There is no need to struggle all alone.
Speaking to someone is the first step in empowering yourself.
Trauma/PTSD, Anxiety & Depression Couselling
Gain control over anxious, depressive thoughts and symptoms of PTSD.
Often times anxiety, depression and PTSD operate together, although most people only experience one or two of these issues at any given time.
Gain Control.
Empowered Solutions Counselling Kelowna can help you manage your anxiety symptoms and conquer your anxiety attacks.
There is no need to struggle all alone and speaking to a local Kelowna trauma counsellor is the first step in empowering yourself.
As a Kelowna counsellor each member of our team will help you identify problematic patterns in thinking that aren’t serving you, assist in build new skills and help you understand how your brain and nervous system function together to help you move through anxiety and depression. We offer a positive relationship where you feel heard, understood, and accepted which will help you almost immediately in gaining control over your anxiety and depression.
As we discover through research that trauma and anxious related challenges show up in various ways, we offer a somatic approach to working through those challenges. Your body responds to trauma on a physiological level and discovering ways to move through those responses is key to manoeuvring through trauma.
Kimberly is currently in training as a Somatic Experiencing (SE) practitioner, which is a body oriented therapeutic approach. SE aims to resolve symptoms of stress, shock, and trauma that accumulate in our bodies. When we are stuck in patterns of fight, flight, or freeze, SE helps us release, recover, and become more resilient.
Somatic Experiencing was developed by Dr. Peter Levine, Ph.D. and is based on the ethological observation that animals in the wild utilize innate mechanisms which regulate and neutralize the high levels of arousal associated with defensive survival behaviours. As Dr. Levine has pointed out, “Trauma originates as a response in the nervous system and does not originate in an event. Trauma is in the nervous system, not in the event.”
As Dr. Levine has noted, “Trauma is an internal straitjacket created when a devastating moment is frozen in time. It stifles the unfolding of being and strangles our attempts to move forward with our lives. It disconnects us from ourselves, others, nature, and spirit. When overwhelmed by threat, we are frozen in fear, as though our instinctive survival energies were ‘all dressed up with no place to go.”
Although humans possess regulatory mechanisms virtually identical to those in animals, these systems are often overridden by neo-cortical inhibition, that is our “rational mind”. This neo-cortical restraint leads to the formation of a constellation of symptoms, such as depression, irritability, decreased concentration, loss of interest, insomnia, emotionally overwhelmed, loss of a sense of the future/hopelessness, shame and worthlessness, few or no memories, nightmares/flashbacks, hypervigilance/mistrust, anxiety/panic attacks, chronic pain/headaches, substance abuse, eating disorders, feeling unreal or out of body, self-destructive behaviour and a loss sense of “who I am”.
TRAUMA/PTSD COUNSELLING
Regardless of the cause of PTSD, many therapies have been proven in treating PTSD.
Are you experiencing any of the following?
• Stressed and afraid
• Overly sensitive to situations or people
• Flashbacks
• Nightmares
• Irritability and edginess
• Difficulty dealing with anything that reminds you of the traumatic event
• Turning to alcohol or drugs to cope
• Feeling detached from others and from life
• You feel hopeless and despair
DEPRESSION COUNSELLING
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can be caused by a variety of events.
Are you experiencing any of the following?
• Feeling discouraged and helpless; thinking that things may never get better.
• Frequently sad; often crying and not sure why.
• Feeling detached from life and family; no one understands what you are going through.
• Blaming yourself for your struggles; you don’t feel good about yourself, you’ve lost your confidence.
• Feeling overwhelmed and exhausted; you can’t cope with your life.
• Hopelessness and despair; you may even think about hurting yourself.
Left untreated, depression can have a continuous, negative impact on you and your family.
Fortunately, depression is one of the most treatable of all mental health conditions.
ANXIETY COUNSELLING
Gain control over anxious, depressive thoughts and symptoms of PTSD.
Are you experiencing any of the following?
• Worrying all the time about trivial things
• Experiencing physical signs of anxiety, headaches, abdominal knots or butterflies, nausea, diarrhea, dizziness, hot and cold flashes, sweating, pounding heart and racing thoughts.
• Having trouble sleeping
• Having a sense of impending danger, panic or doom
• Having the urge to avoid things that trigger anxiety