Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in Lake Cowichan, BC.

Anxiety and stress are common challenges that many face. These two challenges can leave great impacts on our minds, bodies as well as our relationships. I like to use empathy to create a safe space for my clients to share. I also teach my clients what is happening in their bodies when they have large amounts of stress and anxiety. As well as tools they can use to cope during their everyday life.

Everyone reacts differently to stress and there can be variance depending on what the stress stimulus is! Knowing how you respond can be helpful when learning to cope with stress or anxiety. Fight, flight, freeze, and appease are types of responses that are reactive to stress and anxiety. Flight response includes avoiding situations, people, or thoughts. Those who react with fight tend to feel frustrated and irritable. This can look like bursts of anger or resistance to situations and people. Those who freeze tend to shut down, feel like they are disconnected from themselves or the world, or feel stuck in the stressful situation. Therapy can help mitigate some of these responses.

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.

Anxiety as a result of stress is one of, if not the major contributing factor to poor health in most areas of people lives. If you have ever been tense before an exam or a visit to the dentist, you have a felt anxiety. Increased heart rate, sweating, rapid breathing, dry mouth, & a sense of dread are common. Changing this involves cognitive & behavioural approaches. Cognitive change is understanding how thoughts contribute to symptoms and how to change thought patterns to reduce the intensity of your anxiety. And behavioral changes involve using techniques to reduce or stop any undesired behaviors that are a result of the anxiety you have been experiencing.

I offer an integrative blend of somatic awareness, mindfulness practices, relational attunement, and trauma-informed presencing to help my clients address anxiety and stress in their lives. Using your natural healing process as our guide, we can help the nervous system learn what a peaceful state of health and vitality is again. I am currently offering sessions online and in person.

Are you living your life constantly feeling on-edge? Are you a worrier who can't seem to turn it off? Does anxiety or stress keep you from being fully present for your family? As an anxiety and stress specialist, I know rough this can be. But there is hope. Together, we can deploy powerful techniques to get you feeling calm, relaxed, and emotionally thriving, so you can effectively deal with life challenges. Imagine: going about your day feeling excited rather than worried, confident rather than stressed, and focused rather than scattered. If you’re ready to stop worrying and start living, reach out.

The circumstances and issues that you are dealing with are unique to you, but you don't have to face them alone. Every individual has different experiences, perceptions, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, values, attitudes, cultural backgrounds and "upbringings". Counselling sessions are private and confidential, and can provide a way for you to explore your problems and really tune in to your feelings. This is an opportunity to speak freely about your circumstances and release pent up feelings, without having to worry about what others think or feel, and without receiving unwanted advise from family, friends or coworkers. At the root of the problem, there are very real, legitimate and understandable reasons for feeling the way you feel, thinking the way...(view profile to read more)

While our bodies are perfectly designed to adapt and react to stress, modern problems mean that we tend to detect life threatening dangers in very ordinary places. Conflicts at work, arguments in our relationships and uncertainties such as the post-Covid world activate old survival mechanisms. We may be stuck in the buzzing, fear states of ‘fight-flight’ or the numb and paralyzed states of ‘freeze and shut down.’ The good news is that I have a long history of safely and successfully helping individuals and couples to reduce and release stress using a variety of CBT and mindfulness techniques, as well as trauma-informed therapy. You have my commitment to compassionate and educated care.

Often people will tell others to stop worrying and lower your stress because of the serious health problems it can cause, but despite our best attempts to do this, most often people are simply unsuccessful -- the more we try to "control" these problem areas, the worse the worry cycle usually gets. Mindfulness and self-compassion can help us break this cycle by learning to accept our feelings and stop getting hooked into the stress, anxiety and worry. What if these attempts to "control" the anxiety is actually part of the problem that keeps us stuck in it and leads us away from the meaningful life we desire? These are ways we begin to unwind the challenges that come with anxiety and stress.

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.

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!