Counselling for Men in Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Plus

I am now offering online counselling to men in Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Yukon, Northwest Territory, and Nunavut, as well as BC.

One of the great things about online counselling is that we don’t have to be in the same location to meet. However, different provinces and territories have different regulations around the practice of counselling and until recently I’ve stuck for the most part to my home province of British Columbia. But now, with the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors (the regulating body I’m a member of) providing clear guidelines on working with people outside of BC, I have extended my geographical reach.

Until now I’ve worked with men from all over BC, including Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, Vernon, Kamloops, Williams Lake, Haida Gwai, and beyond. I’m looking forward to welcoming more clients from Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon and more!

The men I work with often reach out when they are experiencing anxiety, depression, anger or addiction. You may be unhappy in your work or your relationships, and likely struggle with a harsh internal critic. Perhaps you’ve realized that events in the past continue to impact you and are preventing you from living the way you want to.

Perhaps you have suffered childhood trauma, including physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. Even “mild” dysfunction in families can deeply affect a child’s sense of worth into adulthood. Some of the men I work with have also had traumatizing experiences as teens and younger adults, involving family break-up, discrimination, bullying, the loss of loved ones, or their own physical and mental health. If any of this sounds like you, counselling can help.

Check out this post to find out more advantages of online counselling. My experience working online with hundreds of men over the last few years has convinced me of what a whole lot of research confirms, that this mode of counselling is extremely effective as well as being practical and convenient.

If you’d like to meet, get in touch.

Cognitive Distortions: Step One

I often have conversations with clients about distinguishing thoughts and feelings. People often use phrases like “I feel like …” or “It feels like …” a lot. They will say something like “I feel like I’m a failure,” or “I feel like it’s all my fault,” or “It feels like everyone is judging me.” It’s a common way of speaking. But usually what follows “I feel like …” or “It feels like …” (or “I feel that …” ) is actually not a feeling, but a thought. Yes, there’s often a feeling involved, tangled up with the thought (it’s often a negative, unhappy feeling, and sometimes paralyzing or overwhelming). But “I’m a failure,” or “It’s all my fault,” or “Everyone is judging me” in themselves are just thoughts.

Why does this distinction matter? Well, if you can see a thought for what it is, you can challenge it, and that can change how you feel and what you do. When thoughts are wrapped up in feeling language, they’re harder to spot. Sometimes misplaced feeling language even gives them a kind of sanctity, a special power. “That’s just how I feel,” we say, and the thought goes unquestioned and becomes more and more entrenched, as do the accompanying emotions and behaviours. We accept as truth beliefs that are often inaccurate, unrealistic, unbalanced. This can lead to all sorts of misery. In the language of CBT these thoughts are cognitive distortions and they tend to fall into a number of clearly identifiable categories (for example, catastrophizing, globalizing, mind reading, personalization, labelling). There’s a useful list of them here; and this post from a few weeks ago focuses on one of them.

If you start identifying thoughts as thoughts, you can get some perspective on them. You can ask yourself, “Is this thought true / realistic / balanced? Or am I thinking in some kind of distorted way?” As you begin to think more clearly, that will affect how you feel, and will give you more options in how you act towards yourself and with others. A lot of the time, the language of feeling hides a thought. Step One is to identify the thought; then you can challenge it.

If you want support untangling and taking charge of your thoughts and feelings, get in touch.