William M. Doherty, BA, MA, RP
Couples & Relationships • Trauma & PTSD • First Responders, Military & Healthcare Professionals • Addiction • Anxiety and Depression • Christian/Faith-Integrated Therapy
Registered Psychotherapist | Director
Finding a Way Forward — Together or Individually
Having partnered with all different types of people over the years, I’ve seen that pain does not discriminate – it doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor, black or white, if your parents raised you in comfort or utter desperation… and it certainly doesn’t mind if you’re a doctor
or without a high school diploma altogether. Pain is the true equalizer. Equally and oppositely though, healing unites us. All of this to say, you are not alone.
My name’s William and I’m so thankful you’ve decided to consider therapy with me. I look forward to getting to know you! I’ve provided service in mental health and addictions for over a decade and have been a registered psychotherapist since 2018. I’ve had the honour of helping people from remarkably different walks of life… from CEOs of Fortune 500 companies to life-sentenced offenders released from prison on compassionate grounds to die with dignity in the community. In recent years, I’ve primarily come alongside couples, families, and clients who’ve experienced the effects of trauma. I’ve held pain carefully with hundreds of military personnel, first responders, veterans, and healthcare professionals who struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as well as countless marriages, relationships, and families.
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If you’re in pain, you’re in good company and shouldering the weight is something we can do together.
Couples & Relationship Therapy
I work with couples at many different stages of their relationships — including those who love one another but have become disconnected, those caught in persistent conflict, and those trying to determine whether their relationship can or should continue.
Couples often come to me when they are experiencing:
Recurring arguments that never seem to get resolved
Communication breakdown and emotional disconnection
Infidelity, betrayal, or broken trust
Resentment that has accumulated over time
Differences around parenting, responsibilities, intimacy, or priorities
Major life transitions or external pressures affecting the relationship
Uncertainty about separation, reconciliation, or the future of the relationship
I don’t see the goal of couples therapy as deciding who is right and who is wrong. Instead, we work to understand the relationship itself: the patterns you’ve developed together, what happens beneath your conflicts, what each partner needs but may struggle to communicate, and what would need to change for the relationship to become healthier.
Where trust has been damaged, we can work toward understanding what happened and what genuine repair would require. Where communication has broken down, we can slow the process down and develop healthier ways of hearing and responding to one another.
And where a couple is genuinely uncertain about whether to remain together, therapy can provide a place to explore that decision thoughtfully rather than forcing a predetermined outcome.
Individual Therapy
I have worked in mental health and addictions for more than a decade and provide individual psychotherapy for people facing anxiety, depression, trauma, PTSD, addiction, relationship difficulties, major life challenges, and the psychological effects of high-stress work.
My approach is practical, relational, and focused on helping people understand both what happened to them and what they want to do next.
Therapy can involve making sense of experiences that continue to affect you, recognizing patterns that once helped you survive but may now be creating problems, developing healthier ways of responding to difficult emotions, and reconnecting with the values and relationships that matter to you.
The goal isn’t simply to reduce symptoms. It’s to help you build a life that feels more manageable, intentional, connected, and meaningful.
First Responders, Military & Healthcare Professionals
Some professions expose people to experiences, responsibilities, and pressures that are difficult to understand from the outside.
I have extensive experience working with first responders, military personnel, veterans, healthcare professionals, and others whose work places significant demands on them and their families.
Therapy may address trauma or PTSD but it doesn’t always.
Sometimes the challenge is cumulative stress. Sometimes it’s what you’ve seen or experienced on the job. Sometimes it’s irritability, emotional numbing, sleep difficulties, substance use, hypervigilance, or difficulty transitioning between work and home. And sometimes the career itself is going reasonably well while the marriage or family is absorbing the impact.
I understand that culture matters. My aim is to provide a place where you don’t have to spend half the session explaining the realities of the work before we can begin addressing what it’s doing to you or the people you care about.
Trauma, PTSD & Addiction
Trauma can change the way a person experiences safety, relationships, emotions, and even themselves.
For some people, its effects are obvious. For others, trauma shows up indirectly through anger, avoidance, anxiety, emotional numbness, relationship difficulties, substance use, or the feeling that something is wrong even when life appears fine from the outside.
Addiction can become intertwined with many of these experiences. Alcohol, substances, or other behaviours may initially provide relief, escape, or a way to manage overwhelming emotions before eventually creating problems of their own.
My background in mental health and addictions allows us to look at these concerns together rather than treating them as completely separate parts of your life.
The aim is to understand what a behaviour has been doing for you, address what lies underneath it, and develop healthier ways of living.
Christian & Faith-Integrated Therapy
For some clients, faith is central to how they understand marriage, suffering, responsibility, forgiveness, identity, and the decisions they face.
If your Christian faith is important to you and you would like it incorporated into therapy, I am comfortable working explicitly from a Christian perspective and integrating faith, Scripture, and Christian understandings of marriage and personal responsibility where they are helpful to your therapeutic goals.
For clients who do not want faith incorporated into therapy, it does not need to be. Therapy remains centred on your needs, values, and goals.
My Approach
I believe meaningful therapy requires more than simply talking about what is wrong.
We need to understand the problem, but we also need to understand you — your experiences, relationships, responsibilities, values, strengths, and the kind of life you are trying to build.
My style is collaborative and direct. I want therapy to be a place where difficult things can be discussed honestly while still leaving room for compassion, humour, accountability, and hope.
Pain is part of being human. But pain can also tell us that something matters — a relationship, a loss, a responsibility, a value, or a part of ourselves that we don’t want to abandon.
Therapy gives us an opportunity to pay attention to that pain, understand what it is asking of us, and decide intentionally what comes next.
Modalities I’m Experienced With
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)
Gottman-Informed Couples’ Therapy
Motivational Interviewing (MI)
Mindfulness
The most remarkable insights I have learned in my career have come mainly from my clients.
A few are listed here in brief, although the stories are much deeper and have carved themselves into who I am as a person and as a professional – all of which I hope to guide you with:
“We will find a way.”
- Soldier (Canadian Special Operations and Forces Command Motto)
“The more we understand, the less there is to forgive.”
- Pastor
“One leads to two, two leads to ten, ten leads to meth, and meth leads to jail.”
- Sober Guy
“I am not a smart man … but I know what love is.”
- Fellow Forrest Gump Enthusiast
“Fast is slow, slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”
- Intelligence Officer
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
- Nurse (Benjamin Franklin Quote)
My Background
In agreeing to work with me, you’re agreeing to work with someone who is no stranger to pain – personally and as a witness. You’re also agreeing to work with someone who knows healing – in study, in discipline, and in living. I’d love to help you know healing in the face of pain – all in exchanging your current self for the version you agree to become.
I have Master of Arts Degree from Liberty University in Human Services Counselling – Crisis Response and Trauma. I also hold a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with a Minor in Sociology from the University of Ottawa. I would count myself as someone who hasn’t let their schooling get in the way of their education, however.
Getting Started
Reaching out for therapy doesn’t mean you need to have everything figured out. You may know exactly what you want help with, or you may simply know that something needs to change.
Whether you’re seeking help for your relationship or coming to therapy individually, we can begin by talking about what’s happening, what you’ve already tried, and what you hope could be different.