The most important learning is to expect and accept mistakes and deal with the disappointment they bring.
- Mr. Fred Rogers
What is Anxiety?
Everyone experiences anxiety and fear. These feelings help alert us to danger and keep ourselves safe. Anything in its extreme form is ineffective. When anxiety has become overwhelming and distressing, it’s beneficial to reach out for support. Anxiety is problematic when it impacts your social, work or academic functioning...
What are Panic Attacks?
If you have ever experienced panic, then you know it can be scary and overwhelming. Panic attacks are the body’s fight-or-flight response kicking in to help us flee or defend ourselves from danger. This response becomes problematic when it begins to go off when there is no real danger. Panic attacks peak within 10 minutes and...
What is Depression?
Feeling sadness is a natural human emotion. It’s when you feel stuck in that sadness that it becomes problematic. Chronic low mood can be accompanied with a loss of interest in things you usually enjoy such as socializing, hobbies, and exercise. If your sadness feels like a raincloud dampening your relationships...
What is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?
OCD is experienced via obsessional thoughts and/or compulsive behaviours. Thoughts are recurrent and persistent, and are perceived as feeling intrusive and unwanted. Compulsive behaviours are repetitive and done in response to obsessional thoughts or in response to...
What is Health Anxiety?
Health anxiety is the experience of thinking about a threat to your health, which consequently triggers your anxiety response. Health anxiety can occur for people who are generally physically healthy, have real but undiagnosed medical symptoms and people who have a diagnosed medical condition...
What is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?
A traumatic event is described as a situation that involves actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence. You may have directly experienced the event, witnessed the event, or the event may have occurred to someone close to you. Some examples include: abuse, a car accident, first responder work, or being attacked...
What are Compulsive or Impulsive Behaviours?
Compulsive behaviours are recurring behaviours that cause distress and/or limit one’s social, work or academic functioning. Despite attempts to stop the behaviours, one continues to engage in them and feels unable to stop. Often loved ones are critical or try to encourage one to stop these behaviours...
What is Grief?
Grief is our processing of loss. Loss comes in all forms (i.e. death, divorce, break-up, job loss, ending of a friendship, etc.) Emotions that often accompany grief are guilt, anger, sadness, and despair. There is no right or wrong way to grieve – everyone’s grief process is unique to them and their own experiences. After the loss, there is...
What is Social Anxiety Disorder
Social anxiety disorder is one of the more common anxiety disorders. It is the experience of fear or anxiety about being judged or criticized when in social situations. People with this worry often fear they will be negatively evaluated, rejected, and/or offend others. There are three main categories for these...
What are Phobias?
Fears are very common; however, when these fears are intense, irrational, and/or lead to avoidance behaviours, they can be diagnosed as a Specific Phobia. Phobias are a type of anxiety disorder. Phobias often develop from a traumatic event experienced by the person, or witnessing a family member contend with that...
What is Anger Management?
If you’ve ever had difficulty managing your anger, then you can attest to the overwhelming flood of emotion that feels totally out of your control. If this difficulty resonates with you or a loved one, then it is important to understand how the anger cycle works...
Understanding Suicide
Approximately 4,000 Canadians die by suicide each year, and they estimate four times that amount of people have attempted suicide. That doesn’t even include people who are thinking about suicide but not acting on those thoughts. That’s a lot of people having suicidal ideation!!!
How are Gastrointestinal DIfficulties Related to Mental Health?
When people are having difficulties with their gut health, they also may be contending with mental health difficulties. Many of the neurotransmitters that assist us in feeling calm and content were once thought to solely be produced in the brain. Newer research shows a significant portion of these...
How Does Self-Esteem Impact Mental Health?
The most universal difficulty people face is a lack of self-compassion. When we engage in self-critical thought patterns, it reduces our feelings of worth which leads to distress and/or difficulties in functioning. Few people come into therapy saying, “I need to work on how hard I am on myself,” but they should. Our self-critical voice is...
Why is Perfectionism Problematic?
Often people think perfectionism is a positive thing. Striving toward high standards and setting achievable goals both help self-improvement, but this is different from perfectionism. Perfectionism encompasses putting constant pressure on yourself to meet high standards that are often not concrete and identifiable...
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