Therapy

Anger can feel like a knee-jerk reaction to stressful life situations and can feel uncontrollable in the heat of the moment. But uncontrolled anger can negatively impact your physical and mental health and seriously impact important relationships in your life.

If you are anxious you may experience excessive amounts of worry that feel difficult to control. Your anxiety may be interfering with your ability to live your life and you may feel like you are a stone’s throw away from the worst case scenario.

Attention is part of a complex system of brain functions called executive functions. Executive functions are some of our most advanced brain processes. When everything is going well, our executive functions work to “manage us” like our internal CEO. They are in charge of many skills such as attention, organization and keeping track of things, time-management, planning ahead, and inhibiting impulses. Symptoms of ADHD typically develop in childhood, but can become more apparent or impactful later in life.

Autism affects how people communicate and interact with the world around them. Autism involves differences in social communication, social interactions, behaviour patterns, emotion regulation, and how one interacts with their sensory environment. Individuals on the autism spectrum often feel “different” or misunderstood, but there are many strengths that can be uncovered.

Depression can feel like you have a dark cloud hanging over top of you that just wont go away. You may feel sad, hopeless, and disinterested in activities you once enjoyed. Depression can effect your sleep, appetite, energy, attention, and concentration.

Gender and sexuality are important parts of one’s self and identity. People differ in their gender identity, gender expression, and sexuality. Society also has a lot of “rules” around gender and sexuality which can make it confusing for an individual to discover what feels right for them.

The pain associated with a significant loss is universal, but the grief process can look very different for each person. Grief can involve feelings of shock, despair, or even numbness. Navigating and processing your individual experience with grief and loss is important to establishing a new way of living that, while different from before, can still be meaningful and fulfilling.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder involves uncontrollable and unwanted thoughts (obsessions") and/or behaviours (“compulsions”). These obsessions and compulsions can be upsetting to the individual experiencing them and can interfere with one’s ability to complete daily tasks.

Being a parent is a complex and demanding job. Sometimes, it can feel like you don’t have the ability to cope with the stresses placed on you as a parent. During these times, parenting stress can damage your well-being and impact how you interact with your children. With strategies and support, you can regain your footing and rediscover the joys of parenting.

The birth of a baby can trigger powerful emotions. You might feel excitement and joy as well as fear, anxiety, grief, and despair. Most new parents experience waves of emotions in the postpartum period, which commonly include mood swings, crying spells, and fear. But some new parents experience more severe and long-lasting emotional difficulties that impact their overall well-being and ability to form a secure attachment to their baby.

If you’ve experienced a traumatic event or set of experiences, it is natural to feel afraid, angry, detached, guilty, or other difficult emotions. This is all part of the body’s natural “fight or flight” response that is designed to help protect you. However, when these difficult emotions linger and start impacting your life for the worse, your symptoms might meet criteria for PTSD.

Experiences of race-based discrimination and trauma can have serious psychological impacts. In some individuals, experiences of racism can lead to feelings of depression, anger, intrusive anxious thoughts, distrust of others, and low-self-esteem. Racial trauma can be experienced as a result of direct experiences with racism, vicariously through others’ stories, intergenerationally through families, or through facing systemic oppression against the wider community.

At times, navigating personal relationships can be difficult. Therapy can help you build skills to maintain deeper connections with your loved ones, strengthen communication, address lingering resentments or negative feelings, and better understand why dysfunctional patterns emerge between yourself and those you care most about.

The demands of the educational environment are vast. Whether in elementary school, high school, or post-secondary school, a student must navigate academic demands, their social environment, behavioural expectations, and balance the impacts of these stressors on mental health and well-being. With all of these demands, it is no wonder why so many students struggle. Help is available through assessment, consultation, and therapy services to identify the key issues underlying school-related challenges, create an individualized plan for support, and build key skills to overcome challenges. Assessments and therapy are available for learning disabilities, ADHD, giftedness, behavioural difficulties, social problems, Autism, mental health issues, and more.

We all feel self-conscious, nervous, or worried about interacting with others sometimes. For some individuals, fears about being criticised, embarrassed, judged, or left out can be so overpowering that they stop a person from enjoying their social life. They may face daily stress and worry when interacting with others or avoid social situations altogether. Whether it’s missing out on a social gathering or having a hard time ordering food at a restaurant, social anxiety can impact a person’s life in many ways. Therapy can help by working with the individual to targeting key thoughts, emotions, and behaviours that are holding them back and help them take charge of their social life again.

Tics are involuntary, repetitive movements or vocalizations. Some people experience these involuntary movements as a nose twitch, shoulder shrugs, sniffing, or throat clearing.

Do you feel like work is taking all of your energy and robbing your of your joy? Do you count the hours until the weekend just to find yourself already worrying about Monday when the weekend finally arrives? Therapy can help you identify the cause of your workplace stress, address unhelpful patterns, and help you build skills to cope with the demands of your work.