Services.

Do you feel stuck reliving difficult memories from your past that come to mind and interfere with the present? Always trying to push down or forget, but never able to move forward? Maybe you feel constantly on edge, jumpy, and looking around for the next bad thing to happen.

Our minds can feel preoccupied at best and hijacked at worst after a traumatic event, no matter how many years have passed. It can feel like our thoughts are not within our control, painful memories take us by surprise and interfere with out ability to live our lives.  

Traumatic experiences are inherently unforgettable. Often, they are so painful we try our very best to ‘forget’ or avoid thinking about what happened. You may be trying to avoid certain people, places, and subject matter, but no matter how hard you try you cannot avoid every reminder. Unfortunately our well intentioned avoidance actually keeps our suffering prolonged, and can make our life smaller and smaller over time.

Traumatic experiences can live in our body and we can continue to feel fearful, on edge, easy to startle, and jumpy for weeks, months, and sometimes years. Our body may anticipate that another dangerous situation is just around the corner, that I cannot keep myself or others safe, I cannot trust others, and I do not have enough power/control over myself and others to rest easy.

We know that deciding to face our traumatic experiences can be terrifying. There is tremendous uncertainty about what to expect, how the process will go, and if we will ever feel better. We often anticipate no one will be able to understand or help.

We offer trauma therapy for both complex and non-complex trauma and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder to allow you to finally move on from your traumatic experiences.

When you are ready to get started, we begin to explore the traumatic experiences and how they have impacted your life and the areas most important to you. We will assess the approach best suited to your needs and we will work to help you get ‘unstuck’ from persistent painful thoughts and feelings, to find more helpful ways of viewing painful experiences, and to allow room for new experiences and to fully live your life again.

We have ample experience with Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD and Emotion Focused Therapy for trauma, including extensive experience working with first responders, veterans, and injured workers.

Persistent feelings of sadness, loneliness, and emptiness can weigh heavy on us and, when lasting for weeks or months at a time, significantly interfere with our ability to live our lives. Activities that used to once bring pleasure or joy may now seem empty, routines and interests that were previously meaningful to engage in seem impossible to maintain. Low energy and low motivation get in the way of many if not most obligations and can lead to feeling worse over time with loss of the connection, productivity, and routine we are used to.

Depressed mood often brings along negative thoughts. Many people notice they become more pessimistic and critical of themselves, feel more negatively about others and many important areas of their life (e.g., their relationships, their work, the future). Over time one’s sense of worth can deteriorate and we can feel lost and hopeless.

Depressed mood can take a toll on maintaining our day to day activities and the demands of our busy lives, whether that is difficulty upholding our duties at home, parenting, in our career, with our personal interests, or our relationships. We often notice responsibilities and tasks begin to fall through the cracks and our sense of self erodes being unable to maintain the roles and responsibilities that were once important to us.

We know that it can feel impossible to take action when you are feeling so low and motivation is hard to come by. This is a part of the cycle of depression and it is not your fault. You need and deserve help to find the path forward.

We focus on assessing your unique difficulties and clarifying where in particular you may be getting stuck, finding opportunities to improve thoughts and behaviours that will benefit your mood and your day to day functioning.

Anxiety can take many forms, and can be hard to understand and manage. Maybe you are noticing your mind is racing with worries, assuming the worst, worrying about judgment from others or other feared outcomes. Maybe your body has a strong response, like a change in breathing, upset stomach, rapid heart rate, sweating, and feeling panicked and overwhelmed. Perhaps your body is constantly feeling on edge and not able to fully relax. Often there are situations, thoughts, or habits that may be exacerbating or perpetuating your anxiety without you realizing it. Our first task together is to understand what may trigger and maintain your cycle of anxiety. We will work to identify and develop tools to support you in helping your body learn to find ease, to stop the racing worries and to be able to manage and not flee from or avoid your fears.

Is it hard to tackle stressors and feel resilient to the challenges life throws your way? Do you struggle with big feelings that can be hard to understand and manage? Do moments of big feelings impact your relationship, managing your responsibilities, and your ability to function in a stressful situation?

Understanding our emotions can be a big job, especially if we did not have an environment growing up that valued and supported expressing our emotions. If we did not receive this growing up, we are often looking for guidance on how to make sense of how we feel throughout our adult years and may sometimes view our emotions as the enemy when they can be our friends.

Having emotions is entirely natural, but sometimes we notice we experience too much of a feeling to appropriately manage, or we seem to have a feeling that does not match the situation at hand, e.g., big anger that in hindsight was not warranted. In these cases you may need help to learn about your emotions, how to correctly identify them, to learn when they are helpful, and when they may require regulation or modification.

We will begin to identify barriers to emotion regulation and then build tools to understand and manage emotions more effectively so your emotions can help you in understanding what you need and support you in effective decision-making.

Life transitions can bring up uncertainty and anxiety, which can leave us feeling unstable and lost. It can be hard to know how to proceed when we are heading into a new and unfamiliar period, even if it is a transition we are looking forward to. A significant transition can feel like we need to discover ourself all over again.

Whether the transition is positive (e.g., embarking on a new career, retirement, becoming a parent) or painful (e.g., divorce, grief, job loss, caring for aging parents), therapy can support you through this transition. We are here to help you determine what you need for your next phase of life and help you build new skills and resilience to tackle the challenges head on.

Relationship issues can lead many couples to couples counselling, which is a great resource. But often, there are relationship issues that should be addressed individually first or in conjunction with couples therapy in order to optimize the progress we are looking for.

If you find that you are persistently struggling to maintain and nurture relationships, establish and maintain trust, communicate your needs and emotions, successfully engage in conflict resolution, and manage anxiety that arises regarding relationships, some individual support may benefit you in reaching your relationship goals.

We work one on one with individuals in relationships to develop the tools that help them improve their communication, emotion regulation, conflict resolution, and identify their needs in relationships and helpful ways to meet these needs in their interpersonal relationships.