People come to counselling for various reasons, including increased stress, difficulty making decisions, relationship issues, symptoms of trauma.  Whatever your reason for accessing services, the counselling process is here to help facilitate self-awareness, acceptance, compassion, growth and healing.  In counselling we explore your goals and work towards living a life that fits for you.  

At Inner Alignment, I see individual clients ages 18 and up of all genders and sexual orientations.

Some areas I support with include:

  • Symptoms of depression and/or anxiety

  • Low self-esteem

  • Life transitions

  • Trauma and PTSD

  • Stress and burnout

  • Shame

Some areas we can help to increase include:

  • Trust

  • Boundary-setting

  • Self-compassion

  • Personal growth

  • Relationship issues

  • Grief and loss

  • Sexual abuse or sexual assault

  • Addictions

  • Anger

If you see yourself in this list or need help supporting someone you know who is experiencing these symptoms, please know that you are not alone and I’m here to support you.  For more information, please contact me.

Mindfulness

A key technique I use in counselling is mindfulness.  Mindfulness is present, non-judgmental awareness of our current thoughts, feelings, and environment.  Ron Siegel uses the analogy of a rain storm and bus shelter.  When we don't use mindfulness, we are getting soaked by all of our thoughts pouring on us like rain drops, believing every thought that arises.  When we use mindfulness, we get space from our thoughts, which is like standing under a bus shelter during a storm, watching the thoughts instead of soaking them all in.  We get to choose what we do next when there is space between thoughts and action.

If you're wondering about why you might try mindfulness, check out some of the benefits:

  • Mindfulness helps distance us from our automatic thoughts, which creates time to decide how we'd like to act.

  • Mindfulness helps decrease stress and anxiety as well as other psychological impacts.

  • Mindfulness helps us increase self-compassion and non-judgemental awareness of our experiences.

  • Brain scans of people who regularly practice mindfulness have shown thicker regions in the frontal cortex of the brain. This is the part of the brain that is involved in self-awareness, problem-solving, decision-making, thinking etc.

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