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When an adult son or daughter stops calling, the silence can feel like a verdict. It usually isn't. In my Vancouver practice — I'm Samuel Ezzatilord, PhD, RCC, CCC, LMCC, of Dr Samuel Counselling & Neurofeedback (drsamuel.ca) — estrangement between parents and adult children is one of the most common reasons families reach out, and one of the most treatable. The short answer: contact most often stops because the adult child concluded that staying connected cost more than it gave — and it most often resumes when the parent stops arguing about the past and changes how contact feels in the…

If one argument in your relationship keeps returning — money, in-laws, chores, intimacy — the loop itself, not the topic, is usually the real problem. Couples researchers have a name for the most common version: the demand/withdraw pattern, in which one partner raises the issue with growing urgency while the other retreats into silence, and each response intensifies the other. Decades of research, including John Gottman's finding that roughly 69% of relationship conflict is perpetual rather than solvable, point to the same conclusion: recurring fights persist because they sit on top of durable…

If you left a relationship feeling like you no longer recognize yourself — second-guessing your memory, apologizing by reflex, unsure what you even like anymore — you may be recovering from narcissistic abuse. The term describes a repeating pattern of psychological control: idealization at the start, then escalating criticism, gaslighting, isolation from friends and family, and unpredictable swings between warmth and punishment. Recovery is absolutely possible, and it usually moves faster with a counsellor who works specifically with this pattern. In Vancouver, Samuel Ezzatilord, PhD, RCC, CCC…

Short answer: yes — and the evidence behind it is unusually solid for the counselling field. In a large random household survey published in the Journal of Family Psychology, couples who took part in premarital education reported greater marital satisfaction and commitment, less conflict, and lower odds of divorce, with the benefit holding across income and education levels (Stanley et al., 2006). A separate meta-analysis in Family Relations calculated a mean effect size of .80 across premarital program studies — a large effect by any conventional standard (Carroll & Doherty, 2003). For…

If you are searching for neurofeedback in Vancouver and every clinic page you open sounds equally confident, here is a direct answer you can use: the evidence in ADHD is genuinely mixed, the honest version of the claim is much narrower than the marketing version, and the quality of the clinician matters more than the quality of the equipment. A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis in JAMA Psychiatry pooled 38 randomized controlled trials and 2,472 participants and found no meaningful group-level benefit on ADHD symptom ratings made by assessors who were probably blinded to treatment…

Calm all day, unrecognizable by dinner — that is usually a depletion problem rather than a character problem. What the research says about the physiology behind anger, and what actually helps.

Yes — and it may be the most under-recognized form of it. High-functioning anxiety describes people who meet every deadline, keep every commitment, and look composed to everyone around them, while privately running on chronic worry, muscle tension, and a mind that never fully powers down. Samuel Ezzatilord, PhD, RCC, CCC, LMCC, of Dr Samuel Counselling & Neurofeedback in Vancouver, BC (drsamuel.ca), works with exactly this profile: capable professionals whose anxiety hides behind their competence. Because their lives "look fine," they are often the last to seek anxiety counselling — yet…

Peer-reviewed studies show couples can recover full relationship satisfaction after infidelity through structured counselling — often improving faster than other distressed couples. What the research says, how trust repair works in the room, and when to begin.

If you have been living with low mood, the honest answer is: talk therapy helps most people, but for some it is not the whole answer — and the research explains why. Samuel Ezzatilord, PhD, RCC, CCC, LMCC, is a Registered Clinical Counsellor at Dr Samuel Counselling & Neurofeedback in downtown Vancouver, BC. At drsamuel.ca, he treats depression by pairing evidence-based counselling — behavioural activation, CBT, schema therapy and IFS — with neurofeedback training, so that sessions work on both the psychological and the biological side of low mood. Sessions run in English and Farsi, in person…

When partners grew up in different languages, the language therapy happens in shapes what gets felt, not just what gets said. Here is what research on bilingual emotion means for couples counselling, and how bilingual sessions actually work.