04/03/2019

When I was in grad school, taking my final course in Trauma Counselling, Lesson One literally had nothing to do with counselling. It had nothing to do with what happens in the therapy room and the techniques that need to be done. Instead, Lesson One was about self-care. In the line of work that we do, we hear about terrible incidents in the lives of others and when we practice empathy in session, we feel the emotional pain our clients go through. As much as we try to separate ourselves from

03/27/2019

Today's post comes from a special guest, Rufus Carter from Recovering Works. Recovering Works is a resource for individuals who have a substance abuse disorder and are looking to get back on their feet. On his site, Rufus talks about his personal journey from recovery to establishing a career for himself. Fast forward to today and he is now a personal trainer. Go Rufus! Here is his take on how to turn addiction recovery into a fresh start. When you think of rehab, you may focus on recovering

03/20/2019

This week my eyes found themselves browsing through a hilarious Buzzfeed article that is a compilation of honest tweets from those who have been in therapy. Being as empathic as I am, I wanted to put myself into the shoes of these clients (and some of mine) to get a feel for what they feel in the therapy room. I can verify that some of these tweets are accurate and I have had my own clients ask me these same questions. I thought it would be fun for me to address some of these tweets to get the

03/05/2019

Hello Empathic Readers! Can you believe it? It's already March and I'm embarrassed to say that this is my first blog post of 2019! Believe me, I had many drafts/ ideas for posts lined up for release, especially in February, but every time I sat down to write or edit, I just couldn't do it. It felt like I was housing bricks for brains and any form of intellectual content just didn't sound right. This has never happened to me. What was going on? I was burning out ya'll.  I shouldn't be

12/14/2018

Why do I feel this way? It's not usual for me to be using the same phrase during any given week, but I caught myself saying this during many of my sessions: "You're allowed to feel this way" I wonder at what point in our lives we learned that it was wrong to feel. For example, this week alone I had three clients who had recently gone through a break up and they were missing their ex-partners. They thought they were doing something wrong by missing them.  "He wasn't a great boyfriend the

12/07/2018

Dear Universe... I’m sure many of you out there subscribe yourself to different e-mail lists for goodies (FashionNova subscriptions, anyone?). Sometimes these subscriptions are deliberate and sometimes they’re mindless- something you need to do in order to get that extra 10% off your shoes or something you get over with so that you can go back to browsing. I got an e-mail the other day from something (someone) who I imagine did so because I fell into the latter category. I got an e-mail from