Andras F. Lenart, RCC
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about how I work, what to expect, and practical details.
The Approach
Q1: What makes your approach different from standard therapy?
Most therapy works at the level of thoughts and behavior—recognizing patterns, challenging unhelpful thinking, building better coping strategies. That can help. But it often doesn't change how you actually feel or respond, because the patterns driving your struggles aren't stored in your conscious thoughts. They're in your nervous system and emotional memory.
I work at that level. Sessions are active and experiential. We engage your emotions and body sensations in real time, not just analyze what happened last week. The goal isn't insight. It's felt change—the kind where you notice you're actually responding differently, not just thinking about things differently.
Q2: What is experiential therapy?
Therapy that works with your direct experience rather than just your thoughts about it.
Most talk therapy is cognitive—you discuss your problems, gain understanding, develop insight. Experiential therapy goes further. We engage your emotions, sensations, and felt sense as they arise. We work with experience directly rather than analyzing it from the outside.
This matters because the patterns driving anxiety, insecurity, and relationship struggles are encoded in your nervous system, not your conscious mind. You can't think your way out of them. You have to engage at the level where they actually live.
Q3: What is Coherence Therapy and how does it work?
Coherence Therapy starts from a specific premise: your symptoms aren't random.
Anxiety, self-doubt, emotional reactivity—these are the coherent expression of beliefs formed earlier in your life. Those beliefs made complete sense given what you experienced. They were adaptive. They just now drive behavior that limits you.
The key insight from neuroscience is that emotional learning can be updated through memory reconsolidation. When a belief is activated and then met with a new, contradictory experience, the brain can rewrite it—not suppress it, not override it, but actually update it at the source.
When that happens, change doesn't require willpower or constantly managing yourself. The belief that was driving the pattern updates, and the pattern stops. That's the difference between managing symptoms and resolving them.
Q4: How does neuroscience inform your work?
I studied neuroscience and cognitive science at McGill, and the most important thing it taught me is this: there's a gap between what we know intellectually and what we feel to be true. That gap isn't a personal failing. It exists because different neural systems are involved.
Conscious understanding lives in one part of your brain. The beliefs and responses that actually drive your behavior live somewhere else—in subcortical structures, emotional memory, your nervous system. Those systems don't update through insight alone.
Everything I do is oriented toward engaging that system directly. Not explaining it, not analyzing it—working with it through emotional experience and somatic awareness, in ways that create the conditions for actual change rather than just understanding.
Q5: How is this different from CBT or talk therapy?
CBT works at the level of thoughts and behavior. Identify distorted thinking, challenge it with evidence, replace it with something more accurate. Structured, skill-based, useful for symptom management.
The limitation: it doesn't touch the emotional learning underneath. You can challenge "I'm not good enough" every time it appears and still feel like you're not good enough—because the belief doesn't live in your thoughts. It lives deeper.
Talk therapy helps you understand your patterns, feel heard, process experiences. That matters. But understanding doesn't change nervous system responses.
My work combines structure and skills where they're useful with experiential depth that engages your emotional memory directly. We're not trying to manage symptoms better. We're working with what's creating them.
Working Together
Q6: What are you like as a therapist?
Direct and fairly challenging. I care more about your growth than your comfort, though I do both. There's warmth and a lot of humor, but no softness that avoids the hard work.
Sessions are evocative. Emotional content comes up and we work with it in real time—not just talk about it. I'll give you direct feedback when patterns show up live, ask questions that push you past your current frame, work with what's happening in your body and emotions, not just what you're saying.
This isn't passive therapy. It's active, collaborative work. People often find it moves faster than they expected.
If you want someone to mostly listen and validate, I'm probably not the right fit. If you want someone direct and willing to go to depth with you, we'll likely work well together.
Q7: What happens in the first session?
We get clear on what brings you to therapy—what you're struggling with, what you've tried, what you're hoping for. I'm interested in your lived experience, not just the facts.
From there we'll start getting a felt sense of the patterns at play. I don't spend several sessions just gathering information before we start working. If there's enough context, we engage experientially in the first session.
By the end you'll have a direct experience of how I work, not just a description of it.
Q8: How often do we meet?
Weekly or biweekly to start. The work compounds with consistency—momentum builds when you're engaging regularly.
As things shift and stabilize, some people space out to every two or three weeks. We'll figure out what makes sense based on what you're working on and how things are moving.
Q9: How long does therapy take?
Depends on what you're working on and your motivation for change. I generally recommend aiming for 6-12 sessions as a starting point.
Experiential work can move quickly. Working directly with your nervous system and emotional memory is more efficient than circling issues intellectually—people often experience meaningful shifts faster than they expect.
For complex trauma or deeply rooted patterns, it may take longer. For more focused issues, significant change can happen in a shorter time frame. We'll be direct about what we're seeing as we go.
Practical Details
Q10: What are your fees?
Individual therapy: $175/session (50 minutes)
Couples therapy: $190/session (50 minutes) or $265/session (80 minutes)
E-transfer payments receive a $5 discount per session.
A limited number of sliding scale spots are available for financial need. Mention it when you reach out and we'll figure out what's possible.
Q11: Do you take insurance?
As an RCC and CCC, my services are covered by most extended health plans in Canada. You pay directly and I provide receipts for reimbursement.
Coverage varies by plan—check with your insurer about your specific benefits before we start.
Q12: Do you offer online sessions?
Yes. In-person in Victoria (1608 Camosun Street) or online via secure video. Both formats work well—choose whatever fits your situation.
Q13: Is what I share confidential?
Yes, with three legally mandated exceptions: imminent risk of harm to yourself or someone else, disclosure of ongoing abuse of a child or vulnerable adult, and a court order.
Outside of those, what you share stays between us.