTSD around three things:
- Re-experiencing the event in the present rather than simply remembering it
- Avoiding reminders of it
- A persistent sense of current threat — the hypervigilance and startle that stay switched on long after the danger has passed
What CPTSD adds
Disturbances in self-organization
On top of those three, complex PTSD includes:
- Affect dysregulation — emotion tends to arrive at full volume or not at all, and takes a long time to settle
- Negative self-concept — a durable sense of being worthless, damaged, or fundamentally different from other people, carrying shame with it
- Difficulty in relationships — trouble feeling close to people, or ending things pre-emptively before they can go wrong
Two manuals, two answers. Complex PTSD is a formal diagnosis in the ICD-11, the World Health Organization’s classification system. It is not a separate diagnosis in the DSM-5, which is the manual in general use in North America. That is why one clinician will use the term freely and another will not use it at all. The disagreement is largely about naming rather than about whether the pattern is real.
Why the distinction matters in the room. With single-incident PTSD, the work is organized around a discrete memory and what the body still does with it. With complex trauma there may be no single memory to work with. What can be there instead is a way of being that formed while the harm was ongoing — and that, at the time, may well have been an accurate read of the situation. Sessions tend to move differently: more attention to regulation, self-criticism, and relationships, alongside the memory work rather than after it.
How it can get mislabelled. Complex trauma can arrive dressed as something else. As anxiety. As depression. As burnout. As a personality problem. As “I have always just been like this.” People can spend years working on the surface symptom and wondering why it keeps regrowing.
Again: none of this is a diagnostic tool. If some of it lands, it is worth a conversation — not a verdict you hand yourself at midnight.
Why it can surface decades later
A child in an unpredictable house can learn to read faces fast, keep their own needs quiet, and stay useful. Those are intelligent adaptations. They are also expensive to run for thirty years. In adulthood they can look like reflexive people-pleasing, difficulty naming what you actually want, constant self-monitoring, or a nervous system that treats an unanswered message as a threat.
Neglect complicates it further. When the injury is an absence — of attention, of comfort, of anyone noticing — there may be no scene to point at. “Nothing really happened to me” is one way of putting it.
The goal is not to relive any of it. It is to work toward updating it, so the part of you still braced for a house you left twenty years ago has a chance to take in some evidence that it is no longer that house.
If that is the part that brought you here, our childhood trauma therapy page goes into it properly — how it shows up in adult life, and what the work involves.
EMDR, IFS, and trauma-focused CBT
Three approaches get used here. Which one leads depends on what you walk in with — a single memory that still hijacks your body, or a self-critical voice that has been running since you were nine.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a widely used trauma-focused therapy for PTSD in adults. In session it looks unusual at first: you hold part of a memory in mind while following a repeated left-right stimulus, in short sets, pausing between them to notice what shifted. The aim is that the memory becomes something you can recall without your body responding as though it is happening now. How EMDR works, including how it runs online →
Internal Family Systems (IFS) works with the parts of you that argue internally — the one that pushes, the one that shuts down, the critic that gets there first. It can be useful where shame and self-attack are the loudest part of the picture, as they can be with complex trauma. More on IFS →
CBT adapted for trauma works with the conclusions trauma can leave behind: that it was your fault, that you should have seen it coming, that nobody can be trusted with anything real.
Pacing. There is no fixed sequence here. The order is matched to the person: you are not pushed into processing before you are ready, and you are not made to wait a year either.
Book a Free ConsultationYou can ask exactly how this would be paced for you before you commit to anything.
Can you do trauma therapy virtually?
Yes. Every session here is online, and the structured methods run in the same shape they take in a room. EMDR keeps the same eight-phase protocol: history and preparation first, a specific target memory, reprocessing in short sets, and a deliberate closure with grounding at the end of every session. What changes online is how the left-right stimulus is produced — self-administered tapping with your therapist setting the pace, a marker moving across the shared screen, or tones alternating through headphones.
Practically, you need a private room, headphones, a device propped on something solid, and a fallback agreed before reprocessing starts, so a dropped connection has a plan rather than a panic.
On the evidence, honestly: research on remotely delivered EMDR is smaller and more recent than the research on EMDR as a whole. A 2020 systematic review in Psychiatry Research that searched for studies of online EMDR for PTSD found only one trial — uncontrolled, with promising results — and called for further research before wider dissemination. It is widely practised, with encouraging early findings, which is not the same as proven identical. If the online format is wrong for you, the free 15-minute consultation is where you will be told so.
Meet the trauma therapists
Mohamad Shabib
Founder. MACP, CCC. Advanced EMDR training (EMDRIA), IFS Levels 1 and 2, Gottman Method Levels 1 and 2, CBT for Trauma Levels 1 and 2, and hands-on addictions experience. He began counselling work in 2020. He worked as a trauma counsellor at Edgewood in Nanaimo, in a specialized program for concurrent trauma and addiction, including work with first responders, and has also done crisis response, First Nations community mental health, and refugee support. Sessions in English or Arabic.
Full bio →Alison Shaji
Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC), British Columbia. MA in Clinical Psychology. Trained in psychoanalytic therapy, DBT, EMDR, CBT, EFFT, inner child work, shadow work, and empty chair technique.
Full bio →Rola Shbib
BSW (Hons), Registered Social Worker (RSW) with the Ontario College (OCSWSSW). Trained in crisis intervention and suicide prevention, ASIST-trained, a Mental Health First Aid facilitator, working from a trauma-informed, person-centred stance, with an honours degree in thanatology — grief and loss. Sessions in English. She does not offer EMDR; if EMDR is what you are looking for, that would be Mohamad or Alison.
Full bio →Which clinician you can work with depends on the province you are in. Alison is registered in British Columbia and sees British Columbia clients only; Mohamad and Rola work with clients in all six provinces. That gets confirmed during the free consultation, before you book anything.
A free tool for this
Two printable handouts from our library cover grounding and the body’s alarm and shutdown signals — the steadying work that comes before any memory is touched — with nothing to sign up for.
Trauma Recovery Workbook
Gentle grounding tools for when the past shows up in the present.
Open the tool →The Window of Tolerance
A two-page guide to your body's alarm and shutdown signals — and five ways back to steady
Open the tool →Your questions
Do I need a diagnosis to book?
No. No diagnosis and no tidy explanation of what happened. You can book while still unsure whether what you went through counts.
Where do you work, and when?
Online sessions only, for people in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Newfoundland & Labrador. Evening and weekend appointments are available.
What does it cost?
$150 per 60-minute session for individuals, $175 per 60-minute session for couples. The first consultation is free and runs 15 minutes. Receipts are provided for extended health benefit plans — check yours for which registration categories it reimburses. TEO is an approved provider with BC’s Crime Victim Assistance Program (CVAP).
Does EMDR work?
EMDR is one of the trauma-focused therapies that PTSD guidelines include. That is a statement about averages rather than about you: some people shift quickly, some do not respond to EMDR at all, and that is a normal outcome rather than a failure. It is one of several approaches used here.
Is complex PTSD worse than PTSD?
Broader, not automatically worse. In the World Health Organization’s ICD-11, complex PTSD requires all the PTSD symptoms plus lasting, serious problems with managing emotions, feeling worthless and feeling close to others, so it describes more areas of difficulty; how hard either is to live with varies by person. The US National Center for PTSD notes that under ICD-11 a person has one diagnosis or the other, not both (the DSM-5, in general use in North America, has no separate complex PTSD diagnosis), and that trauma-focused treatments for PTSD also treat complex PTSD. Only a professional qualified to diagnose, such as a physician or psychologist, can assess whether either applies.
What is the best treatment for PTSD?
No one therapy suits everyone, but the major guidelines point to trauma-focused therapies. The International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies guidelines (2019) strongly recommend cognitive processing therapy, cognitive therapy, EMDR, individual trauma-focused CBT and prolonged exposure for adults with PTSD. NICE’s guideline NG116 recommends individual trauma-focused CBT for adults, and EMDR when the trauma was not combat-related. A 2026 critique by EMDR researchers (Journal of EMDR Practice and Research) reports that the American Psychological Association’s 2025 guideline lists cognitive processing therapy, prolonged exposure and trauma-focused CBT as first-line and EMDR as second-line. At TEO, Mohamad has Advanced EMDR training and CBT for Trauma training, and Alison is trained in EMDR and CBT (British Columbia clients only); cognitive processing therapy and prolonged exposure are not offered by name. “Why is EMDR controversial?” on our EMDR therapy page covers the disagreement.
What happens in a first session?
The free consultation comes first, and it is a conversation rather than an intake interview. In the sessions that follow, you decide what gets opened and in what order, and pacing is discussed before any memory work begins.
How long does trauma therapy take?
It depends on what you are working with, and nobody can predict your number of sessions in advance. Single-incident work can be shorter than work with long-running childhood trauma. You can raise how it is going at any point, and you can stop at any point.
Does PTSD ever go away?
It can, for some people, but no one can promise when. In a 2014 review of 42 studies (Morina and colleagues), over four in ten people with PTSD who had no specific treatment no longer met criteria after an average of just over three years, with wide variation between studies. In the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health Surveys (Kessler and colleagues, 2017), a quarter to two fifths of cases had no symptoms left within a year (fewer after war-related trauma), while a smaller group still had symptoms years later. The US National Center for PTSD says symptoms can come and go over years, and treatment can clear them for some people and ease them for others. If it helps to talk it through, book the free 15-minute consultation online, on a video call or a scheduled phone call.
Will talking about it make things worse?
A reasonable fear, and the reason pacing is discussed before processing starts. You decide what gets opened and when. A session can be slowed down or stopped at any point.
Can I have sessions in Arabic?
Yes. Mohamad works in English and Arabic.
Where can I get free counselling for PTSD?
There are free routes, and they are worth trying before you pay for anything. The free and lower-cost sections on our province pages list what is publicly funded where you live — the Ontario Structured Psychotherapy Program in Ontario, HelpStartsHere and BounceBack in British Columbia, and the Alberta Mental Health Help Line at 1-877-303-2642 in Alberta — and our resources page gathers verified crisis lines and free programs for all six provinces. If you have an employee assistance programme through work it may include a few no-cost sessions, and post-secondary students can ask what their institution offers. Free programs can be short-term and may not be built for structured trauma work such as EMDR, which is the honest limit. TEO's sessions are private-pay, the first 15-minute consultation is free, and a small number of reduced-fee spots are held — ask on the call. If it cannot wait, call or text 9-8-8 (Canada, 24/7).
Crisis support
Therapy is not a crisis service. If you are thinking about ending your life, or you are not sure you can keep yourself safe tonight, use one of these instead of waiting for an appointment.
- Suicide Crisis Helpline — call or text 9-8-8 (Canada, 24/7). Free.
- Emergency — call 911 if there is immediate danger.
- In British Columbia — BC Crisis Line, 1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433), 24/7. HealthLink BC — call 811 to speak with a registered nurse any time.
- Outside British Columbia — 988 reaches help anywhere in Canada, and your provincial health line can direct you to local crisis services.
You do not have to be in danger to call one of these lines. Being overwhelmed is enough.
You might also need
- CVAP-funded counselling — if the trauma was a crime committed against you in BC
- First responder therapy — occupational trauma and shift-work realities
Start with a conversation
The first step is a free 15-minute consultation. It is a conversation, not an intake interview: you say what has been going on, ask whatever you want about how the work is done, and decide afterward whether to continue. Nothing is owed at the end of it. Sessions are $150 per 60-minute session for individuals and $175 per 60-minute session for couples, online, evenings and weekends included.
Book a Free ConsultationPrefer to ask a question first? Text (519) 760-5211
Not ready to book? Send a message instead.
If you would rather ask a question first, write a line or two and we will reply by email. No appointment, no commitment.