Education

• Master of Social Work, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto.
• Honours Bachelor of Science, (Psychology), University of Toronto

Additional Training

• Neuroscience Seminars – Dr. Norman Doidge
• Interpersonal Neurobiology and Innovative Therapeutic Practices: Working with Children and Families.  – The Hincks Dellcrest Centre
• The Power of Awareness – A Transformative Mindfulness Training, with Drs. Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield
• Advanced Master Program on the Treatment of Trauma, The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioural Medicine
• Trauma and the Embodied Brain: a Heart Based Training in Relational Neuroscience for Healing Trauma – Dr. Bonnie Badenoch
• Your Brain on Love: The Neurobiology of Healthy Relationships – Dr. Stan Tatkin
• Working with the Neurobiological Legacy of Trauma: Levels 1 and 2 | Janina Fisher, Ph.D.
• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR l and II) – Niagara Stress and Trauma Clinic
• Brainspotting (BSP) Phase l with Dr. David  Grand
• The Attachment and Trauma Mastery Training Program with Dr. Diane Poole Heller
• Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFT) with Dr. Sue Johnson
• Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy Core Skills
• Emotion Focused Couple Therapy Externship with Dr. Sue Johnson
• Emotion Focused Therapy. Working with Emotions in Psychotherapy: A Trans-Theoretical Approach, workshop with Dr. Leslie Greenberg, University of Toronto
• Discernment Counselling with Dr. Bill Doherty, The Doherty Relationship Institute
• Advanced Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and T.E.A.M. Therapy Techniques with Dr. David Burns, M.D.
• Mindfulness Counselling Strategies – Activating Compassion and Regulation. Crisis and Trauma Resource Centre.
• Working with Adolescents and their Families – Navigating Through Tough Times, The Hincks-Dellcrest Centre
• Clinical Hypnotherapy (all levels), Canadian Society for Clinical Hypnosis (CSCH-OD)
• Brief Therapy Certificate Program, The Hincks-Dellcrest Centre/Gail Appel Institute
• Dialectical Behavioural Therapy. Centre for Addiction & Mental Health
• Treating Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders, The Hincks-Dellcrest Centre
• Special Extension Program Workshop, Techniques of Infant/Child/Adolescent Psychoanalytic Therapy in the 21st Century, Toronto Psychoanalytic Society & Institute 
• Special Extension Program Workshop – Trauma: A Psychoanalytic View, Toronto Psychoanalytic Society & Institute

Professional License and Memberships

• Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers
• Ontario Association of Social Workers
  International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy
• EMDR International Association (EMDRIA)
• EMDR Canada

Publications

Mamisachvili L, Ardiles P, Mancewicz G, Thompson S, Rabin K and Ross LE. Culture and Postpartum Mood Problems: Similarities and Differences in the Experiences of First- and Second- Generation Canadian Women. Journal of Transcultural Nursing 24(2):162-70, 2013

Grigoriadis S, Mamisashvili L, and Ross LE. Antidepressant Medications Versus Depression: Achieving the Balance. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry74:375–376, 2013

Grigoriadis S, VonderPorten E H, Mamisashvili L, Roerecke M, Rehm J, Dennis CL, Koren G, Steiner M, Mousmanis P, Cheung A, Ross LE. Antidepressant Exposure During Pregnancy and Congenital Malformations: Is there an Association? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Best Evidence. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 74(4): e293-e308, 2013

Grigoriadis S, VonderPorten EH, Mamisashvili L, Tomlinson G, Dennis CL, Koren G, Steiner M, Mousmanis P, Cheung A, Ross LE. The Impact of Maternal Depression During Pregnancy on Perinatal Outcomes: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 74(4): e321-e341, 2013

Grigoriadis S, VonderPorten EH, Mamisashvili L, Tomlinson G, Dennis CL, Koren G, Steiner M, Mousmanis P, Cheung A, Ross LE. The Effect of Prenatal Antidepressant Exposure on Neonatal Adaptation: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 74(4): e309-e320, 2013

Ross LE, Grigoriadis S, Mamisashvili L, VonderPorten EH, Roerecke M, Rehm J, Dennis CL, Koren G, Steiner M, Mousmanis P, Cheung A. Pregnancy and Delivery Outcomes after Exposure to Antidepressant Medication: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Archives of General Psychiatry 70 (4): 436-443, 2013

Ross LE, Grigoriadis S, Mamisashvili L, Koren G, Steiner M, Dennis CL, Cheung A, Mousmanis P.  Quality assessment of observational studies in psychiatry: an example from perinatal psychiatric research. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, 20 (4): 224-234, 2011 PMID:  22113965

Grigoriadis S, de Camps Meschino D, Barrons E, Bradley L, Eady A, Fishell A, Mamisashvili L, Cook GS, O’Keefe M. Romans S, Ross LE. Mood and anxiety disorders in a sample of Canadian perinatal women referred for psychiatric care. Archives of Womens Mental Health, Aug; 14(4): 325-33, 2011. PMID:  21695590

Grigoriadis S, VonderPorten EH, Mamisashvili L, Tomlinson G, Dennis CL, Koren G, Steiner M, Mousmanis P, Cheung A, Ross LE. Prenatal exposure to antidepressants and persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn: systematic review and meta-analysis. British Medical Journal 2013; 348:f6932 doi: 10.1136/bmj.f6932 (Published 14 January 2014)

Grigoriadis S, Graves L, Peer M, Mamisashvili, L, Vigod S, Dennis CL, Steiner M, Brown C, Cheung A, Guenette M. Maternal anxiety during pregnancy and the association with adverse perinatal outcomes: systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 79, 2018 (in press)

Please click the items below to be taken to the relevant section on this page.

Brainspotting
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Discernment Counselling
EFT for Couples
EFT for Individuals
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
Mindfulness

Brainspotting

Brainspotting Therapy™ (BSP) is a therapeutic process that uses specific points in the client’s visual field to access unprocessed trauma in the subcortical brain. BSP uses relevant eye positions, somatic awareness, focused mindfulness and the therapist’s attunement to process and release the stored traumas which underlie a wide range of emotional and physical problems. It is a brain-body based treatment which integrates well with other types of therapies.

Often brainspotting is used in conjunction with bilateral sound – music or nature sounds which move back and forth between right and left ears, which balances activation of the right and left brain hemispheres and activates the parasympathetic, or calming, part of the nervous system.

Brainspotting therapy was developed in 2003 by Dr David Grand, an EMDR therapist and relational analyst. There are now over 12,500 BSP therapist trained over six continents, with about 50 trainers worldwide. In Canada, the number of brainspotting therapists is starting to grow.

Brainspotting Therapy uses the brain’s and body’s natural ability to self-scan and to self-heal, or move back to a state of equilibrium. When a brainspot is activated, the deep brain appears to reflexively signal the therapist that a neural network holding unprocessed trauma has been found.

Trauma can be processed while connecting to either distressed or calm areas within the body. BSP Therapy can allow the client to move quickly through processing of the trauma in a contained and supported way. Because the processing occurs mostly in the subcortical brain, this may happen with less talking than in traditional talk therapy. It is common for clients to experience both rapid relief of distress and profound insights.

(Excerpt taken from https://www.brainspottingcanada.com)

Cognitive Behavior Therapy

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is based on the cognitive model: the way we perceive situations influences how we feel emotionally.

For example, one person reading this website might think, “Wow! This sounds good, it’s just what I’ve always been looking for!” and feels happy. Another person reading this information might think, “Well, this sounds good but I don’t think I can do it.” This person feels sad and discouraged.

So it is not a situation that directly affects how people feel emotionally, but rather, their thoughts in that situation. When people are in distress, their perspective is often inaccurate and their thoughts may be unrealistic.

Cognitive behavior therapy helps people identify their distressing thoughts and evaluate how realistic the thoughts are. Then they learn to change their distorted thinking. When they think more realistically, they feel better. The emphasis is also consistently on solving problems and initiating behavioral changes. 

(Excerpt taken from https://beckinstitute.org)

Discernment Counselling

Couples best served with this approach are couples on the brink of separation/divorce.

If one spouse is not sure they want to stay married AND doubts that couples therapy can help, then Discernment Counseling is exactly where the couple belongs. The leaning-out partner is supported where they are emotionally, and the leaning-in spouse is equally supported in their own emotional state,  Discernment counseling avoids starting half-hearted couples therapy with these mixed-agenda couples.  It accepts ambivalence rather than trying to work around it or overcome it.

The initial commitment for the couple is simply the first 2 hour session. During this session, each person decides separately if they would like one more session, up to a maximum of five.  The goals are clarity and confidence in a direction for the marriage, based on a deeper understanding of what has happened to the marriage and each person’s contributions to the problems.  The outcomes are framed in terms of three paths: stay married as it, move towards divorce, or decide to do full-on couples therapy for six months to see if the marriage can be put into a good place, with a clear agenda for personal change and with divorce off the table during this time.  

Discernment Counselling helps deal with a wide range of presentations such as current affairs, being “out of love,” and couples flip flopping between leaning in and leaning out.  Most of the time in sessions is spent with each spouse separately, helping them get clearer, manage their emotions, and learn about self and relationship.  This protocol protects the couple from drifting into half-hearted couples therapy, a premature divorce or a divorce that leaves one partner baffled on what exactly happened.  

Excerpt adapted from https://discernmentcounseling.com 

EFT for Couples

Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples is a world renowned evidence-based therapy developed by Dr. Sue Johnson. It is based on over 30 years of research and practice. Meta-analyses looking at EFT show a 75% recovery rate from marital distress in as few as 12 sessions on average and 90% rate of significant improvement  – even in long term outcome studies.

The focus of EFT is to understand the underlying, often unspoken reasons and attachment-related significance and impact of these patterns and to help partners to express their vulnerable emotions to each other. 

Traditional types of couples therapy tend to be open-ended, focus on behaviour change, teach negotiation and communication skills or minimize the importance of interdependence. In contrast, the EFT approach hones in on increasing a couple’s attunement and empathy in order to build trust and create a safe haven and secure base.  In EFT, we focus on helping you create and build more secure bonds with each other. We help you turn to each other when you are most vulnerable, and we foster accessibility, responsiveness, and emotional engagement when you take the risk of expressing your underlying feelings and needs.

How can EFT help?

• You will learn to recognize the negative cycle that keeps you stuck where often one person pursues and criticizes and the other responds defensively or withdraws, or both pursue, or both withdraw. 
• You will safely explore and identify the needs and fears that keep you in that negative cycle
• You will learn to identify and express your underlying emotions in a way that transforms the repetitive negative cycle into a more positive and secure relationship that will enable you to more easily resolve your problems as they arise.

(Excerpt taken from http://iceeft.com) 

EFT for Individuals

Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) for Individuals, developed by Les Greenberg, has evolved in recent years to have a significant impact on the field of psychotherapy.  Its increasing popularity and the growing support for its efficacy with a wide variety of problems have made EFT an important approach to psychotherapy treatment. Emotion Focused Therapy is an empirically-supported humanistic treatment that views emotions as centrally important in human functioning and therapeutic change. EFT involves a therapeutic style that combines both following and guiding the client’s experiential process, emphasizing the importance of both relationship and intervention skills. It views emotion as the fundamental datum of human experience while recognizing the importance of meaning making, and views emotion and cognition as inextricably intertwined.

EFT proposes that emotions themselves have an innately adaptive potential that if activated can help clients change problematic emotional states or unwanted self experiences. This view of emotion is based on the view, now gaining ample empirical support, that emotion at its core is an innate and adaptive system that has evolved to help us survive and thrive. 

Emotions are connected to our most essential needs. They rapidly alert us to situations important to our well-being. They also prepare and guide us to take action towards meeting our needs. Individuals and couples benefit from therapy with the help of an empathically attuned relationship with their therapist, who seeks to help them to better identify, experience, explore, make sense of, transform, and more flexibly manage their emotions. As a result, persons receiving EFT treatment become stronger and are more skillful in accessing the important information and meanings about themselves and their world that emotions contain, and become more skillful in using that information to live vitally and adaptively. 

(Excerpt taken from http://www.iseft.org)

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

EMDR Therapy was developed in the late eighties in the States. It was first used with combat veterans with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but has quickly come to be useful in addressing the symptoms associated with stress and trauma (from PTSD symptoms like flashbacks, panic attacks, intrusive thoughts, anxiety and phobias, through the continuum to depression, over-reactive anger, worrying, disturbed sleep and so on—anything we’re referring to when we say we’re ‘stressed out’).

EMDR Stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, but actually it isn’t necessarily just about the eyes! It’s a therapy where you think about something that bothers you (like a traumatic memory or issue) and I wave my hand in front of your eyes, back and forth.  But we’ve found that we can get the same treatment effects with a headset and alternating beeps, or alternating taps on the hands. The eye movements, beeps or taps are a ‘back and forth’ or bilateral stimulation of the brain (BLS). The idea is that traumatic memories sometimes get ‘stuck’ in the information-processing system of the brain, along with the emotions and even the physical sensations that went with the original experience. When something bad happens , it happens first to the body, then the emotions kick in and then you start to ‘reprocess’ the event—you think about it, sleep on it, get support, time passes etc. At the end of that reprocessing, you can still remember  the bad event, but it no longer bothers you—I’m sure that you can think of bad things that have happened to you in your life, and you still remember them, but you have peace with them. That’s an example of the brain working the way it should. But sometimes this reprocessing gets stuck, and this is where EMDR comes in. It “desensitizes and reprocesses” the difficult memory or issue so that you have peace with it.

EMDR Therapy has been studied by neuroscientists, who research the neurobiology of attachment and trauma, so we have some educated speculation about what is happening with this therapy.  We think EMDR might have to do with the same thing your brain is doing during the dream stage of sleep (REM sleep). EMDR is thought to be a kind of accelerated, conscious version of REM sleep. It has been extensively validated by regulating and governmental bodies in the States and around the world and by the World Health Organization (WHO).

During an EMDR session, you think about the issue or traumatic memory and we do a number of ‘sets’ of BLS (or also known as dual attention stimulation DAS). It’s useful to use the metaphor of a train journey—like you’re sitting in the carriage of a train, here in my office, and if upsetting feelings come up, it’s just like the scenery outside the train. All you have to do is notice and let it go by. Your brain is looking to take you wherever it needs to go. You need to know that you may experience intense emotions, both during an EMDR session and also perhaps between sessions. This can be difficult and tiring emotional work and you need to take really good care of yourself, during the time you’re doing the EMDR therapy.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an integrative psychotherapy approach that has been extensively researched and proven effective for the treatment of trauma. EMDR is a set of standardized protocols that incorporates elements from many different treatment approaches. To date, EMDR therapy has helped millions of people of all ages relieve many types of psychological stress.

The amount of time the complete treatment will take depends upon the history of the client. Complete treatment of the targets involves a three pronged protocol (1-past memories, 2-present disturbance, 3-future actions), and are needed to alleviate the symptoms and address the complete clinical picture.

The goal of EMDR therapy is to process completely the experiences that are causing problems, and to include new ones that are needed for full health. “Processing” does not mean talking about it. “Processing” means setting up a learning state that will allow experiences that are causing problems to be “digested” and stored appropriately in your brain. That means that what is useful to you from an experience will be learned, and stored with appropriate emotions in your brain, and be able to guide you in positive ways in the future. The inappropriate emotions, beliefs, and body sensations will be discarded. Negative emotions, feelings and behaviors are generally caused by unresolved earlier experiences that are pushing you in the wrong directions. 

The goal of EMDR therapy is to leave you with the emotions, understanding, and perspectives that will lead to healthy and useful behaviors and interactions.

(Excerpt taken from https://www.emdrcanada.org) 

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us. Mindfulness is a quality that every human being already possesses, it’s not something you have to conjure up, you just have to learn how to access it.

When we’re mindful, we reduce stress, enhance performance, gain insight and awareness through observing our own mind, and increase our attention to others’ well-being.

We already have the capacity to be present, and it doesn’t require us to change who we are. But we can cultivate these innate qualities with simple practices that are scientifically demonstrated to benefit ourselves, our loved ones, our friends and neighbours, the people we work with, and the institutions and organizations we take part in.

You don’t need to change. Solutions that ask us to change who we are or become something we’re not have failed us over and over again. Mindfulness recognizes and cultivates the best of who we are as human beings.

Mindfulness practice cultivates universal human qualities and does not require anyone to change their beliefs. Everyone can benefit and it’s easy to learn.

It’s a way of living.  Mindfulness is more than just a practice. It brings awareness and caring into everything we do—and it cuts down needless stress. Even a little makes our lives better.

It’s evidence-based. We don’t have to take mindfulness on faith. Both science and experience demonstrate its positive benefits for our health, happiness, work, and relationships.

(Excerpt taken from https://www.mindful.org/what-is-mindfulness/)