Some Reasons for Seeking Therapy

---

Symptoms and causes of depression can vary widely from person to person. Although many people with depression feel sadness, it feels much more  severe than emotions that come and go in response to life events. Depression may feel like a loss of interest and pleasure, inability to concentrate or focus, feeling hopeless or worthless, low energy, appetite changes, and may experience thoughts of self-harm or suicide. 

Many people experience anxiety at some point in their lives. Anxiety can be a normal response to live events that are stressful, however, when symptoms of anxiety begin to interfere with your life, it can become problematic. Anxiety can be on a scale from mild, to full panic. Even experiencing mild anxiety can affect how we operate our lives. Anxiety looks like excessive worrying, feeling agitated, irritability, restlessness, loss of focus or difficulty concentrating, repetitive negative thoughts that heighten your arousal, trouble sleeping, tense muscles, panic attacks, avoidance of situations or places, and irrational fears. 

As families grow and change, some family members can experience symptoms associated with life stages and transitions of children, parenting concerns, lack of communication, detachment, and issues with boundaries, leading to dysfunctional family dynamics. Anxiety, depression, resentment and anger, as well as hopelessness are a few emotions that can linger when family conflict is heightened and unresolved. Family counselling can help each member overcome these symptoms and guide the family through strengthening relationships and problem solving together. 

Relationship counseling can be beneficial to couples who are looking to strengthen their emotional connection, in all stages of their relationship. Therapy sessions are held with one-on-one and couples sessions and is a supportive place to discuss issues and solutions to better strengthen your relationship. Some couples counselling issues and modalities include Effective co-parenting, Emotion focused couples counselling, Parenting Skills, Gottman for strenghtening relationships, conscious uncoupling, separation & divorce, and redefining relationships. 

There are many forms of loss and the emotional responses to loss vary from person to person. When we are experiencing grief, it is the internal response to loss. In order to heal our grief we must mourn it. Mourning is the external response (the outward expression) of those thoughts, feelings, and reactions. Together we learn to understand and identify loss, explore the emotional, physical, and social/relational reactions to loss, and create new meanings. We aim to work through grief and mourning to promote healing and hope among grieving children, adolescents, and adults. 

Sometimes there are questions we explore, contemplate life decisions, as well as search for our meaning and purpose. This can happen at any stage of life and many factors influence how you may go about this exploration. Begining a journey for meaning through therapy allows you to enter into a heightened awareness of yourself, open yourself up to learning what truly matters to you, and experiencing the here-and-now, the barriers and the opportunities for change.