Stress & Anxiety Counselling
- Impossible to quiet your mind?
- Distracting yourself to avoid your thoughts and feelings?
- Is your inner critic on overdrive?
Are you feeling unsettled or anxious? Many of us don’t recognize when we are experiencing anxiety and instead think something is wrong with us. Symptoms can include: unwanted and repetitive thoughts, insomnia, difficulty focusing, irritability, upset stomach, headaches, difficulty sitting still, hyperventilating, fatigue, panic attacks, aching muscles, and more.
Often we try to ignore or push away the symptoms. We may try to ‘think our way out’ of our discomfort, believing that if we can just figure out the ‘why’, or make a right decision, the uncomfortable sensations will go away. Unfortunately, we can’t simply think our way out of being unsettled.
Together, we can explore how to:
- Build more ‘space’ between you and stress so you can choose how to respond rather than being trapped in reactions.
- Learn to be more curious about your anxiety or stress rather than pushing it away – anxiety has a lot of useful information to share.
- Use different breathing and movement techniques to help you better manage anxiety when it occurs.
- Build a healthy ‘inner community’ that can welcome all the different parts of yourself so you can feel more safe internally.
- Increase your confidence that ‘you’ve got this’ versus the fear that ‘you can’t handle this.’
Pre-Marital / Pre-Commitment Counselling
Maybe you are a couple that wants to level up your relationship in some way? Deepen your connection? Move in together or get married?
What is pre-marital/pre-commitment counselling about?
- Establishing a framework for open and honest communication, even around difficult topics.
- Identifying + exploring the key topics that can cause problems for many couples down the road, if not addressed.
- Discovering and discussing differences you may have now, so they don’t become stumbling blocks later.
- Creating a relationship vision and identifying some action steps to keep moving forward together.
Topics include:
- Communication + Navigating Conflict
- Money + Financial Style
- Intimacy + Affection
- Values + Beliefs
- Family of Origin + more
Feel confident in your fit as a couple!
Relationships: Individuals + Couples
Maybe you are an individual looking to better understand your past or present relationship patterns so you can move forward.
Maybe you are a couple that is going through a rough patch and you’d like some support to get things back on track.
Important areas we can explore together include:
- How to manage conflict so it creates deeper intimacy rather than avoidance and disconnect.
- Communication skills to help you feel more confident in speaking and listening to each other.
- How to keep connected while having healthy boundaries.
- How your family of origin may be impacting how you behave in relationship (and how you choose your partner).
- Attachment style: how you form connections and bonds.
- Who you want to be as a partner rather than just who you want your partner to be.
Trauma + Critical Incidents
Unprocessed psychological and emotional trauma and stress injuries can lead the self to develop default, self-protective strategies that, while they served to keep us safe in the moment, can eventually have the opposite effect and limit us from engaging with ourselves and others in a way that feels safe and connected.
Maybe:
- You feel stuck in thoughts that you know aren’t true, but that keep hijacking you.
- You are having intrusive thoughts, images, emotions or nightmares.
- Your body reacts in ways that don’t always make sense and you can’t control.
- You are feeling shut down and frozen or restless and agitated.
- There is a ‘something’ that you can’t put your finger on but is getting in the way of how you want to live your life.
Memory re-consolidation techniques can help to process these stuck experiences so you will:
- Be able to update painful beliefs with more adaptive beliefs.
- Still remember a traumatic event, but more factually, without feeling overwhelmed.
- Properly file memories so they don’t pop up and randomly disrupt you.
- Feel more comfortable and safe in your body and mind.
- Find ways to help nightmares to ‘move forward’ and get unstuck.
Memory Re-consolidation Techniques
I use various different techniques including:
- Focusing-Oriented Therapy
- Coherence Therapy
- Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR)
To learn more about these techniques, please check out the videos below.