INFERTILITY
Any barrier to becoming a parent is frustrating, discouraging, and bluntly unfair. For many people, becoming a parent is an easy process requiring little to no thought or planning. For others, it can require an immense amount of money, willpower, research, and motivation. Accompanying this process is often a slew of emotions and thoughts, ranging from shame and self-doubt, to anger and jealousy, to despair and a feeling of meaninglessness. Counselling can not only help make this process bearable, but can help you live a full and meaningful life regardless of your ever-changing parental status.
PERINATAL WELL-BEING
Mental health during pregnancy, as well as during the postpartum period, is subject to many forces, including shifting hormones, changing bodies, new and unfamiliar lifestyles, and shifting expectations. These forces, on top of everyday life stressors and baseline mental health, can push and pull us in many different directions, sometimes all in the same day! It can be difficult to feel in control of anything, and you might wonder “when will this end?” The answer is: it does and it doesn’t, and through counselling you can create more stability, connection, and confidence to survive and thrive during these often turbulent times.
PARENTING
Being a parent is hard. Full stop. Then, when you seek resources to help guide you, there are a million books, podcasts, and social media accounts available, and not one that is particular to your unique child and situation. It can feel overwhelming, ineffective, and difficult to try and parent “right,” and still have time and space to live your own life. Counselling for parent support can be two fold: 1) it can provide you with specific strategies and resources to parent your own unique child; and 2) it can help support you as a human being - who is also a parent - in terms of managing stress, expectations, multiple life roles, and demands on your time, and in terms of increasing happiness and satisfaction from parenting and from life in general.
RELATIONSHIPS
Our relationships are so important, whether they are with friends, romantic partners, family, or coworkers. Yet, they are often the first to experience strain when life throws us curveballs. And, coincidentally, this is when we need them the most. Individual counselling allows you to have space to talk about your relationships - what’s going well and what isn’t - and take steps to improve their quality. Ideally, our relationships can become stronger and can increase our quality of life, even and especially during stressful times.
STRESS
Everyone experiences stress at some point in their lives, whether it’s constant low level stress or an acute stressful event. It seems almost ubiquitous that everyone is stressed these days, and yet, it doesn’t have to be this way. There are things you can do to decrease your stress as well as manage the stress that you do have. Counselling can help you get there.
MEANING MAKING
Somewhere along the way, between going to school and growing up and working and paying bills and saving money and trying to be a parent, we can lose sight of our own life. Why do we do the things we do? What is the point of everything we’re doing? If things aren’t turning out well for us, why bother? Certain situations, whether it’s infertility or parenting or a health diagnosis or navigating relationships or a global pandemic, can make us take stock of our lives and wonder what it is all for. It’s an age old question that has no specific answer, yet needs to be asked. Counselling can help explore the meaning of your life, and how to make it meaningful regardless of the stressful and busy events that keep us occupied.