Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in Gulf Islands, BC.

Prolonged stress and anxiety can result in impairment to our mental and physical health. We may experience high blood pressure, significant weight loss or gain, inability to concentrate or sleep, panic attacks, agitation and irritability. Overtime, these ailments can not only decrease our life satisfaction, but reduced our overall health. Don’t ignore the symptoms. Get help. Counselling can help you learn ways to cope, identify the underlying causes of your stress and explore ways to reduce stress and anxiety in your life.

Olivia excels in helping clients navigate anxiety and stress, whether brought on by life’s natural demands, unexpected changes, or anticipated transitions. She understands how these challenges can impact emotional and physical well-being and offers a safe space for clients to process their experiences. Through counseling, Olivia provides practical coping mechanisms and strategies to help clients manage their stress and reduce anxiety effectively. Her approach emphasizes understanding the root causes of anxiety while equipping clients with tools to build resilience. Olivia’s compassionate guidance empowers clients to face life’s uncertainties with confidence and balance.

Therapy with me provides a calm, supportive space to help you understand and manage anxiety and stress. Together, we'll explore what's fueling your worry, calm your nervous system, and build practical strategies to regain a sense of control and ease. Whether anxiety shows up as racing thoughts, tension, or overwhelm, you don't have to navigate it alone. Our work will help you feel more grounded, resilient and able to face life's challenges with greater clarity and confidence.

If you're up against anxiety, I offer an empowering and collaborative approach. There is an opportunity to explore your experience and to begin to see yourself as separate from anxiety. Through conversations, you may begin to identify alternative stories that challenge anxious thoughts and beliefs. We'd attend to your capacity and establish coping strategies to foster a sense of possibility. Together the we would co-create a new narrative that emphasizes the your resiliency, self-compassion and a greater sense of calm.

Our focus is to support individuals who are struggling with anxiety and stress to a more relaxed and manageable way of being. Not only is stress and anxiety hard on our health and energy, but it also can have a significant impact on our world around us. We will work in a collaborative manor to break apart the building blocks that have contributed to the imbalance of anxiety and stress in your life, and empower you with the tools and techniques to remain in balance.

Chronic stress and anxiety when untreated can make just 'regular human function' feel like an unsurmountable task. Anxiety tends to be a downstream symptom of other psychological dynamics and experiences, so understanding how we got here can help us process their impact and develop tools to increase resiliency, improve insight, and manage feelings and emotions.

Stress can prompt the cracks in our normal ways of coping to come into sharp focus. Similarly, anxiety can be all consuming, causing us to replay the tapes of our past over and over again. We may even be spending hours reviewing the tapes of events that only ever took place in our heads! The result is exhaustion and avoidance of anything that feels overwhelming. As a result, life can become small as we limit ourselves to our comfort zone. Unfortunately, this is when depression can creep in for a double-whammy. Yuck! Luckily, stress/anxiety is highly treatable. I work with clients to develop the insights and acquire the tools to overcome stress and anxiety. There is hope. Promise!

Do you worry about not being enough, not doing enough, trying to be perfect? Are you constantly wondering what others are thinking and saying. Maybe you worry about your anxiety, about anxiety symptoms like racing heart, chronic pain or dizziness and fatigue. If you have panic attacks, this can cause you to worry about having a panic attack as well as the actual trigger of the attack. Learn to find your triggers. Cognitive behavioural therapy has tools to help you overcome the fear. Wouldn't it be wonderful to believe you are enough and that perfection is some ideal that you never have to achieve because you are okay. Just the way you are. A work in progress and that's okay. Acceptance.

Everyone has anxiety and stress in their life! It is important to evaluate where the majority of it comes from and discover ways to cope at times that are difficult and challenging. It is also critical to recognize when anxiety and stress is past a point that is manageable. Some treatment methods I would use would be grounding techniques, meditation, and Socratic questioning. These techniques would be used to figure out the root cause of the anxiety and stress and also to help determine the cause. Other strategies that may be applied include journalling, incorporating exercise, and other activities to help manage both the anxiety and stress.

Anxiety and stress are among the most common concerns that people seek counselling for. Sometimes people find themselves in anxiety-provoking circumstances for which immediate, short-term counselling interventions are appropriate and effective (for example, preparing for a performance or exam). Others may find that their anxiety is chronic and invades almost every aspect of their life. In this case, I offer a counselling perspective that considers deeper issues that might be feeding the anxiety. Whether you experience anxiety as situational or chronic, it is possible to learn how to tame your anxiety and enjoy greater peace, confidence, and a sense of calm in your life.