In the midst of everything, the fire department and paramedics took the time to make eye contact with me and offer a small smile. On the way to the hospital, the paramedic shared a brief story about her dog. It was a small moment, but it felt grounding and reassuring in the middle of everything that was happening.
A shift you did not want to see at first, but that begins to take shape over time. The possibility that this may not happen. Not as a single moment, but as something that slowly becomes more real.
Most people don’t talk about this part of infertility. Beyond the clinical language and waiting rooms lies a hidden grief that reshapes your daily life, your relationship, and your sense of self. If the process has started to take over, know that carrying it alone is not your only option.
Rather than trying to think your way out of stress, somatic and experiential approaches focus on helping you notice how stress is showing up in your system, including the more subtle cues that are often missed.
Over time, your body begins to hold patterns of activation. These physical responses are the nervous system’s way of trying to protect you when it doesn’t feel safe.
Living with bipolar is so much more than mood swings. It affects every part of your life: your energy, your sleep, your work, and your relationships. Over time, even your sense of who you are can start to feel compromised.
How do we talk to our kids when tragedy strikes close to home? Our kids borrow their sense of safety from us. Here is how to navigate the weight of recent events in BC and support your child through the aftermath.
If you’ve considered contacting a counsellor or psychotherapist and then stopped before you booked in, this post is for you. Maybe you got busy and just forgot when the urgency of the moment settled. There can be a whole host of questions or thoughts that can come up for people when they consider booking a counselling appointment.
Losing a loved one is an indelibly painful experience that can feel like being submerged in the depths of an unforgiving ocean. Profound loss can cause you to question everything you know, or thought you knew. The world can feel surreal and you may experience intense waves of anger, loss of purpose or direction, and intense isolation.
What we know about trauma is that the body remembers some of the specific details in a concrete and tangible way. We cannot predict which ones it will remember and often people feel frustrated by the things that their system ‘on alert’ responds to.