7 Tips on How Families Can Improve Family Time

The amount of time that families spend interacting and building relationships together is declining. As such, many children do not get the personal attention from their parents they crave and need.

Both the quality and the quantity of time spent together are equally important. It is one thing to require your kids to participate in family time, and quite another to engage in something that everyone enjoys. Read more here...

World Day Against Trafficking

When I first returned to my homeland of Canada two and a half years ago, I was hired as frontline staff in a privately-run group home and was assigned to “Amy”. I was eager to get back to one-on-one work with young women in the hope of guiding them toward empowerment and personal growth.

                              

I had no idea that I would be facing a seventeen-year-old’s trauma of being trafficked for sex within the GTA — and worse still, that she had been a victim of that lucrative industry since she was thirteen years old. Read More Here…

How to Get Through a Contentious Divorce

Going through a contentious divorce is likely to add stress and anxiety to your life. In all likelihood your marriage was already contentious before you filed for divorce. It is understandable that you might feel unfocused, exhausted, tired, angry, upset, depressed, and a whole host of other feelings that negatively impact your life in a variety of ways.

                            


You might also find yourself questioning your ability to make sound decisions for yourself and your children. How do you re-ground yourself when you feel like things are out of control? Read more here...

Pride

This June marks 50 years since the Stonewall riots, and 50 years of global Pride celebrations. Pride is all about recognizing and celebrating the contributions of LGBTQ people, communities and organizations.

                           

As a therapist and social worker, I have been privileged to work extensively with and for queer people. I realize that, because it’s been such an integral part of my experience, I often take this knowledge, learning, and mentorship for granted—so, this Pride, I’d like to take a moment to recognize and share some lessons I have learned about resilience, courage and strength from my LGBTQ clients and colleagues. Read more here...

Resistance is Not Futile! It’s Survival: Fear Me Not, For My Armour is But My Defence

As a chaplain and psychotherapist serving in a correctional setting I am challenged to provide a consistently supportive response to individual presentations involving concurrent mental health and addiction disorders, as well as complex trauma exacerbated by the effects of incarceration and its antecedents. Problem management represents the primary focus of my work as every client, without exception, is in a heightened state of disorientation or transitional crisis and has limited access to supportive resources to help themselves.

                             

Responding to Reluctance
As a responder to those who are experiencing personal problems, I find that most are motivated to be collaborative and engage in the solution-seeking process. However, some clients do exhibit a lack of incentive or assume an antagonistic posture in the initial stages of the helping dialogue, which affects not only the helping process but also the development of a therapeutic relationship. I must admit that I tend to feel more engaged with (and subconsciously committed to)clients who exhibit positive interpersonal cooperation than those who don’t. In a correctional context, it is common to encounter disgruntled individuals who attract negative rather than supportive attention. Though I am careful not to withhold support from those who display reluctance or resistance behavior, it can be a challenge to invest therapeutic time and resources in them when so many eager and contemplative candidates are impatiently waiting in the queue. Read more here....

Couples Therapy: Are You Really There For Me? By: Rita VanDooren

We enter into relationships with the assumption that because we are in love, we will intuitively nurture and respect each other and live happily ever after. However, we also bring into a relationship the family of origin dynamics that will influence how we connect with our partner. Marriage is for grownups but few of us are grown up when we marry. Growing up takes time, perhaps a lifetime journey, and getting there, if we get there at all, is hard.

                     

Our capacity for connection and safety is guided by the assumption that the same motivational system that resulted in a close emotional bond between parents and children is responsible for the bond that develops between adults in emotionally intimate relationships. This model of attachment influences how each of us reacts to our needs and how we go about getting them met. Many of us did not experience a secure connection with caregivers and needs were not always met nor was emotional distress always validated.

Read More Here.