Blog

Are you and your partner feeling more like roommates than romantic partners these days? Are you going through the motions of playing house but not feeling very physically or even emotionally connected? It can be confusing and even frustrating for couples when they experience this kind of disconnect in their relationship. Especially when they can remember so fondly those earlier years of having lots of fun sex and deep conversation. What's changed? Can we get it back, they wonder. And how? Don't despair! Yes, couples can find that spark again in long-term relationships, even when it's been gone…

Understanding The Body’s Protective Systems Protective systems in the body can manifest in multiple ways, such as anxiety, avoidance, and people-pleasing. Simply put, this is your nervous system’s way of keeping you safe. We often think of anxiety, avoidance, shutting down, or people-pleasing as problems to fix. But what if these responses aren’t actually problems at all? What if they’re protection? This blog is about helping you learn how to understand and work with these responses in therapy. What Are Protective Systems in the Nervous System? Your nervous system is always working in the…

Let’s start with what is actually happening right now. The economic reality you are living in is not the one many of us were prepared for. The idea of a clear path toward home ownership, financial stability, and a lifestyle that reflects your effort feels uncertain at best. You may be working a good job, doing what you were told would lead somewhere meaningful, and still finding that after taxes and expenses, there is very little left. That gap between effort and outcome creates something uncomfortable. A quiet frustration & desperation. A sense that you are falling behind, even when you are…

Burnout is often described as stress, overload, or working too much. But many people who experience burnout simply aren't doing too much. They’ve been carrying too much emotionally, often for a very long time. If you’re feeling burned out, you might notice a deep fatigue that rest alone doesn’t fix. Tasks that once felt manageable now feel heavy. Motivation fades. Irritability or numbness quietly replaces engagement. You may even wonder, What happened to me ? From the outside, it can look like exhaustion. On the inside, something more personal is usually happening. Burnout often emerges when…

A peer’s mantra reassures me as I grow in my counselling career: “Therapy’s a conversation — just a conversation.” Therapy is a conversation — except, given its emotional character, it’s not just “conversation,” is it? Sometimes, the “wrong” thing is said; maybe it’s some confusion, an irrelevant tangent by the counsellor, or a challenge to the client’s expectations. Such sticking points happen in ordinary conversation, don’t they? Yet in a sometimes-unfriendly world with so much misinformation, the stakes can feel higher in therapy. So, what makes such high-stakes emotional work possible…

Many people who come to therapy describe the same frustrating pattern. They care about their work. They care about their responsibilities. They want to move forward. And yet they keep putting things off. Procrastination is often interpreted as laziness or lack of discipline. In reality, it is much more often a stress response. Understanding what is happening in the brain can reduce shame and help us approach change more effectively. Task Avoidance and the Stress Response (Why You Keep Putting Things Off) Your brain has two systems that are constantly interacting. One system is responsible for…

On my website, I share the story of how I became a counsellor and how the roots of my career go back to elementary school! In this blog post, I’d like to share more details about what this career means to me, and why I believe I was meant to do this work. I will do so through the lens of gratitude, which this work and my clients continually inspire in me. The language I use here is poetic because I’m a poet at heart, and I tend to express the most meaningful experiences in my life in this way. I am grateful, firstly, for my use of empathy with clients. When I can enter into another’s frame of…

A traumatic experience is defined as an experience that leaves us with feelings of "horror, helplessness or hopelessness" (Herman, 1992). It's an experience during which our system is overwhelmed. It's generally an abnormal situation and results in us creating defenses or ways of being that get us through such an experience. Thank goodness for those defenses. Without them we'd be left feeling completely stuck or hopeless. But after the traumatic event has passed and we are safe we may notice that we are still exhibiting some of those defenses. They are keeping us stuck or getting in the way of…

As trauma, trauma symptoms, and trauma therapy are showing up on social media more often, dissociation is becoming a more common term that people are recognizing in themselves and starting to talk about. Here’s some information on why it’s an important symptom to understand and to treat. First, how do you say it? Dis-So-She-A-Shun Some people add an extra A to make: Dis- A-So-She-A-Shun Let’s leave out that extra A. What is Dissociation? Dissociation is truly the opposite of association. It’s a disconnection. Dissociation is feeling like you’re not aware of what’s going on around you. Everyone…

Most of us have heard the phrase "live in the Now," but few of us are taught how to do it when faced with the relentless noise of the modern mind. Practicing the Power of Now is a therapy group involving a structured, six-week immersion into the core teachings of Eckhart Tolle, designed to bridge the gap between reading a book and actually shifting your state of consciousness. Here is a session-by-session breakdown of the themes, inquiries, and practices we explore together. Phase 1: Identifying the "Thinker" Sessions 1 & 2 The journey begins by distinguishing between the "mental noise" of the…