Counselling for the emotional, relational, and practical weight of fertility concerns and fertility care, offered in Edmonton, St. Albert, and virtually across Alberta. Care provided by Registered Psychologists and Registered Provisional Psychologists regulated by the College of Alberta Psychologists (CAP), alongside Registered Social Workers regulated by the Alberta College of Social Workers (ACSW), Canadian Certified Counsellors (CCCs) regulated by the Canadian Counselling and Psychological Association (CCPA), Mental Health Therapists, and supervised student therapists. Practice is guided by the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists. 50-minute sessions, in person at five Edmonton and St. Albert locations or virtually anywhere in Alberta. Fees are published in full, with several clinician tiers.

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You Might Be Wondering Whether Fertility Counselling Is Right for You

You may be questioning whether this is a big enough problem to bring to a therapist. Nothing has been diagnosed. No one has told you to get help. From the outside your life looks the same as it did two years ago, and the hardest parts happen where no one sees them: the second week of the wait, the pregnancy announcement in a group chat, the half day you took off work for a fifteen-minute appointment.

You might recognize some of this. Planning your life in two-week blocks, so that a question as simple as "any plans this summer?" is hard to answer. Reading your body for signs, then trying to stop reading your body for signs. Muting a friend's feed and then feeling like a worse person for it. Snapping at your partner about a scheduling detail that was never really about the schedule.

These are common reactions to a long stretch of uncertainty you cannot control, and to hope that has to be rebuilt on a cycle. They are not evidence that you are handling this badly or that something is wrong with you as a person. Fertility concerns ask people to make significant decisions while tired, and to keep going through appointments that carry a lot of meaning.

You may wish to read on and see what this kind of support actually looks like before deciding whether it fits your situation. This page describes what counselling can address, what it cannot, and how it works here.

Who We Help

This service may be a good fit if you are:

• trying to conceive, with or without medical involvement, and finding the emotional load harder than expected;
• in active fertility care and struggling with the pace, the waiting, or the decisions;
• carrying grief after pregnancy loss, an unsuccessful cycle, or a change in what you expected your family to look like;
• noticing strain in your relationship, your intimacy, or how you and a partner cope differently;
• weighing options such as continuing treatment, pausing, donor conception, adoption, or living without children;
• supporting a partner, sibling, or friend and wanting to understand what would actually help;
• finding that work, friendships, or family gatherings have become harder to manage.

This service may not be the right fit if you are:

• in crisis or immediate danger. Please use the resources below rather than booking a future appointment.
• looking for fertility testing or medical treatment. Counselling does not include fertility assessment, diagnosis, medication advice, or treatment planning. Those belong with your physician or fertility clinic.
• needing a psychological assessment or a report for a third party. Psychological assessments are a separate service at this clinic and are not part of this counselling service.
• seeking legal advice or documentation for a legal process. Therapy is not a legal or investigative service.

Some readers arrive here while pregnant or in the first year after a birth that followed fertility care. That period has its own set of concerns. Perinatal mood and anxiety difficulties arise during pregnancy or in the first year postpartum, affect an estimated 10 to 20 percent of pregnant women and new mothers, and can also affect the non-child-bearing parent (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health [CAMH], n.d.). If that is closer to where you are, our perinatal mental health counselling and perinatal loss counselling pages may be more relevant.

Crisis Guidance

Wholesome Psychology books appointments in advance and cannot respond to emergencies. If you need help right now, please use one of these instead.

• Immediate danger or urgent medical need: call 9-1-1.
• Suicide crisis support in Canada: call or text 9-8-8, available 24 hours a day.
• Alberta Mental Health Help Line: 1-877-303-2642, available 24 hours a day.
• Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741741.

Wholesome Psychology is not an emergency or crisis service.

What This Service Is

Mental health and fertility counselling is talk-based psychological support for the emotional, relational, and practical effects of fertility concerns or fertility care. Fertility concerns and fertility care can affect emotions, relationships, routines, and decision-making in different ways, and no two people carry it the same way. Counselling offers a structured space to discuss what you are experiencing and to identify goals for support.

It is equally important to be clear about what this service is not.

• Counselling is not a medical fertility treatment. It cannot guarantee pregnancy or any other reproductive outcome.
• Counselling can complement medical care, but it does not replace fertility assessment, treatment, or advice from a qualified medical provider.
• Counselling is not a legal service, an investigative process, or a crisis intervention.
• Psychological assessments are a separate service. Nothing on this page implies that testing or a diagnostic report is included.
• Your therapist will not diagnose you with a fertility-related condition or interpret your medical results.

If coordination with your physician or fertility clinic would be useful, it happens only with your written consent. Nothing is shared automatically. The pace is set by you, not by your therapist. You decide what to talk about, in what order, and how much detail to go into. Confidentiality and its limits are explained in full further down this page and again in your first session.

Symptoms: Signs Fertility Stress May Be Affecting You

These are experiences people often describe, not diagnostic criteria. Recognizing yourself in this list does not mean you have a condition.

• Low mood, flatness, or tearfulness that arrives without an obvious trigger.
• Worry that circles back to the same questions, often worst at night.
• Sleep that breaks up around appointments, results, or the end of a cycle.
• Irritability with the people closest to you, followed by guilt about it.
• Avoiding baby showers, family events, or social media, then feeling isolated by the avoidance.
• Difficulty concentrating at work, or a sense of going through the motions.
• Changes in intimacy, including sex that has started to feel scheduled or clinical.
• Feeling out of step with a partner who copes very differently.
• Physical tension, appetite changes, or fatigue that does not lift with rest.

Experiences like these are common responses to prolonged uncertainty, repeated disappointment, and decisions that carry real weight. They are not permanent features of who you are, and they are not a character flaw. Structured support can help you find footing while the situation itself remains unresolved.

How Treatment Works Here

• Find your therapist. Use the match with a therapist tool or read individual profiles on our our therapists page. If you would rather talk it through with a person, call our administrative team at 780-904-4880 and describe what you are looking for. They can tell you who currently has availability and who works with fertility-related concerns.
• Book your first session. The first appointment covers informed consent, confidentiality and its limits, and what you would like to get out of counselling. You will not be asked to produce a full history on day one. Ask any questions you have before you share anything personal.
• Build your plan together. You and your therapist decide together what to work on. The plan reflects your goals, values, and circumstances, including whether you are in active treatment, between cycles, or reconsidering your options.
• Ongoing sessions. Sessions run 50 minutes, usually weekly or every two weeks, and the frequency is adjusted as your needs change. Some people book around treatment milestones instead of a fixed schedule.
• Progress check-ins. Your therapist reviews progress with you regularly. If something is not working, the plan changes, or the approach does, or the therapist does.

There is no fixed number of sessions and no set curriculum you have to complete. Therapy here is collaborative, and your view of what is helping matters at every stage.

Evidence and Approaches

The research base for psychological support in fertility settings is real but modest, and we would rather show you its limits than overstate it. Psychological and educational interventions have been studied in fertility settings; those findings should not be read as a guarantee of any mental health, relationship, treatment, or pregnancy outcome. The approaches below may be used depending on your therapist and your goals.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

What it helps with: Repetitive worry, sleep disruption, and self-critical thinking that build up over a long course of fertility care.

Evidence summary: A Cochrane systematic review examined psychological and educational interventions for subfertile people undergoing assisted reproductive technology, with anxiety and depression among its primary outcomes (Cochrane, 2016). A later systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials reported small reductions in infertility-related distress across psychological interventions overall (Dube et al., 2023). Neither review identifies CBT as superior to other approaches here.

Limitations: The Cochrane review rated overall evidence quality as very low and did not pool results, so no reliable effect estimate is available. Individual responses vary. More about CBT.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Mindfulness-Based Approaches

What it helps with: Living alongside uncertainty without putting the rest of your life on hold between appointments.

Evidence summary: The reviews available for this page group a range of psychological interventions together rather than testing each model separately (Cochrane, 2016; Dube et al., 2023). The meta-analysis reported that therapeutic approach, intervention length, therapy format, and participant gender did not appear to change the size of the effect on psychological outcomes (Dube et al., 2023). These approaches sit inside a studied category rather than having their own evidence base here.

Limitations: No ACT-specific or mindfulness-specific fertility trials are recorded in our evidence pack, so their use here rests on general applicability rather than condition-specific research. More about ACT.

Couples and Relationship Counselling

What it helps with: Differences in how two people cope, decision fatigue, and strain on communication and intimacy while trying to conceive.

Evidence summary: The Cochrane review focused on subfertile couples, so couple-based interventions sit inside the body of work that has been studied in this area (Cochrane, 2016). The meta-analysis found that therapy format, including group and couple delivery, did not appear to moderate the effect on psychological outcomes (Dube et al., 2023). Neither review supports a claim that couples work outperforms individual work for fertility-related distress.

Limitations: Included studies varied widely in format, duration, and quality, and couple-specific conclusions were not drawn. Availability of couples sessions depends on the individual clinician. More about couples counselling.

Grief and Loss Focused Counselling

What it helps with: Pregnancy loss, unsuccessful cycles, and grieving a version of the future that may not happen.

Evidence summary: Our evidence pack does not contain grief-specific trials in fertility populations. The reviews available examined distress outcomes broadly rather than bereavement-specific outcomes (Cochrane, 2016; Dube et al., 2023). This approach is offered on clinical and scope grounds rather than on the basis of fertility-specific grief research.

Limitations: There is no direct evidence in our current evidence pack for this approach in this population, and it should be understood as clinically reasonable support rather than a research-backed protocol. More about grief and loss counselling.

What Results to Expect

Progress in this area is rarely a straight line. A week that feels manageable can be followed by a result that undoes some of it, and that pattern is normal rather than a sign that therapy has failed.

Some people find relief from just 2-3 sessions, particularly when there is one specific pressure point such as a decision, a conversation with family, or a single upcoming appointment. Others benefit from longer work, especially when grief, relationship strain, or a long treatment history are involved. Neither pattern is better than the other.

Several things influence how this goes:

• the nature and length of your fertility experiences to date;
• what else is happening in your life, including work, finances, and health;
• the support available to you outside of therapy;
• how well you and your therapist work together.

No therapy guarantees an outcome, and counselling cannot change a medical or reproductive result. What it may offer is a clearer sense of what you want, steadier ways of coping through the waiting, and better conversations with the people involved. Outcomes vary between people, and research findings describe averages across groups rather than predictions about any individual.

Therapeutic fit matters more than most people expect. Changing therapist or approach is always an option and does not require an explanation you are uncomfortable giving.

Confidentiality and Privacy

What you share in counselling is confidential. Your therapist will not discuss your care with your family, your employer, your physician, or your fertility clinic without your written consent.

This is governed by professional and legal obligations, not just clinic preference:

• Psychologists are regulated by the College of Alberta Psychologists (CAP) and practise under its Standards of Practice.
• Canadian Certified Counsellors (CCCs) are regulated by the Canadian Counselling and Psychological Association (CCPA).
• Registered Social Workers are regulated by the Alberta College of Social Workers (ACSW).
• Practice is guided by the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists.
• Alberta's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) generally applies to psychologists working in private practice and private clinics, and sets rules for how personal information is collected, used, disclosed, and retained.
• Alberta's Health Information Act (HIA) applies where a provider is a custodian as defined in that Act, and governs health information under those circumstances.

Confidentiality is not absolute. Your therapist may be required to disclose information in a limited set of circumstances:

• where there is a risk of serious harm to you or to another person;
• where there is suspected abuse or neglect of a child, which carries mandatory reporting duties under Alberta law;
• where disclosure is compelled by a court order or other legal requirement.

Your clinician will explain these limits clearly in the first session, before you share anything personal. You are welcome to ask questions about privacy, record keeping, or what would happen in a specific situation before you decide what to disclose.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to describe everything that has happened, including the medical details?

No. You choose what to say and when. Some people want to lay out the full history, including dates, cycles, and results, because it helps to have someone finally hold all of it. Others would rather work on what is happening now, such as sleep, a conversation with a parent, or a decision that is coming up. Both are legitimate ways to use therapy, and your therapist will follow your pace rather than working through a checklist.

Is what I share kept private?

Yes, within professional and legal limits. Your therapist will not contact your physician or fertility clinic without your written consent. Disclosure is required in a small number of situations, including risk of serious harm, suspected abuse or neglect of a child, and a court order. These limits are explained in the confidentiality and privacy section above and again at the start of your first session.

How many sessions will I need?

There is no fixed answer, and anyone who quotes you a number before meeting you is guessing. Some people come for a short, focused piece of work around one decision or one difficult period. Others stay longer, particularly when grief or relationship strain is involved. Your therapist reviews progress with you regularly so the plan reflects what is actually helping.

What if the therapist is not the right fit?

Fit is a real clinical factor, not a politeness issue, and it is reasonable to change your mind after one session. Our administrative team can help you move to a different clinician, and you do not need to justify the decision. New clients may access their first session at 50% off to help find the right therapeutic fit. You can also use the match with a therapist tool before booking to narrow the options.

Can I access therapy online?

Yes. Virtual sessions are available to clients located anywhere in Alberta, and many people prefer them during active treatment because they remove travel time around appointments. The same confidentiality standards and legislation apply to virtual sessions as to in-person ones. You will need a private space and a reliable connection.

Can counselling improve my chances of getting pregnant?

Counselling is not a medical fertility treatment and cannot guarantee pregnancy or any other reproductive outcome. We will not make that claim, and we would suggest caution with any service that does. What counselling may offer is support with the distress, decisions, and relationship strain that often come with fertility concerns and fertility care.

Can I come on my own, or should my partner come too?

Either. Some people attend individually for the whole course of counselling. Others bring a partner for some or all sessions, which can help when the two of you are coping in different ways or facing a decision together. Counselling may be arranged for an individual or, where appropriate and available, with a partner. Availability of couples work depends on the clinician, so mention it when you book.

Do I need a referral, and can my therapist talk to my fertility clinic?

You do not need a referral to book counselling here. If you would like your therapist to communicate with your physician or fertility clinic, that can be arranged, but only with your written consent and only to the extent you agree to. Nothing is shared automatically, and you can withdraw that consent later.

Meet Your Clinicians

Wholesome Psychology's team includes Registered Psychologists, Registered Provisional Psychologists, Registered Social Workers, Canadian Certified Counsellors, Mental Health Therapists, and master's level student therapists. All psychologists are registered with the College of Alberta Psychologists (CAP). Canadian Certified Counsellors (CCCs) are regulated by the Canadian Counselling and Psychological Association (CCPA). Registered Social Workers are regulated by the Alberta College of Social Workers (ACSW). Registered Provisional Psychologists practise under the supervision of a senior registered psychologist.

Many clinicians here have training relevant to fertility-related concerns, including grief and loss, anxiety and low mood, couples and relationship work, and perinatal mental health. Specific training, experience, and current availability vary by clinician, so we recommend confirming fit before booking rather than assuming it.

You can read individual profiles on our our therapists page, use the match with a therapist tool, or call the administrative team at 780-904-4880 and describe what you are looking for.

Children and Youth

Fertility experiences sit inside family systems, and children in the household often notice more than adults expect. Wholesome Psychology offers counselling for children, adolescents, and young people, including support around secondary infertility, pregnancy loss in the family, and questions that arise in donor-conceived families.

Therapists working with younger clients use age-appropriate approaches rather than adapted adult therapy, and they work alongside caregivers to support the child's environment rather than treating the child in isolation. If you are unsure whether your child needs their own sessions or whether caregiver support would be enough, the administrative team can help you think it through. Our child and youth mental health counselling page has more detail.

Getting Started

If this page has described something close to your situation, here is what a next step could look like.

• Book a session online through our booking system.
• Match with a therapist if you would like help narrowing the options.
• Call 780-904-4880 to talk it through with our administrative team.
• Email info@wholesomepsychology.ca with questions about fit, availability, or logistics.
• Read our getting started with therapy page if you would like to know more about how the process works first.

New clients may access their first session at 50% off to help find the right therapeutic fit.

Starting the conversation is enough.

References

• Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. (n.d.). Treating conditions and disorders: Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders.
• Cochrane. (2016). Psychological and educational interventions for subfertile men and women.
• Dube, L., Bright, K., Hayden, K. A., & Gordon, J. L. (2023). Efficacy of psychological interventions for mental health and pregnancy rates among individuals with infertility: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Human Reproduction Update.
• Government of Canada. (n.d.). Mental health support: Get help. https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/mental-health-services/mental-health-get-help.html