Counselling and Therapy Services in Victoria, BC
As someone who specializes in trauma counselling, I have to admit that I bristle every time that I hear that word dropped casually in conversation: “That six hour flight delay was traumatizing!” “The way that movie ended was traumatic!” “He stopped returning my texts just out of the blue. It was traumatizing.” We are using […]
Many people ask me and others probably wonder: what exactly is counselling? Counselling is not about healing others. I don’t heal anyone. I walk alongside the men* I work with as they heal themselves. When I work with a man, I start by being in his corner so that he can learn […]
Let me paint a picture for you. This is what men’s shame looks like in my counselling practice: Shame is the curve of your shoulders as you sit, hunched in your chair across from me, almost cowering Shame is the nervous laughter when I comment on something unique or strong about you and you just […]
You have a sick feeling in your stomach, a dread. You have a voice inside that has started telling you that you’re a piece of shit for what you did. Sometimes the voice whispers at you and sometimes it screams. It is there in your quiet moments when you are just trying to relax. It […]
You’ve been that guy. The one who scares people, who lost control. Maybe you raised your hand to the person you love or maybe you frightened your kids. Maybe you punched back, first in self-defence and then kept going in rage. Now the people in your life look at you differently. They are cautious around […]
This idea of acceptance has me wrapt. It is no small thing to accept the life I have: my past with all its pains, heartaches and mistakes; my present with all the worries and fears, risks and uncertainties of a career and home and family; my rapidly growing city with its few secure jobs, its […]
I have been thinking a lot about acceptance, about how difficult it is to do and about how the word simply does not reflect how challenging it is. One of my beloved teachers reminds me that we tend to think of acceptance as a passive process when in fact acceptance is a very active process, […]
I have been thinking a lot about kindness. The Dalai Lama said, “My true religion is Kindness.” What does this mean for me? How do I put this into practice? And what place does kindness have in counselling? How is kindness different from niceness in counselling? To the last question, I see a profound difference […]