Therapies Practiced

  • The healing of trauma is a natural process that can be accessed through an inner awareness of the body

    ~Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger, 1997

    Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) was created by psychiatrist Dr. Frank Corrigan and has recently achieved status as an evidence-based therapy. DBR’s initial application was to the treatment of attachment shock. However, as the therapy has evolved, it has proven to be effective in the treatment of a wide range of unresolved traumatic experiences.

    DBR’s aim is to access and process traumatic experience by tracking the original sequence of physiological responses that occur when the deep brain is alerted to a threat. DBR is used to engage the part of the brain responsible for initially orienting to these threatening situations. This highly effective somatic therapy facilitates the release of trapped shock and emotions such as rage, fear, grief, and shame that are held in the body. Once this stored energy clears, the body and mind do what comes naturally: they begin to repair and heal. This process could be described as “re-mapping” how the body, and therefore our mind, holds these memories.

    DBR is a transformational, rather than a counteractive trauma therapy, which means that it goes beyond merely helping to manage trauma responses and symptoms. Its goal is to liberate the brain’s intrinsic potential for healing from traumatic experience.

    For more information on the neuroscience behind DBR visit Frank Corrigan’s website: https://deepbrainreorienting.com/history-of-dbr/

    Hoping to explore DBR? Book a Session

  • Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy is an evidence based and highly effective therapy that facilitates healing from trauma and other distressing memories.

    When we experience a traumatic event, the strong feelings that arise in that moment can lead to our feeling completely overwhelmed. This state of overwhelm can interfere with our ability to completely process the experience. When this happens, the distressful moment becomes “stuck” in our brain and body.  Any recall of the event may feel as though we are reliving it over and over again because images, smells, sounds, and feelings that remind us of this moment can be “triggered” in the present. When triggered, these memories can interfere with our daily functioning; impacting how we relate to others and the way we see ourselves, others, and the world around us.

    EMDR therapy works by encouraging the brain to form new neural pathways that “unstick” the traumatic memories, allowing us to resolve them.

    Visit EMDR Canada if you would like to learn more about EMDR therapy: https://emdrcanada.ca/about-emdr/

    Interested in EMDR therapy? Book a Session

  • “We can now say with certainty that psychological flexibility [which includes mindfulness skills] is the single most commonly founded skill of importance to your mental health and emotional well-being. Whether you suffer from anxiety, depression, addiction, or any other kind of mental distress; psychological flexibility helps you deal with these issues more effectively and move your life in a meaningful direction.”

    ~ Steven C. Hayes

    Acceptance and Commitment Therapy was created by Steven Hayes, Kelley Wilson and Kirk Strosahl. The aim of this therapy is to alleviate suffering and promote flourishing through the expansion of a person’s “psychological flexibility”. Psychological flexibility has three parts or “pillars” under the ACT model: those of awareness, openness, and engagement.

    Awareness

    Awareness is about noticing our internal experience: our thoughts, emotions, urges, bodily sensations, and memories. More specifically, it is about noticing our internal experience in ways that allow us to “shift”: to gain new perspectives and connect more easily with others. Awareness is also about learning how to stay in the present moment rather than being stuck in our heads ruminating about the past or worrying about the future. Finally, awareness is about learning how to direct our attention to what matters to us rather than getting lost in things that don’t.

    Openness

    Openness builds upon our awareness skills and asks us to do the opposite of what we may want to do with our painful internal experiences.

    Openness is about not fighting with, running from, hiding from, or numbing our difficult thoughts and feelings. Instead, it is about allowing them to be exactly as they are. We now know that the harder we try to get away from or get rid of, internal pain the more it ends up controlling our lives. Openness is about learning how to hold thoughts and feelings more lightly; about recognizing that they are just thoughts and feelings, and that they don’t need to control our lives.

    Surprisingly, being present with, and being willing to have, difficult thoughts and feelings, tends to lighten the burden of them.

    Valued Engagement

    Within ACT, mindfulness skills are not practiced for their own sake, but to open us up to valued engagement.

    Valued engagement is about moving in the direction of things that matter to us. It is about embodying or expressing the qualities of being that are important to us. These values (for example: being kind or courageous), when they are freely chosen, are inherently motivating and give meaning and purpose to life. On the other hand, the goals we set and the habits we build in the service of our values are necessary to give values substance.

    In short, valued engagement is about living a meaningful life and becoming the sort of person you want to be.

    According to a massive review of therapeutic interventions, the ACT “processes of change” that make up psychological flexibility are the most effective tools for promoting mental health and emotional well being of all therapeutic interventions.

    To learn more about ACT, visit:

    Steve Hayes: https://stevenchayes.com/

    ACBS: https://contextualscience.org/

    Are you interested in developing your psych flex muscle? Book a Session

  • Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) focuses on developing skills in four major areas: mindfulness, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness, and emotion regulation. DBT is proven to be highly effective for people who are impacted by overwhelming emotions, relationship challenges, suicidality, self harm, eating disorders, and personality disorders.

    All that said, understanding and developing skills that fall within the four DBT skill areas can actually benefit anyone who wants to cope better when faced with challenging life events.

    In simple terms…

    Mindfulness is the capacity to pay attention, on purpose, in the present moment, without judgement. While mindfulness is something that we all naturally possess, it becomes more accessible to us when we practice.

    Distress Tolerance is our ability to bear and accept painful emotions, sensations, thoughts, and situations that we have no control over and can’t change. We can learn how to wisely respond to pain instead of responding in ways that make things worse for us.

    Interpersonal Effectiveness is about building healthy relationships: knowing how to “get along” with others and how to assert ourselves. The foundation of interpersonal effectiveness is skillful communication. This means asking for what we need, saying no, and setting limits with others in ways that maintain our self respect (and the respect of others, too).

    Emotion Regulation skills come in handy when we are trying to understand, communicate and regulate our inner experiences. Life has a greater sense of ease when we can name and express our feelings with others and can take “right action” to respond to our feelings. Healthy habits are important here because when we are doing them we are less likely to respond in ways that feel extreme. Consider our “hangry” or “sleep deprived” responses.

    Want to explore DBT skills? Try these:

    DBT-Linehan: https://dbt-lbc.org/index.php?page=101119

    Skillful Podcast: https://theskillfullpodcast.libsyn.com/2019

    DBT Tools: https://dbt.tools/

    Want to discuss DBT skills? Book a Session

  • Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is a well-researched and empirically-validated therapy that has proven to be effective in helping people cope with a variety of psychological issues, including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, emotion regulation, and relationship problems.

    CBT is a highly structured form of therapy that uses cognitive based strategies (the brain part) to manage thoughts and behavioural based strategies (the action part) to help improve your mood, expand your comfort zone, and build skills in a wide variety of situations that you may face in your everyday life.

    Though CBT’s strength lies in its behavioural based strategies, which help clients manage their day to day lives, it does have its limitations. CBT is not an effective therapy for treating personality disorders or complex trauma. Recent studies also call into question CBT’s cognitive strategies, specifically the idea of “challenging thoughts,” and provide evidence for the efficacy of accepting our thoughts.

    Want to explore CBT? Try the links below:

    Mind over Mood: https://www.mindovermood.com/thoughts-feelings-action/

    The Beck Institute: https://cares.beckinstitute.org/about-cbt/

    Want to discuss CBT? Book a Session

  • Mindfulness and self compassion are concepts that you may have some familiarity with, given the amount of branding and marketing attention that they currently receive. You might have also noticed that mindfulness and self compassion play a big part in the therapies that we practice at Liberation Counselling.

    So why do these have their own space on our website?

    Well, because we believe that any therapeutic work you are interested in doing requires the building and practice of mindfulness and self compassion skills.

    So, what is self compassion?

    Having compassion for oneself is no different from having compassion for others. In Latin, com refers to “how we are with” and passion “to suffering”. We can empathize with the suffering of others, but we really struggle with finding that same experience within ourselves. According to Dr. Kristen Neff, self compassion includes three important elements: mindfulness, common humanity, and kindness.

    Perhaps you can envision a time when you noticedthat a good friend, your partner, or your child, was struggling. You may have felt compassion as you saw their suffering as something that you, or any other human, would experience. You most likely responded with warmth, understanding, and kindness; feeling the desire to help or comfort your loved one in some way.

    Self compassion is the process of giving yourself the same compassion that you would show to a loved one when you are experiencing a life challenge, are feeling inadequate, or have made a mistake. The behavioural change here, is to shift from ignoring your pain, or getting caught up in judgemental self-talk and negative emotions, to using a self compassionate inner voice that reminds you that “this is really hard” and asks, “what can I do to care for and comfort myself in this moment”.

    Instead of mercilessly judging and criticizing yourself for all your inadequacies and short comings, becoming self compassionate means that you can acknowledge, accept, and understand that you are going to fail. For whom ever said that you had to be perfect in the first place?

    When you try to make changes that lead to greater health and happiness, you are doing so because you care about yourself, not because you are worthless or unacceptable. You engage with the work of growth and healing because you honour and accept your humanness. There is nothing “broken”, and you do not need to be” fixed”. You are beautifully and painfully human – just as you are.

    You’ve probably noticed that life does not always happen as you expect and that it is hard to accept that life seems to be constantly changing. You have and will encounter frustrations and losses, you will feel pain, you will make mistakes, and you will come up against your limitations and other barriers. You will fall short of your ideals and expectations. This is what it means to be human – it is the shared reality of our humanness. 

    Change requires you to become more open to the reality of being human, to work with it rather than fight against it. This is the work of becoming more compassionate – to ourselves and to others.

    Studies show that self-compassionate people are more likely to:

    • Feel happy, optimistic, and satisfied with their lives

    • Have a stable and unconditional sense of self-worth

    • Be appreciative of and satisfied with their bodies

    • Demonstrate higher levels of emotional intelligence

    • Be forgiving and compassionate toward others

    • Be strong and resilient when faced with hardship

    • Be conscientious and take personal responsibility

    • Show grit, motivation and determination to meet important goals

    • Focus on learning and personal growth

    • Cope with work challenges and feel more competent and effective at their jobs

    • Maintain healthy work-life balance

    • Draw healthy boundaries and say no

    • Feel authentic and connected and experience intimacy in relationships with others

    • Make compromise solutions in conflict situations

    • Eat nutritious food, exercise, and get medical checkups

    • Sleep well and have a strong immune system

    Studies also show that self-compassionate people are less likely to:

    • Experience intense shame and self-loathing

    • Base their self-worth on social approval, perceived attractiveness or success

    • Have negative body image or engage in disordered eating

    • Ruminate on negative thoughts and emotions or become emotionally dysregulated

    • Develop anxiety or depressive disorders or engage in suicidal ideation

    • Get overwhelmed by stress or develop PTSD

    • Abuse drugs and alcohol as a way to escape emotional pain

    • Feel lonely and isolated

    • Become hopeless about the future or cynical toward life

    • Develop fear of failure or the imposter syndrome

    • Procrastinate or give up after failing on important tasks

    • Get burned out and depleted by their work as caregivers or professionals

    • Be detached, controlling, or verbally or physically aggressive in romantic relationships

    • Get colds or experience aches and pain

    What is Mindfulness?

    Mindfulness is described by Jon Kabat Zinn as the act of paying attention, on purpose, without judgment. It is the very human ability to be aware of where you are and what you are doing, without becoming overly reactive or overwhelmed by what is happening around you. Mindfulness is not a magical ability that few possess, it is a quality that everyone possesses. You don’t need to conjure it up, you just have to learn how to access it. While it is innate, it can be cultivated through proven evidence-based techniques.

    So why are we talking about mindfulness in relation to counselling and psychotherapy?

    Mindfulness is essential to the work that we will do together because it asks us to notice what is happening within and around us before we decide how we might respond to any given situation. Mindfulness is also a pretty fantastic tool for getting grounded, for moving into a state of calm, when we feel overwhelmed by our emotions, thoughts, and body sensations. When we are in a state of mindfulness we are in the present moment, our thoughts are clear, our body relaxed, and we are able to connect with our inner experience.

    Mindfulness helps you to:

    • be more self aware

    • fell calmer and less stressed

    • feel better able to choose how to respond to your thoughts and feelings

    • cope with difficult or unhelpful thoughts

    • be kinder to yourself

    • increase your clarity and focus

    • manage your day-to-day wellbeing

    So, how do mindfulness and self-compassion relate to one another?

    • Mindfulness focuses on accepting the experience itself while self-compassion focuses more on caring for you, the experiencer

    • Mindfulness asks, “what am I experiencing right now?” while self-compassion asks, “what do I need right now?”

    • Mindfulness says, “feel your suffering with space and awareness” while self compassion says, “be kind to yourself when you suffer.”

    Mindfulness and self compassion allow you to live with less resistance toward yourself and your life. If you can fully accept that things are painful and challenging (and be kind to yourself because they are painful and challenging) then you will find greater ease in being with the pain that comes with being human.

    If you’d like to learn more about Self Compassion in psychotherapy:

    The Center for Mindful Self Compassion website: https://centerformsc.org/

    Self Compassion website: https://centerformsc.org/

    Mindful: https://www.mindful.org/the-transformative-effects-of-mindful-self-compassion/

    Dr. Dan Siegel: https://drdansiegel.com/

    Interested in exploring mindfulness? You may wish to start here:

    Mindful: https://www.mindful.org/what-is-mindfulness/ and https://www.mindful.org/everyday-mindfulness-with-jon-kabat-zinn/

    American Psychological Association: https://www.apa.org/topics/mindfulness

    Headspace: https://www.headspace.com/mindfulness/mindfulness-101

    Insight Timer App: https://insighttimer.com/en-ca

    Book a Session to talk with Jeannette and Grant about how they bring mindfulness and self compassion into their work with you.

  • Spirituality is a big and tricky subject.  It can be defined so broadly that it loses all meaning, or so narrowly that it becomes contentious. Liberation therapists aren’t truly interested in defining spirituality. We are interested in exploring if it, or how it, plays a role in your life. How it shapes your sense of self, influences the decisions you make, informs how you treat people, determines the meaning of your life and death… and so on. 

    If these are questions that you want to delve into then you have come to the right place.  Our therapists have taught religious studies in university settings, accumulated years of study in the history and philosophy of religion, explored yogic philosophies, received ayurvedic training, and practiced meditation for many years.

    Thus, we are uniquely qualified to join you in your spiritual and existential investigations, and will do so with presence, openness, and curiosity. 

    Interested in delving in? Book a Session