Anxiety & Depression

“When all you know is fight or flight, red flags and butterflies all feel the same.”

– Cindy Cherie

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Is your life consumed by a non-stop hamster wheel of family, work, parenting, chores, finances, school, bills, and social engagements? Do you know about work/life balance but have no idea how to achieve it? Perhaps you’ve already reached the point of burnout and feel like you’re drowning in quicksand.

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Short term stress can often be useful, but intense and chronic stress will affect your performance, relationships, life satisfaction, mental health, and physical health. Our bodies are not built to manage and maintain a nervous system that is in a state of constant hyper-arousal (mobilization) or hypo-arousal (collapse).

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Counselling for mood disorders such as anxiety and depression aims to help you first, learn how to recognize when your system is in a state of mobilization or collapse. Second, explore and create a set of strategies that support you in returning to a regulated state, thereby reducing unwanted symptoms. And third, attune to yourself so you can recognize your needs and make intentional choices about how to best get them met.

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Symptoms of mood disorders include:

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• Difficulty with memory, focusing, or thinking clearly

• Difficulties with sleep; either too much or too little

• Obsessive or intrusive thoughts

• Loss of interest in activities that were once enjoyable

• Isolating yourself from friends and family

• Being unable to slow down or get nourishing rest

• Feeling overwhelmed and like life is out of control

• Rumination about a particular life event or experience
  that has occurred in the past

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Therapy can help to uncover the roots of your worries and fears, teach you useful relaxation and engagement strategies, and develop more helpful coping and problem-solving skills.

 

We often start with practical strategies to help you make micro-changes that can enhance your well-being in a big way and stabilize your sense of wellbeing. The practical strategies are combined with deeper work that aims to provide corrective experiences to support core healing and change.

 

Our counsellors want to help you break free of the patterns weighing you down and holding you back from living an authentic and fulfilling life.