Support for the Personal Side of a Work Change. Counselling that makes room for the questions a career change raises about your priorities, your relationships, and your day to day life, alongside the practical decisions. Registered Psychologists, Registered Provisional Psychologists, Registered Social Workers, Canadian Certified Counsellors, Mental Health Therapists, and Student Therapists. Registered Psychologists and Registered Provisional Psychologists are regulated by the College of Alberta Psychologists (CAP). Registered Social Workers are regulated by the Alberta College of Social Workers (ACSW), and Canadian Certified Counsellors (CCCs) are certified by the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA). In person at five locations in Edmonton and St. Albert, and virtually across Alberta. 50 minute sessions, daytime, evening, and weekend availability.

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You Might Be Wondering Whether Career Transitions Counselling Is Right for You

You may be asking yourself whether a work problem is a real reason to talk to a therapist. Plenty of people reach this page and think some version of the same thing. Nothing catastrophic has happened. The job is fine on paper. Other people have it worse.

You might recognise some of this. Sunday afternoon starts to feel heavy before anything has gone wrong. You have opened the same job posting eleven times and closed it again. You keep rehearsing a conversation with your manager that you have not had. Or the change already happened, the layoff, the last shift, the retirement date, and now the mornings are open and you are not sure what to do with them.

These are ordinary responses to a change in something that shapes a large part of your week. Work is tied up with money, routine, status, relationships, and how you describe yourself to other people. When it shifts, more than a schedule shifts. That does not mean something is wrong with you, and it does not mean you have a condition.

You can read the rest of this page and decide for yourself whether this kind of support looks useful. It describes what happens in sessions, what the available research does and does not show, what it costs, and how privacy works.

Who We Help

Career transitions counselling may be a good fit if you are:

• Thinking about changing role, industry, employer, or schedule
• Looking for something new while you are still employed
• Adjusting after a layoff, a resignation, a contract ending, or a workplace restructuring
• Returning to work after a leave, caregiving, illness, or another break
• Approaching retirement, or finding the months after it harder than expected
• Working through workplace relationships, boundaries, workload, or a conflict between the job and what matters to you
• Weighing further education, training, or self employment against your wider circumstances
• Supporting a partner or family member through a work change and trying to understand it

Some people explore a new role while they are still employed, and it is a common reason to want a confidential place to think (Langevin, 2018).

This service may not be the right fit in these situations:

• You need urgent safety support. Please use the crisis resources below rather than waiting for an appointment.
• You need legal advice. Questions about wrongful dismissal, severance, human rights complaints, or contracts belong with an employment lawyer.
• You need financial advice. Pension timing, severance investment, and retirement income planning belong with a qualified financial professional.
• You need job placement or recruitment. Counselling is not an employment agency and does not find work for you.
• You want formal testing of interests or aptitudes. That is a psychological assessment, which is a separate service. You can read about career assessment if that is what you are after.

If You Need Help Right Now

Wholesome Psychology is not an emergency or crisis service. We cannot respond to urgent messages outside of booked appointments. If you need immediate support, please use one of these:

• 911 if there is immediate danger or an urgent medical need
• 988, call or text, if you or someone else is thinking about suicide
• Alberta Addiction and Mental Health Help Line: 1-877-303-2642, or call 811 for Health Link

What This Service Is

Career transitions counselling is talking therapy focused on a change in your working life. You meet with a therapist for 50 minutes, in person or by video, and use the time to think out loud with someone who is not your partner, your manager, or your friend from the same department.

The therapist does not decide anything for you. There is no test that produces an answer at the end, and no one tells you which offer to accept. The work is closer to sorting through what you are actually weighing, and noticing which parts are practical, which are about other people, and which are about how you have come to see yourself.

Sessions may cover things such as identifying what matters most to you right now, noticing patterns that keep repeating across jobs, thinking about boundaries and communication at work, or breaking a large decision into next steps that fit your circumstances. What gets discussed is agreed between you and your therapist, and the pace is set by you.

Some clear boundaries. This is not a legal service, an investigative process, a financial planning service, or crisis intervention. It is not a psychological assessment, and no formal career or vocational testing is part of this service. Therapists work within their scope of practice and will say so if something you need sits outside it, and they can point you toward the right kind of professional. What you share is confidential within the legal and ethical limits set out further down this page.

Signs a Career Transition May Be Weighing on You

People often arrive without a tidy explanation of why now. These are some of the experiences that bring people in:

• Dread that builds the evening before the working week starts
• Going over the same decision again and again without getting anywhere
• Feeling flat or disconnected at work even when nothing specific has gone wrong
• Sleep that thins out, or waking early with work already running in your head
• Snapping at people at home about things that are not really the problem
• Losing confidence in skills you used to take for granted
• Avoiding former colleagues, or avoiding the question about what you do now
• Feeling unmoored after a retirement or a job ending, with days that no longer have a shape
• A tightness in the chest or shoulders that eases on holiday and returns on the Monday

Identity questions are a recognised part of leaving long term work. The Canadian Psychological Association describes the difficulty of explaining who you are without explaining what you do, and notes that this is harder for people whose sense of themselves rested mostly on their working role (Canadian Psychological Association [CPA], 2023).

Experiences like these are common responses to a change in something that structured a large part of your life. They are not a diagnosis and they are not a permanent feature of who you are. Employment change is recognised internationally as a life circumstance that can affect health and bring people into contact with services, without being a condition in itself (World Health Organization [WHO], 2026). Having a structured place to work through it is one of the things that can help.

How Treatment Works Here

• Find your therapist. You can browse Our Therapists to read profiles, or use the Match with a Therapist tool. If you would rather talk it through with a person, the admin team is at 780-904-4880 and can help you narrow it down.
• Book your first session. The first appointment covers what brought you in, what you would like to be different, and the paperwork that matters. Your therapist goes through informed consent and explains confidentiality and its limits before you share anything you would rather keep private. You can ask questions at any point.
• Build your plan together. You and your therapist agree what to focus on. The plan is yours, and it can be revised. If your priorities change halfway through, that is normal and worth saying out loud.
• Ongoing sessions. Sessions run 50 minutes, usually weekly or every second week at first, adjusted as things settle. Some people space them further apart once they have what they came for.
• Progress check ins. Your therapist reviews with you what is working and what is not. If the approach is not helping, that is information, and the plan changes.

There is no fixed number of sessions. Some people come for a short stretch around a specific decision. Others stay longer because the work opens onto something else. Both are legitimate, and you decide when you are finished.

Evidence and Approaches

Being straight about the research matters more than sounding impressive. The sources reviewed for this page do not establish that any particular counselling approach produces a specific career or wellbeing outcome, and no comparison between approaches is supported. What the available evidence does cover is structured support around returning to work, and the psychological terrain that career and retirement transitions involve. Each approach below states what the source supports and what it does not.

Structured Support Around Returning to Work

What it helps with: Planning a return to work after a long absence, and the worries that come with going back.

Evidence summary: Guidelines recommend that people absent beyond four weeks be encouraged to reflect on what is contributing to the absence or causing concern about returning, and to identify the support they need (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence [NICE], 2019). The same guideline names counselling among possible support services, and suggests structured support over three months after a return from mental health related absence.

Limitations: This United Kingdom guideline is aimed at employers and occupational health services, so it does not map directly onto private counselling in Alberta.

Problem Solving Focused Work

What it helps with: Breaking a stuck work situation into defined problems and workable next steps.

Evidence summary: Problem solving therapy appears among the interventions NICE suggests considering to help people return to work after four or more weeks away (NICE, 2019). The recommendation sits within a wider package that also includes graded activity, workplace assessment, and facilitated conversations with a line manager.

Limitations: That specific recommendation concerns absence due to musculoskeletal conditions, so it should not be read as evidence for problem solving approaches in career decision making generally. No effect size for counselling in career transitions is available in the sources reviewed here.

Working Through Identity and Meaning

What it helps with: The questions about who you are and what your time is for that surface when a long held working role ends.

Evidence summary: The Canadian Psychological Association describes retirement as a process rather than a single event, running from a pre retirement phase through to adaptation, and notes that identity and meaning are common sources of stress within it (CPA, 2023). It names consulting a registered psychologist as one option when that stress feels overwhelming.

Limitations: This is a public education fact sheet rather than a treatment study, so it does not establish effectiveness. It addresses retirement rather than career change at other life stages.

Attending to the Emotional Side of Career Paths

What it helps with: Making sense of career decisions as something felt and lived, not only as a logical comparison of options.

Evidence summary: Academic work on careers has framed career development as an affective process in which people manage their identity through ongoing change, and has raised what this means for counselling (Watzlawik & Kullasepp, 2016). This supports treating feelings, values, and self concept as legitimate material in a career conversation.

Limitations: This is conceptual and qualitative work, not an outcome study, and the extract reviewed for this page does not include findings or conclusions. It should not be read as evidence that any counselling approach works.

What Results to Expect

Progress in this kind of work is uneven. People often report a clearer sense of what they are weighing before they report feeling settled, and a decision that seemed obvious one week can look different the next. That is a normal shape for the process rather than a sign it is failing.

Some people notice a shift within a few sessions, particularly when the focus is narrow. Others find the work continues over a longer period, especially where a job change sits alongside health, family, or financial pressures. Outcomes vary, and several things influence them: what the transition involves, what else is happening in your life, how much control you have over the timing, and how well you and your therapist work together.

No therapy guarantees an outcome. Counselling cannot promise a job, a decision, a particular feeling, or a specific timeline, and any service that promises those things is worth questioning. What it offers is a structured, confidential place to think, with someone trained to help you do it.

Therapeutic fit matters as much as approach. If it is not working with the therapist you started with, saying so is reasonable and expected, and changing therapist or changing direction is always available to you.

Confidentiality and Privacy

What you say in session stays in session, within limits that your therapist will explain before you share anything personal.

Registered Psychologists and Registered Provisional Psychologists at Wholesome Psychology are regulated by the College of Alberta Psychologists (CAP), which sets the standards of practice they work to. Practice is also guided by the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists. Registered Social Workers are regulated by the Alberta College of Social Workers (ACSW), and Canadian Certified Counsellors (CCCs) are certified by the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA). Other clinicians at the clinic are accountable to their own regulatory or certifying bodies.

Two pieces of Alberta legislation are relevant to how health related personal information is handled. The Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) governs how private sector organisations in Alberta, including private psychology clinics, collect, use, disclose, and retain personal information. The Health Information Act (HIA) applies to organisations and professionals defined as custodians, such as Alberta Health Services and certain regulated health professions. Psychologists in private practice are generally covered by PIPA rather than the HIA, which is why consent, access, and retention at a private clinic are handled under PIPA.

Confidentiality has legal exceptions. Information may be disclosed without your consent when:

• There are reasonable grounds to believe disclosure is needed to prevent imminent and serious harm to you, to another person, or to public safety
• There is suspected abuse or neglect of a child, which carries mandatory reporting obligations under Alberta law
• A court order or another legal requirement compels disclosure

Your therapist will walk through these limits with you during the first session, in plain language, before you decide what to share. You are welcome to ask how records are kept, how virtual sessions are secured, and what appears on an insurance receipt. Asking those questions first is a reasonable thing to do.

Sessions are private from your employer. Wholesome Psychology does not report your attendance or anything you discuss to an employer unless you give written consent, for example if you are asking us to support a workplace accommodation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to describe my whole work history in detail?

No. You decide how much detail to give and when. Some people want to lay out the full timeline in the first session because it helps them think. Others would rather start with what this week has been like and work backwards, or not backwards at all.

It is possible to do useful work on present day patterns without a full account of everything that led here. If a topic feels like too much to open, you can say so and your therapist will follow your lead.

Is what I share kept private, and could it get back to my employer?

Sessions are confidential, and nothing is shared with your employer unless you give written consent. The legal exceptions are narrow: a risk of imminent and serious harm, suspected abuse or neglect of a child, and a court order or other legal requirement. Your therapist explains these limits in the first session before you share anything personal. There is more detail in the confidentiality section above, and you can ask about records, virtual security, and insurance receipts before you book.

How many sessions will I need?

There is no set answer, and anyone who gives you a number before meeting you is guessing. Some people come for a short series focused on one decision. Others continue longer, particularly when a work change is tangled up with health, family, or money. Your therapist reviews progress with you regularly, and the plan is adjusted as things change. You are the one who decides when to stop.

What if the therapist is not the right fit?

Fit is a real factor, not a politeness. If it does not feel right after a session or two, you can say so directly to the therapist or contact the admin team at 780-904-4880, and they will help you move to a different clinician. Changing therapists is a normal part of the process and does not need to be awkward. 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 to narrow the options before you book.

Can I meet online instead of coming in?

Yes. Virtual sessions are available across Alberta, which suits people working shifts, commuting, living outside Edmonton and St. Albert, or looking for a new role while still employed. The same confidentiality standards apply to virtual sessions as to in person ones. Availability varies by therapist, so check the profile or ask the admin team.

Is this the same as career coaching or a career assessment?

No, though they overlap. Career coaching usually focuses on practical career development, such as job search strategy or advancement. A career assessment uses structured tools to explore interests, abilities, or vocational direction, and is a separate service at this clinic. Career transitions counselling focuses on the emotional, relational, and values based side of a work change. Your therapist can help you work out whether one of the others, or an employment service, would serve you better.

Do I need a referral?

No referral is needed to book. You can book directly through the booking system or by calling 780-904-4880. If your insurance plan requires a physician referral for reimbursement, that is a matter between you and your insurer, and the admin team can tell you what appears on your receipt.

Meet Your Clinicians

The clinic brings together Registered Psychologists, Registered Provisional Psychologists, Registered Social Workers, Canadian Certified Counsellors, Mental Health Therapists, and Student Therapists. The credential affects the fee, the scope of practice, and the regulatory body a clinician answers to, so it is worth understanding the difference before you choose.

All Registered Psychologists and Registered Provisional Psychologists at Wholesome Psychology are regulated by the College of Alberta Psychologists (CAP). Registered Provisional Psychologists have completed their graduate training and practise under the supervision of a senior registered psychologist while they complete the requirements for full registration. Registered Social Workers are regulated by the Alberta College of Social Workers (ACSW), and Canadian Certified Counsellors (CCCs) are certified by the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA). Other therapists are accountable to their own regulatory or certifying bodies.

Clinicians differ in the areas and populations they work with most often, and profiles set out what each person focuses on. If you would like help choosing someone suited to a work related transition, read Our Therapists, use the Match with a Therapist tool, or call the admin team at 780-904-4880 and describe what you are looking for.

Children, Youth, and Families

A change in one person's working life is rarely contained to that person. A layoff, a return to shift work, or a parent's retirement changes the household routine, and children often notice the tension before anyone explains it to them. Counselling is available for children, adolescents, and young people at Wholesome Psychology, and therapists who work with younger clients use approaches suited to their age and stage.

Young people face their own version of these questions, including decisions about school, training, and a first job, and the pressure that comes with choosing a direction early. Clinicians working with younger clients also work with caregivers, since what a child needs usually depends partly on what is happening at home. If you are looking for support for a young person rather than yourself, the admin team can point you toward the right clinician.

Taking a Next Step

If any of this sounded like your situation, here are the ways in:

• Book a session online
• Match with a therapist if you would rather narrow the options first
• Call 780-904-4880 to talk it through with the admin team
• Email info@wholesomepsychology.ca
• Read Getting Started with Therapy to see what the process looks like

You may also find the pages on life transitions and adjustment challenges or loss of employment useful, depending on what your situation looks like.

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

Starting the conversation is enough.

References

• Canadian Psychological Association. (2023). "Psychology Works" fact sheet: Retirement. Prepared by J. Haley for the CPA Section of Psychologists and Retirement.
• Langevin, M. (2018, July 11). Workers looking for a new job. Insights on Canadian Society. Statistics Canada.
• National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. (2019). Workplace health: Long-term sickness absence and capability to work (NICE Guideline NG146). https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng146
• Watzlawik, M., & Kullasepp, K. (2016). Career as affective journey: How constant flux challenges the search for career pathways and counseling. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 50, 492-506.
• World Health Organization. (2026). ICD-11 for mortality and morbidity statistics (Version 2026-01): Chapter 24, Factors influencing health status or contact with health services.