Hi, I’m Martin Wilfred
I live in Hamilton, Ontario, and first came to Canada in 2022. My path into counselling began during the COVID years, when I moved from a background in journalism toward mental health and healing work. In 2020, I completed a certificate course in Healing the Inner Child — something that supported my own mental health during a difficult time and sparked a lasting interest in this field.
From there I pursued further counselling training and a Master of Science in Applied Clinical Psychology. During my practical training, I noticed how often therapy attends to the mind and body while the spiritual dimension of healing goes overlooked. With the guidance of one of my professors, I discovered whole person integrated counselling, which eventually led me to Divinity College at McMaster University in Hamilton, where I completed a Master's degree in Counselling and Spiritual Care.
Since arriving in Canada, I've worked in community-based settings supporting people living with developmental disabilities, addiction and concurrent substance-related concerns, and homelessness and other life challenges. My experience includes work with The Salvation Army, Helping Hands Street Mission, and other community mental health settings.
I am a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying). My approach is compassionate, client-centred, trauma-informed, culturally sensitive, and spiritually aware. I'm currently completing further professional education in Addiction Studies at McMaster, and I continue to grow through ongoing practice, supervision, and learning.
Outside of my work, you'll usually find me cooking, reading, or out in nature — hiking, and visiting parks, waterfalls, and lakes.
My Approach
My approach to therapy is compassionate, client-centred, trauma-informed, culturally sensitive, and spiritually aware. I believe healing happens when people feel safe enough to be honest about their pain, their story, their questions, and their hopes.
I draw on my training in counselling, spiritual care, clinical psychology, and addiction studies, along with years of community-based mental health work. My practice is shaped by experience supporting people through developmental disabilities, addiction and substance-use concerns, grief, homelessness, emotional distress, and complex life challenges.
I see each person as far more than a diagnosis or a problem to be fixed. I pay attention to the whole person — mind, body, relationships, culture, values, and spirit. For clients who wish to include faith, meaning, or spirituality in their therapy, I offer space for that respectfully and without judgment; for those who don’t, the work is no less whole. Throughout, we work collaboratively — exploring your experiences, making sense of the patterns beneath them, and reconnecting with the strengths you already carry.
Simple ideas
Meaningful change usually starts with something modest: one honest conversation, met with compassion, in a place where you don’t have to perform or hold it together.
You don’t need the right words or a clear plan to begin — only the willingness to take a first step. From there, we move at a pace that feels manageable, one step at a time.
Lasting impact
Those small, steady moments add up. Over time, the goal is not only relief from what’s difficult now, but something more durable — a deeper understanding of yourself, greater emotional clarity and resilience, and a renewed sense of where you want to go.
The aim, in the end, is for you to feel genuinely supported as you take your next steps, and steadier in facing the ones after that.
Land Acknowledgement
I respectfully acknowledge that I live and work in Hamilton, Ontario, on the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Mississaugas. This land is part of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant and is also connected to the Between the Lakes Purchase. I offer this acknowledgement with respect for Indigenous Peoples, past and present, and with a commitment to learning, reconciliation, and respectful relationship with the land.
