When we understand what shaped us, we can choose what comes next.
Bonnie Altro is a psychotherapist, former lawyer and essayist. Her work helps adults understand and shift patterns of thinking, feeling and responding that no longer serve them in their internal lives, relationships or careers.
You may already know where you get stuck. What is harder to see is what keeps it in place.
The ways we get stuck often began as intelligent ways to cope, belong, achieve, stay safe or stay connected. Seeing what keeps them in place can create room for a different response.
You replay conversations, second-guess what you said, and can become intensely self-conscious in situations where you normally expect yourself to feel confident.
You are patient and capable with almost everyone else, but find yourself irritable, critical or short-tempered with the people you love most.
You say yes, accommodate or stay quiet in the moment, then realize afterwards that you ignored what you actually wanted or thought.
You are very good at pushing through and getting things done, but increasingly wonder why everything feels so effortful, or how you are supposed to know when you have had enough.
You become defensive quickly when you feel criticized, questioned or misunderstood, even when another part of you knows the reaction is bigger than the moment.
You want to feel close to the people you love, but when you are hurt or overwhelmed you pull away, shut down or become hard to reach.
Therapy
The goal isn't to become someone else. It's to have more choice in how you show up.
I'm so glad you found your way here. I know how hard it is to reach out for support, and I know what it's like when the usual strategies stop working. Managing your feelings, minimizing what hurts, rationalizing everything: it carried you this far. Now it's not enough.
You may know the pattern already: becoming intensely self-conscious, overthinking, agreeing when you don't really agree, pushing yourself too hard, second-guessing yourself, or reacting in ways that don't quite feel like you. What can be harder to see is what is happening underneath.
There is nothing wrong with you.
My work is about helping you understand why a response makes sense, where it came from, and what keeps it in place. As we notice patterns and make connections, the things that once felt automatic can begin to feel more flexible, giving you more freedom in how you respond.
I work with adults virtually across Ontario and in person from my office in High Park, Toronto.
Book a free consultation
About Bonnie
I know something about how far you can go doing what seems right before realizing you have never asked what feels right to you.
Before becoming a psychotherapist, I spent fourteen years practising law. I began my career in securities litigation at a large international law firm in New York City and later became a partner at a boutique tax and estate-planning firm in Toronto. From Wall Street to Bay Street, I was successful by every conventional measure. I was good at the work. I was respected. From the outside, there was no obvious reason to leave.
What took me much longer to understand was that being capable of doing something, and even succeeding at it, is not the same thing as choosing it. I had spent a great deal of my life being responsive to what made sense, what I was good at, what was expected of me and what I knew how to handle. Eventually, I became more interested in a different question: what did I actually want?
That experience continues to shape the way I work. I am interested in the invisible rules we absorb about who we should be, what makes us good, what keeps us safe, and what earns us belonging. Once those rules become visible, we have a little more room to decide whether we still want to live by them.
A publication by Bonnie Altro
You Did Everything Right.
Essays on the invisible forces that shape our lives
I write about the invisible forces that shape the lives we build: the rules we absorb, the roles we learn to play, the ways we adapt to our families, relationships and culture, and the things we come to believe about love, success, goodness and belonging.
I called the publication You Did Everything Right because so much of what we later question once made perfect sense. We learned ways of coping, pleasing, striving, performing, protecting ourselves or staying connected for reasons that were real. The interesting question is not whether we were wrong to become who we became. It is whether those old ways of being are still serving us now, and what becomes possible when we realize we have a choice.
Practice themes
- Anxiety, social anxiety and overthinking
- Self-doubt, people pleasing, boundaries and relational patterns
- Perfectionism, high-performance pressure, overwhelm and burnout
- Work, identity and life-stage transitions
- Grief, loss, trauma and long-standing protective patterns
- Parenting, motherhood and family transitions
If something you're carrying is not listed here, you can still reach out. We can decide together whether I am the right person for the work.
Training
- Internal Family Systems (IFS)
- Emotion-Focused Therapy
- AEDP
- EMDR
- Mindful Self-Compassion
- CBT
Education + registration
- Master's in Counselling Psychology, University of Toronto
- Bachelor of Common Law and Bachelor of Civil Law, McGill University (Dean's List)
- B.A., First Class Honours, McGill University
- Registered Psychotherapist (RP), College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario
For clinicians: I also provide clinical supervision for psychotherapists working toward or maintaining CRPO registration.
Consultation
Book a free consultation
Individual sessions are $250 per hour, available virtually across Ontario and in person at my office in High Park, Toronto.
bonnie@bonniealtrotherapy.com