About
The person on the other side of the call.
I am Alrick Watson. I am a member of the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association, and my Canadian Certified Counsellor certification is in progress. I hold a Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology, and Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Religious Studies.
I have been counselling for over twelve years, and for eleven of those I have facilitated the Prepare and Enrich program with couples before and during marriage. I work with mood, anxiety, trauma, grief, relationships, and questions of faith and meaning, using cognitive behavioural, solution focused, and client centred approaches.
Restart Counselling and Consultation is my own practice and an entirely online one. That is a deliberate choice rather than a compromise. It means the person in a small town with no counsellor for two hours in any direction, and the person who cannot face a waiting room, both get the same fifty minutes as everybody else.
Outside the work I travel, lift weights, and hike, and I like meeting people who are not like me. That is not a small thing in this job. It is most of it.
- Twelve years
- In practice
- CCPA
- Member, Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association
- MA
- Counselling Psychology
- Online
- Across Canada
Why I do this work
Most of the people I sit with waited a long time before they booked. Some waited because counselling was never a thing their family talked about. Some waited because they could not picture who would be on the other side of the call, or could not picture someone who would understand the part of their life that is hardest to explain.
Shortening that wait is the reason this practice exists. So I say plainly who I am. I am a Black counsellor, and I work with people of every background. I have a particular commitment to Black and Indigenous clients, to people who want their faith taken seriously, and to men, who are usually the last in the room to ask for help and the first to say afterwards that they wish they had come sooner.
The rest of it is meant to be simple. Fees on the page rather than behind a form. Fifty minutes, online, wherever you are in Canada. No requirement that you arrive with the right words, a diagnosis, or a problem you have decided is big enough to deserve the time.
That is who you would be talking to
A first session is fifty minutes and costs no more than any other. You are not committing to anything beyond it.