Hi, I'm Jim! I founded and run Old Pine Counselling, a virtual-only private practice. My goal is to give you a consistently safe and supportive experience of human connection, in the areas of your life that are hardest to share. I am neurodivergent, trans, non-binary, queer, and on the ace spectrum.
I am a kink-knowledgeable and kink-affirming, sex worker and sex work affirming, and have been openly and proudly ethically non-monogamous for the last thirteen years (and I still feel like a beginner sometimes!)
I am also mixed (Indigenous and settler), and can empathize with the complexity and pressures of growing up between two racial and cultural worlds.
I am a member in good standing of the Ontario Association for Mental Health Professionals (OAMHP) and carry commercial liability insurance with McFarlan Rowlands, as a mental health practitioner.
My choice to practice counselling instead of psychotherapy (which I was trained in) is intentional! I came away from that training feeling disillusioned with the professionalizing of mental health I was taught there and felt I had to unlearn a lot of the language and mindset, which often felt deeply colonizing to me.
What stayed with me were the humans who shared themselves and their lives with me. I never stopped being in awe of how complex, resilient and profoundly uncategorizable they were.
I see counselling as coming face-to-face with some of the deepest elements of the human condition: conflict, grief, transition, hard questions, existential questions. There’s a reason these all show up in our stories and mythologies. You can draw on whatever is most meaningful for you and speaks to you most deeply, from Star Wars to fungi. I am comfortable providing a structured, goal-oriented approach, more open-ended and exploratory, or a mix.
I am here for you and how you see and experience the world.
I also do consulting and workshop facilitation, and you can find more information about that on my website.