Stress & Anxiety

I recently watched a wonderful documentary, The Barkley Marathons, about an ultra endurance trail race that takes place in the Tennessee mountains.  Only 40 runners are accepted into the race each year.  Covering the entire distance of 160 kilometres (100 miles) or more also requires climbing and descending the equivalent of Mount Everest – twice.  To…

While my soccer team is on Winter hiatus, I have been musing about how much playing a team sport reminds me of relationship building.  What makes relationships strong and what creates challenges are similar for a team, a couple, or a family.  Soccer promotes good sportsmanship as much as good foot skills.  Since taking up…

We don’t intend to sabotage ourselves.  But if we take the time to observe how we are living our life on a daily basis, we might catch glimpses of how we seem to thwart our own best interests by the habits we keep, the attitudes we hold or the behavior we extend towards others.  Based…

On February 16th 2015, at around 4:15pm, I received a call while at work from a friend who lives in my apartment building. She said “Chris, there’s a fire in our building and we’ve been evacuated. But don’t worry; the fire is on the opposite side of the building from where we both live.” At…

Sam came in highly nervous to attend his first therapy session. He was distressed and stated his doctor wanted him to have Cognitive Behavioral Therapy  (CBT) for his depression, anger, and  anxiety.  Sam feverently  added, “I don’t have a million dollars to spend on therapy and don’t want to be in here for the rest…

Liz and Dan recently received a call from the school counsellor informing them their 14 year old daughter, Becky, has been cutting herself. Liz and Dan were in disbelief and confusion. Becky has always been an outstanding child who is friendly, outgoing, does well in school, is in cheer competitively and helps out around the…

EMDR has been used and researched for 25 years, and is considered a highly effective therapy for resolving trauma. Nevertheless, it remains somewhat mysterious and misunderstood. Written explanations can become jargon filled very quickly. Visual demonstrations of the process can raise concerns as it looks strange. In an effort to shed some light on the…

Do men go through a midlife crisis? Is there research to support such a concept or is this an “urban legend?” The books “Passages” and “Seasons of a Man’s Life” were published several years ago but were based on small samples of investigation. Yet, men in their early 50s or 60s arrive in my counselling…

Cognitive therapy for depression, a widely used approach, is based on the notion that depressive symptoms—sadness, loss of enjoyment, fatigue—are actually products of fear. That is, the person has allowed anxieties and doubts to take over, and to become the only “truths.” She starts to believe the fears are the total story, whereas they really…

As the counselling session was winding up, Jack’s counsellor discussed recommendations for Jack to follow up with before their next scheduled session together. “Jack, please read this handout, it relates to a number of the points we talked about in our session.” “Also, I would like you to do some writing.” “Writing?” said Jack. “I…

People with health anxiety focus on specific sensations such as feeling dizzy, fatigue, joint pain,  digestive problems, a headache or a quick and sudden heartbeat.  Such physiological symptoms are typically not harmful if they are short lived and do not re-occur on a repeated basis. The difficulty that people with health anxiety have is that…

Kathy’s friend Laurie breaks down in deep sobs while sharing that her favorite aunt has recently passed away. Kathy looks at her friend, “speechless” and “paralyzed,” not knowing what to say or do. In this moment, Kathy wants so much to “make it better,” but fears that anything she says will be the “wrong” thing…