What can counselling help you with?
Anxiety
Anxiety can have two causes, either a person is born with an anxiety problem, which means the chemicals in their brain are imbalanced and it will be hard to treat this without medication. For other people their anxiety is caused based on a traumatic experience. For people who have an anxiety problem based on a trauma they can process their experiences to the point of resolve. Being a victim of sexual abuse often creates anxiety for the person who is abused. Anxiety is not something that people need to suffer in silence with. There is help.
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Past Abuse
People who have been abused think and act different because they view the world from a different lens. Victims of abuse often have the need to rationalize why the abuse occurred and therefore they blame themselves and see the world from this perspective. This creates irrational thoughts which are self defeating and problematic. In therapy, we need to go back and find where did the transition from rational thought to irrational thought take place, and how has this impacted the persons life. When a person is influenced by the past they are not dealing with reality and they do not have an accurate perception of reality.
Every human being deserves to be happy and healthy, and for people who have been abuse this is often not possible until they are given the opportunity to process their feelings and have their thought process challenged. This takes time and dedication, but people can move beyond abuse and live life with a balanced mind.
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Depression
Depression can be a chemical imbalance in the brain, but it can also be related to a persons experiences and their core beliefs about them self. Often people who are more passive struggle with depression because they do not state what they want and need; therefore, they are repeatedly taken advantage of. For example, passive people tend to let others make choices for them, which will create guilt, anger, frustration, and a lack of respect, all which contribute to depression.
People who are depressed often have trouble being optimistic and see their life as a never-ending cycle of doom and gloom. Life does not need to be this difficult and people can change their thinking so they can feel at ease and enjoy the simple things in life.
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Self Esteem
Self-esteem affects majority of people, but people can learn to love the life they have and appreciate their body and achievements. People do things in life to prove to themselves that the image they have of themselves is true. If a person feels like they are worthless, they often make choices which create additional problems such as misusing drugs or alcohol, cheating on their partner, or spouse and having repeated problems with the criminal justice system. Life can be enjoyable and people can be confident.
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Incest
When a family member has molested a child, in order to survive, the child starts to think irrationally. A common example of irrational thought is when a child very much believes being sexually abused is their fault. The child often believes their own judgment and body has betrayed them. If this child never gets help, they will carry this belief with them into adulthood and their future relationships will be impacted.
There is alack of public knowledge about female sex offenders, which allows them to go unnoticed. A female’s affection towards children is seen as maternal not sexual, which is part of the reason these offences are not detected. When looking at female sex offender’s aunties and babysitters are common due to their access to children. Both males and females can be victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse and in order to stop this cycle people need to get help.
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Cycles
People live their life in a manner in which they were taught, this is why when a child has witnessed violence in their family they often repeat this cycle. For Aboriginal people due to the impacts of colonization, the Indian Act, and residential schools this cycle is often deep rooted and help is needed to break it. No one asks to be born into an unhealthy family but everyone has the choice to seek help and change unhealthy patterns. Human beings are built to process emotions; this is our natural healing tool so many people do not access. If you have been impacted by the cycle of violence, be different and make a change. We can all make the world a better place.
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We believe wellness comes from balancing the mind, body, emotions, & spirit.
Mind
In the realm of the mind, this model addresses what people think and why they view things the way they do. This model believes experiences strongly shape how the mind perceives things. In this program we help people make a distinction between their psychological and emotional self, enabling them to differentiate between what they think and how they feel. We help people to gain an understanding of why they feel and interpret things the way they do, and how their interpretation is expressed through their actions and behaviors.
Emotions
In treating the emotional self, we help the individual to understand their feelings, many of which tend to be strongly related/connected to their past. In this model we believe people’s feelings are a direct experience of their self and part of who a person is. If a person denies their feelings, this means they are denying who they are as a person.
Spirit
In the area of one's spiritual self, each person is encouraged to examine and evaluate their spirituality; to fully understand what they believe in terms of morals, ethics, values, and beliefs. The spiritual self has a great influence on the other 3 aspects of the person, which we believe means the person needs to ensure their actions match their core values and beliefs. These four human aspects help define each person and in order to be healthy they need to be in balance.
Body
If a person’s physical health is diminished this can affect their mind, emotions and spiritual life. We believe we need to understand the person’s physical condition and determine its origin which usually means making a referral to a physical specialist.