Kim Guigui, M.A.

Kim Guigui, M.A. Kim is a certified mental health counselor in the Greater Montreal Area. I earned my B.S. in Counseling Psychology.

There is no perfect recipe to healing, and each of us needs a unique combination of ingredients. However, compassion, empathy, non-judgment, and loving-kindness are necessary to the process, and I commit to bring those qualities into our interactions. My role is to be present to your explorations, and help you identify steps you can comfortably and safely explore. Regardless of the reason for your desire to start therapy, consent throughout is of primordial importance, and my approach is client-centered: that means I pull from an eclectic set of tools to provide a space, pace, and environment that works for you. In addition to more traditional talk therapy, I often draw from cognitive behavioral models, mindfulness, guided imagery, creative expression and art therapy, and some body-oriented techniques. A Little Background:

As a multilingual, transnational, and multicultural person who embodies social justice ideals, an appreciation for diversity is a key motivator to my understanding the unique strengths of individuals, couples, and families. I therefore seek to use my clinical skills, cultural humility, passion, and love for humanity to help effect positive social change in whichever way I can, and deeply believe that working from within leads to positive outward change. from the University of Toronto, where I pursued a double major in Biology and Forensic Science, with a minor in Psychology. I have several years of experience in the food and wine industry, in organizational development of a government agency, as an independent marketing consultant and translator, and as a private tutor and nanny, working with children and adolescents. After considering several avenues to pursue my counseling career, I proudly chose the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (currently Sofia University), which focuses on mind, body, and soul integration, to earn an M.A. What To Expect:

As a therapist, I have had the privilege of working as a bereavement counselor at Pathways, where I assisted adult individuals through the painful, yet indiscriminately transformative journey of intense grief. I also worked at an elementary school within the Santa Clara Unified School District, where I support children ages 5 to 11. I have a particular affinity to working with grief and identity issues (specifically, cultural and multicultural identity, gender and/or sexual identity, religious/spiritual identity). In addition, I have worked with a variety of clients facing depression, anxiety, chemical and substance dependence and abuse, relationships and codependency, domestic violence, major life transitions, and various forms of acute and developmental trauma. I am happy to provide a 20-minute consultation over the phone at no cost to answer any questions you may have, and to help you book your initial appointment.

02/04/2026

No but seriously let us know if you’re running late please 🙏

02/03/2026

In 2024, about 50,000 women and girls worldwide were intentionally killed by an intimate partner or family member. That’s roughly 137 deaths per day.

In Canada, between 2018 and 2022, more than 850 women and girls were killed in gender-related incidents (often by current or former partners or family members). On average this means at least one woman or girl was killed every two days.

Femicide refers to the killing of women and girls because of their gender — often in the context of intimate partner violence or family violence. It highlights that gender-based power imbalances and discrimination can be underlying factors in these deaths, not just random acts of violence.

02/02/2026

Day 86: Your brain is surprisingly easy to “trick” in small, helpful ways — and smiling is one of them.

Even a forced smile sends signals up to your brain that look a lot like the real thing. The muscles you use to smile are connected to emotional processing systems, so when you lift the corners of your mouth, your brain goes, “Oh, we’re doing this? Must be okay then.” It can slightly lower stress and nudge feel-good chemicals like dopamine and serotonin in the right direction.

That tiny physical shift can take the edge off tension, help you feel a bit more open, and make it easier for an actual good moment to land.

Think of it as a mood doorway, not a mood makeover. A fake smile won’t solve your life — but it can soften your state just enough to help you get through the moment with a little more ease.

02/01/2026

Day 85: Spending time with elderly people and little kids is like getting mental health support from both ends of the timeline.

Older people shrink the urgency of everything. They’ve lived through heartbreak, mistakes, reinventions, grief, joy, and boredom — and they’re still here. Being around them quietly reminds your nervous system: most things pass. Their pace is slower, their stories are longer, their perspective wider. You borrow their sense of proportion. The thing that feels like the end of the world to you? They’ve probably had five of those… and survived.

Young kids do the opposite magic. They pull you out of your head and drop you into the present moment whether you’re ready or not. A rock on the sidewalk is fascinating. A joke is funny every single time. Their emotions move through fast — cry, recover, laugh, repeat. Being around them reminds your brain what it’s like to feel without overthinking, to be curious without self-consciousness, to rest without guilt.

Old people help with perspective.
Kids help with presence.

Together, they balance the two things most adults struggle with: worrying about the future and replaying the past. Time with them gently pulls you back to what’s actually happening right now — and reminds you that life is both longer and simpler than your stress makes it feel.

01/31/2026

Day 83: The fact that you can see the pattern is already you stepping out of it, but let’s break it down: repeating relationship patterns is about familiarity. Your nervous system is less interested in healthy and more interested in known. If chaos, emotional unavailability, or having to earn love feels familiar, your system reads that as “home,” even if it hurts. Meanwhile, someone steady, kind, and emotionally available can feel… boring, suspicious, or even unsafe.

On the flip side, pushing good people away often happens when:
• intimacy starts to feel vulnerable
• you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop
• you don’t fully believe you’re worthy of something stable
• calm feels like loss of control

So the old protective strategies kick in: withdrawing, nitpicking, losing interest, picking fights, or choosing people who can’t really show up so you never have to fully risk being seen.

Here’s the hard truth:
Your patterns once protected you. They just might not fit your life anymore.

Healing isn’t just “choosing better.” It’s:
• learning to tolerate consistency
• sitting through the discomfort of being cared for
• noticing when attraction is actually anxiety
• pausing before reenacting the old script

Love doesn’t have to feel like survival anymore.

01/30/2026

Did I mention I speak French? 🤔

01/30/2026

Day 82: The mind and body are in constant conversation3 it’s a live feedback loop running 24/7.

Your nervous system is the bridge. It’s constantly scanning for safety or danger, and your body responds before your brain even finishes the story. That’s why you can’t always “think” your way out of how you feel — sometimes the way forward is physical: breathing deeper, unclenching your jaw, going for a walk, drinking water, crying, stretching, being held.

Mental health is physical health. Emotions live in the body, not just in your head. You have to learn to listen to physical cues — tension, fatigue, restlessness, heaviness, warmth, etc.

01/29/2026

Day 81: Learning curves are sneaky. At the start, effort is high and results are low. You feel clumsy, slow, maybe even a little embarrassed. That part tricks people into thinking they’re bad at something — when really, they’re just early.

Then something shifts. Your brain starts recognizing patterns. Movements smooth out. Decisions get faster. What once took all your focus becomes automatic.

The hard truth? Most people quit in the steep, awkward part — right before the curve turns in their favor.

Learning isn’t linear. It’s messy, humbling, and full of plateaus where nothing seems to change… until it does. The plateau isn’t failure — it’s your brain wiring things behind the scenes.

So if it feels hard, slow, or uncomfortable, you’re probably not behind.

You’re on the curve.

01/28/2026

If you don’t wanna get called out, I’m not a good fit for you!

Being deeply listened to in therapy is healing — it makes you feel seen, understood, less alone in your inner world. But if that’s all therapy is, you don’t actually change. You just feel validated inside the same patterns.

Getting gently called out is where growth lives.

A good therapist doesn’t challenge you to shame you — they do it to interrupt the blind spots your brain has gotten very good at protecting. We all have stories we tell ourselves, defenses we don’t notice, and patterns that feel “just how I am.” When a therapist reflects back, “Hey, notice how you say you want connection but push people away?” or “You’re being really hard on yourself right now,” they’re helping you see the water you’re swimming in.

Listening helps you feel safe.
Being called out helps you get unstuck.

Real therapy is both:
✨ Compassion so your nervous system can settle
✨ Truth so your life can actually shift

If you only feel comforted, you stay the same.
If you only feel challenged, you shut down.
But when empathy and honesty meet? That’s where transformation happens.

01/27/2026

Day 80: Depression doesn’t just affect mood — it affects perception. When your brain is depressed, it’s like looking at your life through a distorted lens. Your mind filters out evidence that you’re capable, loved, or doing okay, and zooms in on mistakes, fears, and worst-case scenarios.

A depressed brain is operating from a state of threat, exhaustion, and low hope. It overgeneralizes (“I always mess up”), mind-reads (“They must think I’m annoying”), and predicts the future like it’s already decided (“Nothing will change”). These thoughts feel like facts — but they’re symptoms.

The important part: feelings in depression are real, but the conclusions your brain draws from them are unreliable. Recovery is about learning to question the depression-voice and gently widen the lens until reality comes back into focus. I will often interrupt my clients and say “that’s your depression brain talking” because one of the first steps is identifying that the depression brain is separate from you.

01/26/2026

Day 79: But you gotta have the courage to ask for help, not do it alone, and let others hold the hope when you can’t do it yourself 🫶🏼

Therapists who’ve lived through hard things carry a quiet kind of confidence — not the loud, toxic-positivity kind, but the steady “I’ve seen storms and I know people can survive them” kind. We’ve watched feelings that seemed unbearable soften with time. We’ve made mistakes, lost things, rebuilt, doubted ourselves, and still found our footing again. So when you sit across from us convinced you’re broken or that this pain will last forever, we’re not guessing when we say you’ll be okay. We’re drawing from lived proof — our own and the many lives we’ve witnessed heal. We don’t have faith because your situation is small. We have faith because humans are far more resilient, adaptable, and capable of growth than they realize, especially in the middle of the mess.

01/26/2026

We can process after we both get the dopamine hit.

Address

645 Boulevard Décarie
Montreal, QC
H4L3L3

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 10am - 4pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 10am - 4pm

Telephone

+14387971503

Website

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