Working with teens in the counselling space can be incredibly rich and rewarding - and it also holds its own considerations. Beyond basics like whether they've come to therapy of their own accord or have been sent by a caregiver, there are other factors to…
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Some time ago I was speaking with one of my academic mentors about therapeutic approaches and he said, "You should be experimenting in therapy." I was surprised to hear this, even a little unsettled. At the time, I was working for a governmental organization and…
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Down by the Riverside motel It's ten below and falling By a ninety-nine cent store She closed her eyes and started swaying But it's so hard to dance that way When it's cold and there's no music ~ Hold On, Tom Waits It’s hard to…
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Dearest daughter, Guard your uterus in these darkening days. Gather your wits as you go into the belly of the beast. Your lifelong dream of travelling to the South has dovetailed with a moment in history. Find a rally. Don’t get shot. Memes of fallopian…
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For most of us honesty is a quality that we value, though when it comes right down to it, telling the truth isn't always easy. If it were, we would do it all the time, and we don't. On a large scale, many environmental, political,…
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There is an idiom about the canary in the coal mine, dating back to when miners brought caged canaries underground with them. If the canary died, signalling toxic levels of methane or carbon monoxide which were undetectable by smell, the miners knew to get out.…
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That’s the question that begat this article, but it mushroomed into more than that. You see, to talk about how borderline and bipolar are different, we also need to talk about how they’re similar. And to talk about how they’re similar, we need to talk…
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Not infrequently, I will receive a call from someone who is looking for help with addiction. In these calls I’m thinking about, it’s not the person suffering the addiction who calls - it’s a loved one. They want to know a few things: What can…
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When I began my master’s degree in counselling, the first thing that struck me was how genuinely warm and kind my classmates were. In a roomful of people that supportive, I thought to myself, “I’m home!” It’s pretty true that, by and large, counsellors are…
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"There’s no such thing as a stupid question.” Or, as one of my teachers said, “Yes there are, but those are outliers and they don’t count.” The simple truth is that we often don’t know where an encounter will take us, and that’s the good…
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When my daughter was little, I posted some affirmations up around her room. On heart-shaped post-it notes were statements like, “I am funny” and “I am kind.” In return, she made some affirmations for me. I walked into my bedroom to find the walls plastered…
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I love the quality of wonder. It evokes curiosity, exploration, and the humility to simply not have all the answers. When we wonder, we ask questions. We open our hearts and minds. We are as children. Clinically, wonder is a very useful tool. When first…
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Anger has a fast, hot, destructive quality, and those that struggle with it know all too well the remorse and shame that result when they have let it get the better of them. The trick with anger is to slow it down. One of the…
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Years ago a healer said to me, “Go home. Nurture your inner grandmother. Put on a bathrobe. Make yourself some tea.” In high school Sister Josephine started her lessons with, “Listen to your grandmother.” Since then, I have learned all sorts of things about what…
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