Practice information:

As my client, your well-being will always be my guiding focus.  In the safety of counselling, you will be valued, respected and listened to.  Like the roots below affecting the tree above, the inner worlds of your mind and body affect the outer aspects of your lives.  Guided by these values, therapy at Tree Roots Counselling provides a safe place to restore balance to your inner and outer worlds.  

Individuals

When life gets overwhelming, you find protection by over or under reacting with fight, flight, or freeze.  Once there to help you, these short-term coping strategies can become stuck habits that no longer help you.  If unaddressed, these habits can impact your daily life and how you connect with others. The more you protect, the harder it is to connect. 

To restore functioning and strengthen relationships, we will reframe how your coping strategies work for and against you. We can begin to make sense of your thoughts, feelings, and experiences.  We can develop safer strategies to connect and protect.  You can learn new ways to be seen and accepted.  You can learn new ways to feel safe and secure.  This new awareness is the source for resilience and growth. 

Couples

You want connection with your partner.  You want to be seen and cared for but somehow you feel misunderstood.  No matter how hard you try, you feel trapped in this pattern of resentment and anger, and you don’t know how to end this cycle. You would like to find the intimacy and connection again.

When partners become overwhelmed, it becomes hard to meet each other’s needs.  Bids for attention can be misunderstood as cues of danger.  Coping mechanisms that once helped you become cycles of blame and shutdown.  In the safety of counselling, we can unpack what is causing this anguish and explore how past and present exchanges may contribute to your stuck patterns.

Instead of being stuck as an unwitting creator and victim of negative cycles, new patterns can be created.  Instead of isolation, angry pursuit or defensive withdrawal, secure bonds can be cultivated.  Guided by empirically-based Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), safety can be restored in your relationship to build more trust and connection.  Partners can become emotionally more accessible, responsive and engaged with each other.

Parents and Families

What is the meaning behind your child or teen’s behaviour?  What you do depends on what you see?  Misbehaviour can be reframed as stress-behaviour and parents can shift from:

• Reacting to short-term problems to
• Responding to long-term needs

From reactivity to receptivity, parents learn strategies to be present and respond to the emotional and developmental needs of their child or teen.  Meaningful change begins to happen with practical tools to understand and manage behaviour—a real shift in the trajectory of your relationship.  Healthier connections take shape and brains can be rewired to develop more secure attachment.  In cases where there is separation or divorce, parents can learn to respectfully co-parent to raise resilient and self-regulated children who will thrive.