Grief Counselling Online in Ontario

Grief counselling online in Ontario, at a glance. TEO Counselling provides grief and bereavement counselling across Ontario by video. It is led by Rola Shbib, BSW (Hons), RSW (Ontario), OCSWSSW #866715, who holds an honours degree in thanatology, works in English and is based in London, Ontario. It is also available with Mohamad Shabib, MACP, CCC, a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) with the CRPO (#14298), in English or Arabic, particularly where grief is entangled with trauma. Appointments at TEO run 3:00 pm to midnight Eastern, seven days a week; each clinician's own openings are confirmed at the free consultation. Individual sessions are $150 per 60-minute session, with no intake or assessment fee; couples sessions ($175) are with Mohamad. OHIP does not cover counselling in private practice; every session comes with an insurance-ready receipt, and direct billing is available with Mohamad Shabib for plans on the TELUS eClaims network (Canada Life, Manulife); with Rola you pay per session and submit the receipt. The first step is a free 15-minute consultation by video or a scheduled phone call, no referral needed.

Grief counselling online in Ontario, in plain terms

Grief counselling is a scheduled 60-minute session, weekly or less often, with a clinician trained in loss, in which the death — or a loss that was not a death — is the subject. At TEO it is provided by video to adults anywhere in Ontario by Rola Shbib, a Registered Social Worker with an honours degree in thanatology, at $150 per 60-minute session; the first step is a free 15-minute consultation and no referral is needed. It is not a programme with stages to complete, and it does not treat grief as an illness to be cured — grief is a response to loss, and the counselling is built around that. What it offers is a steady, trained person who is not tired of hearing about it, who knows what loss does to sleep, appetite, concentration and relationships over months, and who can tell the difference between grief that is doing its slow work and grief that has stalled.

People in Ontario reach out at very different points, and none of them is wrong. Common reasons to come are that you cannot say the person's name without losing the thread of the day, that you are functioning at work and coming apart at home, that the people around you have quietly decided you should be further along, or that you feel nothing at all and that frightens you. None of these is a requirement. Wanting an hour that is about the loss is reason enough.

A first session with Rola Shbib is unhurried. She asks what happened and who the person was to you, in whatever order it comes out, and pays attention to how much room you have right now — which is what decides whether the early work is about steadying the week or about the relationship itself. The aim is to open nothing you are not ready to hold, and the hour ends with a sense of where the next one goes rather than with a checklist.

This page covers the Ontario practicalities — who you would see, what it costs, what OHIP does and does not do, when appointments run, and how to start. What grief can look like, why it does not follow stages, and what prolonged grief means are on our grief therapy page, and where the stage models came from, and what they miss, is in What are the six stages of grief?

What grief sessions look like by video

Video sessions happen on Jane — the same system you book through — with Zoom or Google Meet held in reserve. Sixty minutes, by video, from wherever you can close a door — which, for someone grieving, is often the point. In the weeks after a death, getting dressed, driving somewhere and sitting in a public room before you can say what you need to say are real costs, and a session at home removes them. A phone call is the agreed fallback if the connection fails.

The first session is mostly listening, and the pacing follows from where you are rather than from a programme — what that looks like with Rola is on her page.

Anniversaries, birthdays and the dates nobody else remembers can be planned around in sessions; anniversary reactions are covered in more depth on the grief therapy page.

Anticipatory grief — grieving someone who is still alive, through a terminal diagnosis, dementia or a long decline — is grief, and it can be worked on before the death rather than only afterwards. So are the losses that get little recognition: a pregnancy, a marriage, a country, a body that no longer does what it did, a future you had planned on.

Sometimes grief will not move because something else is standing in front of it. If the death was sudden, violent or witnessed, if you found them, or if the last hours replay in a way that feels less like remembering and more like being back there, the loss has a traumatic edge that grief counselling on its own may not reach. In that case the work shifts to, or is shared with, Mohamad, who is EMDR-trained, with the aim of processing the intrusive memory so that grieving is not hijacked by it. How EMDR runs by video in Ontario, and what it costs, is on the EMDR therapy online in Ontario page.

What you say in a session is confidential, with the limits every clinician here works under: a risk of serious harm to yourself or to another person, a child in need of protection, a court order or subpoena, and the reporting obligations a regulatory college can impose. They are explained at the start, before anything sensitive is said, so there are no surprises later.

What it costs, and where OHIP stands

Individual sessions are $150 per 60-minute session; couples sessions, with Mohamad, are $175. There is no intake or assessment fee. The consultation is 15 minutes, free, and needs no referral.

OHIP does not cover counselling in private practice — not with a social worker, not with a psychotherapist, not for grief. That is the short answer to the OHIP question. What can cover part of the fee is an extended health plan through your work or a partner's: coverage depends on the credentials your plan recognizes — check for Registered Social Worker or Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying). Sessions with Rola are receipted under her RSW registration and sessions with Mohamad under his Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) registration, and plans differ on which they include — some name social workers, some name psychotherapists, and some are unclear about the Qualifying category. Read the booklet or ask the insurer before the first paid session, and tell the consultation which designation your plan names, so you are matched with a clinician it recognizes.

Direct billing is available with Mohamad Shabib for plans on the TELUS eClaims network (Canada Life, Manulife). Rola is not on the direct-bill line: with her you pay per session through Jane, by Interac e-Transfer or credit card, and receive an insurance-ready receipt after every session to submit yourself — the same receipt Mohamad's clients receive for any plan that cannot be billed directly. Cancellation is free with 24 hours' notice; inside 24 hours, or a missed session, the full fee is charged. A small number of reduced-fee spots are held — if cost is the barrier, say so at the consultation. The full fee table is on the fees page, and the plans that can be billed on your behalf are listed on direct billing.

Common questions

Related pages

• Grief and loss therapy — the full explainer: what grief can look like, and why it has no stages to clear
• Rola Shbib, RSW (Ontario) — her training, her approach, and what working with her looks like
• Online therapy in Ontario — the whole practice in Ontario, beyond grief
• EMDR therapy online in Ontario — when a loss has a traumatic edge
• What are the six stages of grief? — where the model came from and what it gets wrong
• Books on grief: a clinician's reading list — ten books, what each does, and one honest limit of each
• Fees & insurance — the full fee table and receipt details