Whether you are new to counselling or have done counselling for many years, there are always reflections and information gained by talking to someone trained in multiple mental health concerns, wellness solutions and psychological reasons for behavior.
Sagacious Counselling strives to provide a safe, judgement-free environment for consultation, advocacy, counselling and wellness support.
You can facilitate goal progress by regular attendance, practicing what you learn, doing self-care, following appointments and communicating openly and honestly. The length, frequency of sessions, and treatment duration vary and can be discussed at the beginning and throughout therapy.
To achieve the most significant progress in therapy, your therapist will work with your goals to provide the best and most appropriate treatment.
EMDR is a structured therapy that allows clients to reduce traumatic memories by using bilateral stimulation such as eye movements or tapping. The client focuses on the traumatic memory while doing the bilateral stimulation to move the memory from the highly emotional side of the right brain to the more logical left brain. It involves much less talking than traditional therapy methods. EMDR allows clients to process traumatic events, thus allowing more freedom from future triggers to activate clients’ trauma responses. EMDR is successful at processing with clients of childhood trauma, sexual abuse, PTSD from single events like car crashes, accidents, or repeated exposures such as that of a Police officer, EMS, or anyone in a frontline job.
CBT is an effective method for problem-solving patterns of thinking, feeling and behaviours. CBT is a more structured therapy with homework and concrete skills that focus on decoding all of the emotional, physical and psychological problems that keep us stuck so we can move forward. The premise is that our thoughts dictate our behaviour, so if we can change our thought patterns, we can change our behaviour. CBT is effective in helping people face fears, change unwanted behaviour, understand underlying thoughts and feelings and learning where the problem may have started. Then the person is more capable of knowing their triggers. CBT is successful with depression, fears, cognitive distortions, Bipolar disorder, Anxiety, and addiction
Emotion-focused therapy allows the space to have emotions, understanding emotions and naming them. Many people suppress emotions for various reasons and then explode in crying, anger, anxiety attacks or depression. By allowing the emotions to be heard, felt, and processed, people, can control their emotions. However, we have to name it to tame it. EFT is done in a safe, non-judgmental space where emotions are not only allowed but welcome and celebrated in their way. Emotion-Focused Therapy is often incorporated among the other therapies but successfully understands emotion regulation concerns, grief/loss, shame and guilt patterns, Anxiety and depression.
Psychodynamics, also known as psychodynamic psychology, in its broadest sense, is an approach to psychology that emphasizes systematic study of the psychological forces underlying human behavior, feelings, and emotions and how they might relate to early experience.
Play therapy is to children what counseling is to adults. Play therapy utilizes play, children’s natural medium of expression, to help them express their feelings more easily through toys instead of words.
We spend a lot of our day giving to others in various ways, at home, work, school, or in the family. We give our physical, emotional and psychological energy to others, and though we do it out of love, obligation, or a plethora of other reasons, it’s draining on us.
There is a misconception about self-care. Self-care is self-preservation, not selfishness. We have to let go of the stigma that taking care of ourselves is not a priority. People seem to relate self-care to a bubble bath and deep breathing.
We like to think about self-care as something healthy you do that is just for you that makes you feel good. For some, it is a bubble bath and deep breathing; for others, it is working out, doing a calendar, vacuuming, monthly budgets, or tinkering on a car. For others, self-care is gardening, dancing, puzzles, building things, reading, taking a long drive, listening to loud music, or even catching up with friends. We all have different hobbies and things that make us feel good.
Anxiety is a subjective experience as each person is triggered by different things. Each person feels Anxiety in different places in their body, and Anxiety has different effects on a person’s life, from mildly annoying to completely debilitating. I like to explore how Anxiety presents itself in each person’s life emotionally, physically and psychologically before addressing Anxiety. There are common symptoms like feeling heart rate or breathing changes, change in attention or focus patterns, inability to sit still, sleep changes, eating changes, mind racing or changes in thought patterns. Anxiety is triggered by events, people, places or things. By looking at the specific anxiety pattern in each person, we can understand what triggers and what soothes Anxiety for the person.
Depression is more than the sadness; it is more than a bad day or two; depression can be debilitating for some. As with Anxiety, I like to explore how depression affects each unique person. Where it shows up, how long it stays and what helps make it feel better. Depression is an overwhelming feeling of despair that doesn’t just go away. There is no magic cure. Depression becomes a lot about doing things not because we want to but because it is in our plan, which sets up feelings of success that can instill hope. For some, depression means not wanting to leave the house, shower, see friends, or even wake up. For others, it is wanting to die by suicide. By talking about depression openly, we can start addressing the feelings hanging onto depression and establishing goals or structures to help each person function in their own lives.
Grief and loss are not just death. It can happen in any life change such as divorce, moving, losing friendships, changing jobs, kids leaving home, medical illness or anything where you lose a hope you once had. There are no words that adequately move people through the grief and loss process. Explaining the healthy normal grieving cycle helps normalize that grief takes time, and it is not linear. Allowing people the open, non-judgmental, compassionate and empathetic space to tell their grieving story is the best gift to give comfort. Allowing all the emotions such as denial, anger, guilt, depression, helplessness to be processed is critical to healing and finding vitality and purpose again.
One of the most common reasons people seek individual therapy is because of relationship conflict with a spouse, family member, friend or coworkers. We value connections in our life, so it makes sense that many mental health stressors are wrapped in our relationships with others. Our relationships profoundly impact our quality of life. We can’t control the way others see us or their subjective experience, but we can control how we show up in the relationship. We can’t help others on their part, but we can work on setting boundaries where needed, learning to communicate better, regulating our emotions, and taking accountability. We can learn about our attachment styles, family dynamics and love languages. Learning about our definition of healthy relationships helps us see if we are in healthy relationships with others or need to make modifications.
Two people can have similar traumatic events occur, and one person seems to move on fine while the other struggles with significant physical, emotional or psychological impairments. We often call that resiliency, but what that term resiliency lacks is understanding why one person’s response to the same event is different. Put simply, we are all unique and see the world from our lens. Our connections with others add to our resiliency. Just as people feel love in different ways (love languages), we feel trauma in different ways. Survivors carry physical, emotional and psychological abuse and neglect. Understanding how these things impact our current life story is a way to begin healing.
We view addiction primarily as a choice in today’s society, but no one wakes up and chooses to be addicted. Addiction and adverse childhood experiences or trauma are often associated. Negative life experiences, challenges or events lead to seeking an escape from pain, which is found most quickly in addictive substances or patterns. The escape to substances, sex, porn, video games, work, and obsessive behaviours causes temporary relief from the psychological pain, thus creating addiction. The negative consequences of the addictive behaviour will dictate the amount of shame and guilt that is felt, thus leading to more escaping from the pain. When we can learn what is underlying the addictive behaviour, we can better cope with the physical process of seeking the escape. It is somewhat circular, but you cannot simply wish addiction to go away; it needs to be processed like trauma.
We strive to make both partners feel safe, heard and welcomed into the session. We don’t take sides or align with one person more than the other. Our goal is to find strategies that help both people work towards making their relationship healthier and stronger. When couples come to counselling, there is already a mountain of pain and hurt between them, and we want to help get you connecting again. We often help with communication and fighting fair techniques that help couples hear each other without judgement, put ego and pride aside to show up for each other again or for the first time. Very often, couples end up in counselling after a child is brought into the equation. While each person learns and adapts, the relationship gets put on the back burner. Our goal is to help you find your way back together.
Sometimes a healthy relationship together is impossible, and couples decide to separate. At that point, our goal is still to look at how we can do this in the least intrusive way so that both people leave the relationship feeling supported. If children are involved, we start looking at how to co-parent effectively. We work with all couples.
In couples counselling, we work with infidelity, life changes (birth, death, empty nest), fertility concerns, attachment concerns, work/balance, reconnection concerns, intimacy issues, parenting conflicts, communication issues, fighting fair, healthy relationship definitions, gender roles, and most other relationship concerns.
