COUNSELLING BLOG AT NEW TIDES COUNSELLING
The holiday season doesn't have to be a battleground of old patterns and unspoken tensions. What if you could approach family gatherings with curiosity, compassion, and a newfound sense of personal agency? This guide offers a transformative approach to understanding your family dynamics, setting gentle boundaries, and creating connections that honor both your needs and your relationships.
Every family has an invisible script — a set of unspoken roles and expectations that echo through gatherings year after year. This year, you have the power to observe, understand, and slowly rewrite that script. Not through dramatic confrontations, but through small, intentional moments of awareness and connection.
If anxiety makes it difficult to make and stick to plans, it's pretty likely that you've thought, "Should I go out if I'm feeling social anxiety, or should I just stay home?" The answer isn't so simple, but if you experience anxiety and still feel worried about FOMO (fear of missing out) as well, there is a way to make those tough decisions when anxiety makes you want to hide away at home.
Instead of setting New Year’s resolutions, here’s a little nudge to set intentions focused on the process, rather than the progress you make to lower the shame and high expectations, and turn instead towards a theme that can help carry you throughout the year.
Wondering how to deal with the grief, confusion, and interruption of life caused by the last year? Take a moment over the next 10 days to journal about COVID-19 and give compassionate, expressive space to your experience.
Even as a mental health professional, the search for a new counsellor can be an extremely daunting one! Here are some questions, resources and food for thought as you are embarking on the next phase of growth in your life!
Making the transition to online counselling can be tricky! Here are some tricks and tips to make video counselling work for you as you get into the swing of things.
So often when we feel angry or someone in our lives blows up at us, we may need to look beneath the surface to know what's really going on. Anger is most functional when our survival is threatened. There are times when anger may bubble up to the surface, be warranted and make evolutionary sense.
3-part grounding is one of my favourite grounding techniques for moments when we need to reset, or are experiencing anxiety, or a trauma tigger. This technique comes from training in somatic counselling and trauma-informed yoga.
This post will be regularly updated to include printable/saveable tools for managing activation! These tools can be used for regulating overwhelming emotions, anxiety, shame, trauma responses or triggers and more. Try them each when you are calm to see which ones you like!
Square or box or 4x4 breathing for working with anxiety, trauma, or other types of emotion regulation. This tool can also be used to practice mindfulness, before falling asleep at night, or anytime you need a moment of extra calm.
Resources for coping with anxiety, trauma, low mood and more during COVID-19 , as well as Vancouver companies offering free classes, activities and support.
What is attachment anyways? The good news is that when you work with healing your own attachment wounds, either by yourself, or with an attachment focused therapist, you CAN actually heal and impact your attachment style, and related trauma.