This past year and a half of pandemic life has taught me a lot. Working as a clinical counsellor, and as the owner of a large counselling clinic during a pandemic has exposed me to more than I could have anticipated when I first entered this work over a decade ago. Reflecting on this time and all our team has done to try to meet the needs of our community, I wanted to take some time to share some of the ways our team of clinicians have adapted, grown and worked to support the wellness of our community. Our monthly blog posts often focus on topics of interest to our clients or prospective clients as well as areas of specific interest or specialization for our clinical team. This month, I want to share about the many ways in which our team have shown their helping hearts in really creative ways during this pandemic – to spotlight their efforts to make a difference during this lengthy time of uncertainty.
Our team has been learning that our work as clinicians in session is important and valuable, but that there is such a big and broad need for tools, resources and access to evidence-based wellness supports that we can’t fulfill one session at a time. I have found myself privileged to work alongside a team of clinicians who are excited to think outside the box and are willing to invest time, energy and their specialized wisdom in extraordinarily creative ways to help people get the help they need. You can learn about many of the pieces we’ve been working on by checking out Our Resources page.
Reaching Parents and Supporting Families
Just before COVID hit, Karen Peters had been working on a project to create online programs for families. Throughout the pandemic, Karen has grown a library of free resources for parents and families that include several downloadable print resources around topics like childhood anxiety, helping kids navigate big behaviours, and tools for couples working to strengthen their couples relationship as they prepare to grow their family through birth or adoption. Her free resource library has also grown to include a phenomenal podcast that tackles topics facing parents who are in the trenches of parenting – and it’s called Parenting in the Trenches. She has reached out to experts and interviewed some amazing professionals who offer their collective expertise on areas including parenting in a digital age, grieving family losses, navigating teen years, and so much more.
Watching Karen assess the needs she is hearing from her clinical clients, as well as from the community at large, and seeing her craft creative ways to support solving problems and bridging to resources to make meaningful change has been inspiring. She has carefully and painstakingly developed four comprehensive programs designed to support families, and all can be found on her Living Room Learning page. All of the programs are offered online for ease of access, all are grounded in evidence-based approaches, and all are designed to be engaging alternatives and/or adjuncts to therapy where therapy may involve long waitlists or difficulty accessing professional support.
- Adoption: What To Do While You Wait is a relationship course designed for couples who are growing their family through adoption. Anchored in the work of relationship experts, and created to address the specific and unique areas of concern for adopting couples, this program works to support couples in strengthening their relationship and building a solid framework for care and attachment for their growing family.
- 10 Strategies for Co-Regulation is a 45 minute online intensive workshop focused on empowering parents with tangible tools to support emotion regulation in their kids. This workshop addresses issues in supporting young kids with tantrums, high reactivity and other concerning behaviours. It is appropriate for families navigating neurodiverse needs and challenges.
- CBT for the Family: Tools for Life is a family-friendly program designed to teach the fundamental principles of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and its applications to supporting family members with high anxiety. The video components are designed to inform parents, and the workbook offers engaging activities for the family to participate in together to build tools and a plan for supporting anxiety and it’s impacts within the home. This program is designed for families with a child between the ages of 5 and 12 years old struggling with anxiety. Check out the free family self-assessment tool by clicking the link above to determine if this program would be a benefit for your family.
When you work with amazing people, their energy and ideas rub off on one another, and I love watching the results of that. Within our team, Matt Armstrong has also worked to cultivate a program for families called Emotion Coaching: The Healing Power of Connection. This 9-part online video series offers caregivers tangible and practical skills for growing emotional intelligence, the capacity to regulate and support strong attachment within their family. This program is anchored in research that indicates that children raised in environments where emotion coaching is implemented tend to have stronger social skills, physical and mental health outcomes, academic performance outcomes, and reduced rate of emotional dysregulation and concerning behaviours such as substance use, disordered eating and self-harming behaviours.
Resources for First Responders & Front Line Workers
Inspired by our team, I too wanted to broaden the scope of impact from my one-to-one sessions to those needing support on a bigger scale. As a trauma therapist who has long worked with a variety of populations who have suffered traumatic incidents, I have always felt most at home with my First Responder and Front Line Worker clients (think Police , RCMP, Fire Fighter, Paramedic, 911 Dispatcher, Corrections Officer, Social Worker, Nurse, Crisis Response, Front Line Addiction/Mental Health Community Response, etc.). Having worked with these professionals for a long time, I have long noticed shared experiences between them and key areas that seem to be missed by their training to prepare them for sustainability in the very hard jobs they do.
I developed Beating the Breaking Point, an online resilience training program specifically tailored to First Responders and Front Line Workers. This program works to fill in the common gaps I have seen in my clinical work with these groups who end up burning out or facing more significant mental health concerns like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and related Occupational Stress Injuries (OSI’s). The program is comprehensive and is an investment of time and energy into developing a plan for sustainability. Our free Beating the Breaking Point Indicators Checklist & Triage Guide can be a helpful first step to assess if the program might be a good fit.
As I began supporting this group of professionals more through this program, I continued to find a lot of difficulty in accessibility for people and as a result developed Behind the Line, a free podcast offering a behind the scenes look at life on the front lines and strategies to support wellness and sustainability.
The timing of these tools emerging just as COVID showed up on the scene was uncanny, and the response has been overwhelming given the degree of exposure, risk and demand that First Responders and Front Line Workers have faced in this pandemic. I feel grateful to be a part of offering something to those who are sacrificing so much for our communities.
A Mixture of Counselling Services
At ThriveLife Counselling & Wellness, we have always been intentional about cultivating a diverse team of clinicians, specializing in a range of clinical needs, to ensure that we can support the myriad of clients who reach out to us for support. During the pandemic we grew to offer more virtual services within our existing team, as well as growing our team to include additional accessibility to online and in-person sessions. Click here to learn more about our team, including our exclusively online affiliates who work virtually with clients around issues including perinatal mental health, parenting concerns, stress-related concerns, and much more.
Reduced Cost Counselling Services
Witnessing the degree of need that the pandemic created this past year and a half has been staggering. Our clinic’s prospective client contacts have nearly doubled month-over-month and we have worked to find ways to use every bit of office space and resources at our disposal to make mental health treatment and support accessible to our community. This has included growing our services to include reduced cost counselling both in-person and online. We have done this through this program:
- Clinical Internship: We currently have four student interns working with our clinic offering low cost sessions for $50/session (approximately a third of the cost of a full-cost practitioner). Our student interns are currently in their second year of their Master’s degree program in Counselling Psychology. They are carefully supervised to ensure the highest standards of care. Learn more about this program here, or email internship@thrive-life.ca to book a session.
Other Exciting Things
Jillian Hart, along with colleague Elsje Hannah offer reduced cost counselling services through internship partnerships at Soul Matters in Surrey, BC.
Renae Regehr is the director of the Care for Women Foundation, a non-profit organization that offers support to women in the complex and challenging first weeks of motherhood.
Rita Girn has been engaging in talks and showing up on the radio to promote perinatal mental health and wellness, particularly for the South Asian community. Follow her Instagram account (@RKMGgroup) to find out about upcoming talks.
We are also thrilled that Tammy Bartel will be pursuing further education and expanding her research related to how families grieve; and we are excited to welcome Chelsea Beyer back to the office after completing a year away working on her internship for her doctoral studies.
I am so proud to be a part of this team of gifted helpers. It is truly among the greatest privileges of my life. I feel grateful to have navigated this past year and a half alongside people who genuinely want to make a difference and support the hurting world. We are just getting started – follow up on Facebook and Instagram to continue getting updates about additional talks, program and exciting ways we are reaching out and offering support to help make the world a better place.
Thank you to our team, to the community of Fort Langley and surrounding areas who invite us to be a part of the work of doing therapy in a beautiful place, and to the Kwantlen and Katzie First Nations on whose unceded territory our offices reside. We are grateful to be able to do the work we do, to work within an amazing community, and alongside the brave clients who show up to the work.
Lindsay
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