Dr Garri Hovhannisyan

Dr. Garri Hovhannisyan is dedicated to helping adults navigate a wide range of emotional and psychological challenges, including depression, anxiety, worry, complex trauma, and dissociation, as well as insecure attachment, stress, anger, and low self-esteem. Garri also provides support for individuals struggling with time-management, grief, social disconnection, and major life transitions. Whether you’re facing family challenges, relationship difficulties, struggles with motivation, or searching for meaning and self-understanding, Garri offers a warm, compassionate, and safe space to help you navigate the difficult questions your life is presenting.

Garri adopts a personalized approach to therapy, recognizing that each person’s journey is unique. Drawing on a variety of evidence-based psychological tools, Garri helps clients break free from confusion and distress that can at times feel overwhelming, guiding them toward clarity, hope, and meaningful change. Garri’s background in existential-humanistic, psychoanalytic, attachment-based, emotion-focused, and cognitive-behavioural perspectives allows him to tailor sessions to your specific needs, helping you to not only feel better but to gain insight into the deeper patterns affecting your life.

In addition to his work in psychotherapy, Garri conducts psychodiagnostic assessments for individuals with concerns of mood dysregulation (depression, bipolar, anger), worry (fear and anxiety), interpersonal challenges (rejection-sensitivity, shame, avoidance, dependence), inattention (trouble with concentration, spacing out), trauma (loss of trust in self, others, or the future), dissociation (disconnection from self and world), and loss of motivation (loss of desire and hope). Garri also provides collaborative and therapeutic assessments (CTAs), which form an important pillar in his assessment practice. CTA is a brief intervention that uses psychometrically validated tests to promote self-understanding and personal growth rather than diagnosis of mental disorders. CTA is particularly helpful when clients are experiencing distress and feel unclear about their therapeutic needs or how to move forward, wanting to better understand themselves and the underlying cause(s) of their problematic patterns.

Dr. Garri Hovhannisyan is currently a clinical psychologist in supervised practice working under the supervision of Dr. Rex Collins, C. Psych., at the Willow Centre. Garri completed a CPA-accredited predoctoral internship at the Centre for Interpersonal Relationships where he worked with clients with diverse challenges. Prior to his residency, Garri worked at a university psychology clinic for a number of years, providing psychological assessment and psychotherapy services for students and members of the broader community.

Garri was granted a $40,000 Doctoral Fellowship by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to support his doctoral research on the role of personality differences in experiences of psychological distress. Specifically, Garri developed an approach to assessing why individuals become and stay stuck in their negative patterns, a method he draws on in his assessment practice at the Willow Centre.

Garri has also taught undergraduate courses in introductory psychology and cognitive science. His research is highly interdisciplinary and resides at the intersection of philosophy, cognitive science, psychological assessment, and personality theory. To date, he has presented internationally at over 20 academic conferences in philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science, and holds professional memberships with the Canadian and American Psychological Associations and the Society for Personality Assessment.

Below you can find some recent coverage of Garri’s research in the popular press, as well as podcast interviews he has done on personality differences and attachment theory: