HOLISTIC COUNSELLING FOR THE HIGHLY SENSITIVE WOMEN

I provide a warm, safe environment for you to discover your potential

I will assess your needs and assist you to

• Explore and identify your concerns, hopes and dreams
• Embark on a sacred and healing relationship
• Create a safe space for the exploration
• View yourself holistically - physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and socially
• Respect your own wisdom and strengths as crucial to healing and growth
• Listen to yourself quietly, non-judgementally, with unconditional positive regard
• Clarify your true values
• Discover your bona fide self worth and self respect
• Create a vision of health and human potential
• Celebrate the transformation

I work from a variety of theoretical perspectives

• Integral transpersonal psychology

  Studies the full range of human experience and development. It seeks a balanced growth and maturation of the six domains of a person's life: physical, emotional, intellectual, social, spiritual and creative expression. It is the process of developing through ones full humanity to reach the divine at the core of their being

• Person-centred

  A non-directive form of therapy that operates from a fundamental belief that clients are their own best authorities. Clients naturally tend to move toward growth and development and have the capacity to find their own answers when three qualities are present in the therapeutic relationship

  • when the counselor uses empathic understanding - understands the client's thoughts, feelings and meanings from the clients own perspective
  • when the counselor is non judgmental and relates with unconditional positive regard
  • when the counsellor is "transparent", genuine, authentic, present

  Clients give up all notions of how they should be and develop those parts of themselves that express their real deep feelings and wishes. They learn to accept their real selves.

• Narrative Therapy

  Narrative therapy is about how people "story" their lives - herstory as well as history. In Western culture there is a dominant story about what it means to be a success - financial, personal, career along with personal attributes such as strong, bright, and outgoing. Trying to live up to these stereotypes keeps the client stressed and unhappy with themselves. A narrative counsellor helps the client to deconstruct the dominant story and tease out the alternative or preferred story where the client experienced success and fulfillment being their true and authentic self. This is called restorying their life.

• Solution-focused

  In solution focused therapy, the client is encouraged to concentrate on finding solutions to the problem rather than concentrating on the problem itself. The problem is the problem. The person is not the problem. By concentrating on solution building rather that problem solving the client is encouraged to explore current resources and future hopes rather than present problems and past causes. Exceptions to the problem are discovered and contain the seeds to the clients own solutions. The counsellor and the client co-construct solutions and together they develop a picture of the future where they have found the resources to achieve it.

• Feminist theory

  Studies women's lives with the roles, rules and stereotypes of the culture they were born into. It aims to understand the nature of inequality and focuses on gender politics, power relations, and sexuality. It analyzes gender inequality and the promotion of women's rites, interests, and issues. Themes explored include discrimination, stereotyping, objectification, oppression, et al. With the growing awareness of the woman's role in the culture, she can begin to find ways of living a more empowered and authentic life.

• Energy psychotherapy

  Energy psychologists believe that all organisms have an infinite field of consciousness surrounding and vibrating through them. This is called the morphogenic field or morphic resonance. In Qi Gong and Homeopathy, as well as other disciplines this is called the Vital or Life Force. In addition, every one of our cells is like an infinitesimal battery, each possessing a positive (outside the membrane) and a negative (inside the nucleus) polarity. Traumatic memories, negative beliefs, emotions and behaviours are often experienced as energy disruptions or blocks in the human energy field. Energy psychotherapy works to balance the subtle energy systems of the body, such as the electrical activity of the nervous system, acupuncture points (acupoints) along the meridians, the chakra system, and morphogenic fields. These systems are balanced by incorporating muscle testing with a unique version of acupuncture. The client concentrates on the particular symptom or issue and at the same time stimulates the acupoints through tapping or rubbing. Relief is obtained relatively quickly.

I utilize the following techniques:

• EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)

  Human beings have an inborn information processing system that processes multiple components of an experience and stores the information in an easily accessible form starting with perception, moving through attention and labeling and finally meaning. Related sensations, images, emotions, and thoughts are stored in and retrieved from memory networks allowing learning to take place. This is called adaptive processing.

  Different levels of processing contribute to the ability to access or retrieve that memory. When traumas (big or small) happen or unmet needs occur at crucial times during a person's development, information processing may be incomplete. Disturbing beliefs, thoughts, feelings, flashbacks and/or memory blocks may be the result.

  EMDR helps to desensitize the emotional disturbance associated with the traumatic memory. Reprocessing helps to integrate the elements of the difficult experiences that are stored in memory as unprocessed or incomplete information. A combination of focused attention and bilateral stimulation (alternating right/left visual, tactile, or audio stimulation) are used with other procedural steps to enhance the reprocessing. Clients may focus on a negative event or a specific positive event be it past, current, anticipated or even imaginable. This reduces feelings of negativity and builds feelings of competence, self worth and well being.

• EFT (Emotional Freedom Therapy)

  Emotional Freedom Therapists work with the Electrical Circulatory System or Chi Energy System known as the Universal Vital Force. Negative emotions such as anger, fear, anxiety and depression are associated with the body's energy meridians. These emotions cause an imbalance to the flow of Chi resulting in tension and stress. EFT is considered acupressure for the emotions. An EFT treatment consists of tapping specific acupoints on the body's meridians. The technique works quickly to help the client reduce emotional distress and return to a more resourceful state to deal with the issue at hand. When the Chi is balanced the client experiences relief, a feeling of calm, and freedom from the intensity of the negative emotion. Once the negative emotions have been transformed into more life enhancing emotions true feelings are more likely to be experienced including deeper experiences or confidence, self esteem, peace, love and joy.

  Note: EMDR and EFT are often integrated to enhance therapy.

• Imaginal Nurturing

  Imaginal Nurturing was developed by April Steele, Psychotherapist situated in Nanaimo. The goal of the process is to help the client form a new relationship with the self and integrate the infant and child with the adult ego states. It makes use of bilateral stimulation and guided imagery to help the client work directly on issues of attachment, the needs for nurturing, intimacy and autonomy. Complements the EMDR Standard Protocol

• Relaxation and Imagery

  The body/mind can't tell the difference between a real experience and an imagined experience. Imagine a fearful scene and your body will respond with the fight/flight/or freeze response; increased heart rate, anxiety, muscle tension. Imagine a peaceful scene and it will respond with the relaxation response; decreased heart rate, breathing rate, muscle tension, stress hormone levels, anxiety and increased calmness. There are countless techniques and methods for bringing forth the relaxation response and the corresponding benefits. These are often incorporated within the therapy session to manage such issues as anxiety, stress, depression, and emotional reactivity. They are also used to find solutions, focus your thoughts on what you want, create a future template, increase concentration and calmness, and deepen the sense of the sacred.

• Breathing and Relaxation

  The first thing we learn how to do is breathe. Breathing is an involuntary and automatic function. It is also voluntary; therefore, it can be manipulated. Most of us have developed and conditioned inefficient and improper breathing techniques. Breathing is very dependent on relaxation. It is almost impossible to be tense and have slow, relaxed, deep breaths. Therefore, control your breathing and you control tension. Breathing techniques are often incorporated into the sessions to control anxiety, panic attacks, and correct faulty breathing that causes stress and tension. It is a very large part of Qi Gong.

I view you as a whole person engaged in the process of development reaching toward full humanity!

Together We Will Uncover Your True Self.
I will help you to Learn To Be All You Can Be

Let's Talk

Book a Complementary ½ hour Consultation

Confidential Phone: (604)805-2344
Email: lynne@cwcinc.ca