Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in Lions Bay, BC.

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.

Anxiety has a purpose - once you understand it you can benefit from it. The feeling of anxiety is giving you information about who you are and what you need to do to be yourself. In counselling, you can learn how to process anxiety instead of fearing it. You can learn concrete skills to work through anxiety; You can learn from the emotions and in the process find a more colourful and rich, positive experience of life.

When working with clients experiencing stress and anxiety, I often draw on both Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) approaches. CBT helps us identify and challenge the unhelpful thoughts and beliefs that fuel stress and anxiety, replacing them with more balanced and supportive ones. DBT complements this by focusing on building skills like emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and mindfulness, which can help clients manage the intense feelings and reactions often tied to stress and anxiety. By integrating these approaches, I aim to support clients in developing healthier coping strategies and fostering a greater sense of calm & control in their lives

Do you find yourself worrying about whether you locked the front door,even though you know that you checked it three times? Do you feel your palms sweating and your heart racing, with an impending sense of doom as a sense panic washes over you? These are both forms of anxiety, that sense that the world is not a safe place and worry and concern over the future. Together we will work together to improve your sense of well being, decrease your anxiety and release you from the need to devote energy and brain space to safety behaviours.

My counselling approach can help you to increase your awareness about where your symptoms of anxiety and stress are coming from. I find that once clients have more understanding of the underlying causes of their stress and anxiety, they are much better able to manage their stress/anxiety and reduce their symptoms. Let's work together to help you get unstuck and back on track!

We live in anxious and stressful times. Although anxiety is an expected and adaptive reaction to stress, it can become a problem when it limits our ability to work, socialize, and enjoy life. The good news is we know that evidenced-based techniques can significantly reduce anxiety and help cope with stress. Our reactions to stress can impact all areas of life including work, relationships, and general well-being. I want to help you manage the current stress in your life, and develop resilience to make it easier to rebound from future challenges.

I support individuals tunderstand and cope with anxiety. The underlying purpose of anxiety is to keep an individual safe and away from harm. Due to complex mechanisms that influence the nervous system, individuals develop stress responses that can be adaptive strategies in the moment but become maladaptive over time, no longer serving one’s best interest. There may be many triggers that can generate overwhelming levels of anxiety in an individual that can difficult to cope with. I use CBT to help clients rewire their nervous system, reframe their belief system, recognize negative automatic thoughts and their generation stemming from critical incidents in childhood.

I will teach you how to reduce anxiety and stress response through calming your mind and body. Using Mindfulness and Mindful Self-Compassion strategies, you will be able to take control of how you respond to difficult life situations. When the mind and body are calm, we are able to expand our thinking about our problems, and solutions to challenges become more readily available.

Anxiety can feel relentless — tight chest, racing mind, constant what-ifs. I support people as they attempt to break free from those cycles. In our work, you’ll learn how anxiety operates in your nervous system, why it keeps showing up, and how to respond to it differently. Using practical strategies and a steady therapeutic presence, we’ll reduce overwhelm and restore a sense of clarity and control. You don’t have to keep living in fight-or-flight.

Anxiety, panic, and stress often show up as tension or unpleasant physical sensations in the body as fear and other emotions are held back. Trauma, relationship problems, losses, and attachment issues are often the hidden source of emotional pain. To resolve anxiety and panic, I use a mind-body approach which integrates cognitive, emotional, and body sensing techniques to get curious about and resolve the true underlying issues.

I offer counseling that can help you change your thinking patterns that trigger your anxiety. This will help you change the way you react to anxiety-provoking situations. Anxiety can be expressed in many ways including social phobia, panic attacks, problems with sleep and heart palpitations . They can disrupt your normal life. With my support, many with anxiety disorders can lead normal fulfilling lives.

Every day , we are exposed to different distresses. How we perceive the external distresses could result in how we feel. When we feel anxious and stressed out, we feel scared and vulnerable , because of the activation of emotional memories of harmful and painful experiences in the absence of protection and support. In the process of therapy , while I help my clients process the past harmful experiences in to helpful ones , I assist the clients in: Enhancing self-efficacy or sense of agency , Resolving discrepancies between self-beliefs and self-standards, Increasing tolerance for—and ownership of negative affects and perhaps affective experience in general.

I approach anxiety counseling with a professional and evidence-based methodology, ensuring that you receive the utmost quality of care. Drawing from a robust background in psychology, education, and therapy, I am well-prepared to navigate the intricacies of anxiety and its impact on your life. While anxiety is a natural response to stress, I recognize that, for some, it can become overwhelming and disruptive. It may manifest in various forms, such as generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, panic disorder, or specific phobias. Together we will implement proved techniques to relieve you of the anxiety that is impacting your well-being.