Our Counselling Approach

The essence of transformation and change starts with awareness. An awareness of how we are experiencing something leads to more long-lasting change.  This involves more aspects of ourselves than an intellectual insight. For this reason our work centers on this experiential focus.

 From this perspective, the focus is on the present moment, mindfulness, and a holistic experience (mind, body, and spirit). Our past experiences are alive in the present moment so that we can access our emotions, sensations, movement, reactions, and behaviour that are part of the memories we hold.  Neuroscience research also informs us that emotions are key to integrating new information and therefore key to any transformational experience.

Our Values

Anti-Discrimination

We welcome and respect diversity and your rights to determine who and how you love. Race, gender, abilities, sexual preference, and age are some of the differences that add to a richness of experience and talent. We acknowledge the impact of a system that discriminates against those it sees as less than, unworthy, defective and un-entitled to succeed.  In our work with you and in our lives, we endeavour to work towards a world where the legacy of oppression and caste is no longer felt and everyone is honoured for their contribution and unique being.

Relational

We see the importance of relationships to all humans. It is through a relationship with you that you can experience safety, compassion, acceptance, and healing.  We also recognize that your deepest wounds have occurred in relationships. Therefore, we believe that the relationship between us provides the opportunity to create a new experience of connection where you have the opportunity to relax into who you are meant to be.



Collaborative

This refers to the type of relationship we want to cultivate with you. We view the relationship as a partnership where we work together to figure out what you need. So we commit to inviting you, not telling you, to involving you, not disregarding you, and following your agenda, not ours.






Embodied

Connection to our bodies relates in part to the focus on the present moment.  Embodied means that your sensations, emotions, and movements are crucial to understanding your experience. Part of the practice is helping you to be centered and grounded so that you can integrate your experience more successfully. We also understand that past wounds and traumas are held in the body.

Non-pathologizing

We see your struggles in the context of managing difficult circumstances, and traumas you have encountered. Rather than something that is wrong with you, we reframe your experience as having to encounter and manage, the disturbance and chaos that has surrounded you. The focus is on your strengths, resources, and developing new skills.

    All of our therapists incorporate many approaches and studies within our overall experiential and relational perspective.  The following ways of working identify the therapists who have adopted these as their main orientation and have specific in-depth training and certification in them.

    Internal Family Systems

    Internal Family Systems is a comprehensive approach that views the human psyche from a multiplicity perspective.  What this means is that we develop our personality as parts of us rather than a unified whole.  Even though in each moment we experience ourselves as a unified self (this is me right now) we have many different aspects and reactions that are expressed over and over as a way of managing the world.  For example,  I keep reacting with anger whenever I think someone is lying to me.  This reaction contains emotions,  sensations, memories, thoughts, and meaning.  IFS conceptualizes this cluster of experience as a part of you.   So experiencing ourselves as many parts is a natural way of relating to ourselves and our identity is made up of the various parts of us.

    The IFS Model views these parts as developing within us from birth in response to having to manage conflicts externally and in our internal world as our environment is unable to support our needs.  This lack of response and support for who we are and what we need causes an emotional wound (pain) that we have to do something with.  So we develop these parts to manage the pain by minimizing, forgetting, distracting, etc.  Throughout our lives, these parts become more and more extreme through repetitive use.

    Internal Family Systems work experientially by accessing these parts in the moment where we notice how they sit and live in our mind and body. To bring an internal experiential focus to resolve the original wound they carry. As we work in this way we can develop a relationship to ourselves that releases us from the outdated ways of managing the world based on the past and brings compassion and acceptance to all parts of us.

    Your IFS Therapists

    Michelle Carchrae RCC

    counsellor
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      Mindfulness

      Main elements of mindfulness.

      In The Mindful Brain (2007), Daniel Siegal proposed that mindfulness is a form of a healthy relationship or attunement to oneself. In many ways, mindfulness is less about being a complete therapy method but more a practice that affects the ability of the therapist to be present and attuned to the client.

      Mindfulness can be taught and practiced within therapy to help process psychological material and increase self-awareness. In some ways, mindfulness is the present-day term for awareness.

      Nonconceptual. Mindfulness is awareness without absorption in our thought processes.
      Present-centered. Mindfulness is always in the present moment. Thoughts about our experience are one step removed from the present moment.
      Nonjudgemental. Awareness cannot occur freely if we would like our experience to be other than it is.
      Intentional. Mindfulness always includes an intention to direct attention somewhere. Returning attention to the present moment gives mindfulness continuity over time.
      Participant observation. Mindfulness is our detached witnessing. It is experiencing the mind and body more intimately

      All Turning Point Therapists Practice Mindfulness

      Focusing

      Focusing is a practice and approach to therapy that arose out of research done by Eugene Gendlin and Carl Rogers in the 1960s. They noticed that some therapy clients got better as a result of therapy, and others continued to struggle and feel stuck. When they looked closely, they noticed that the clients who got better all had a particular skill, a way of listening inside to what things were like for them. Gendlin studied these clients and discovered that this skill could be clearly defined and taught to those who didn’t do it naturally, improving therapy outcomes for more people. 

      The skill and practice of focusing is similar to mindfulness practice and the somatic awareness that is used in other types of therapy, but it’s also unique in some ways. Focusing helps us get in touch with the way something feels, which may include images, memories, emotions or body sensations, and may also be something more vague or unclear that exists underneath all that. Focusing also helps us to learn how to relate to that feeling with an attitude of friendly curiosity. When these two ingredients come together, there is very often a shift in the way things feel, which usually brings more clarity, lightness, relief, or a feeling of rightness

      Your Focusing Therapist

      Michelle Carchrae RCC

      counsellor
      Book online
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      EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing)

      EMDR sessions can be used within ongoing therapy to provide a safe focus on the targeted experience.  This can be useful to work through and heal traumatic experiences.  Research studies have shown that EMDR is effective in reducing the symptoms of PTSD and resolving memories so that one can experience the memory as a point in the past, rather than active in the present.

      The EMDR technique uses bilateral stimulation that appears to activate areas of the brain that would not usually be active when processing an experience or memory. This has been shown through images of the brain during an EMDR session. This suggests that new information and experiences can be accessed throughout the processing of memories or fears and often comes in naturally.

      Bilateral stimulation is often achieved by a TheraTapper which you hold in each hand and it vibrates from one hand to the other.  This provides a tactile bilateral stimulation that assists the neurophysiological system, the basis of the mind/body connection, to free itself of blockages and reconnect itself.

      Symptoms that can be helped by EMDR

      • High anxiety and lack of motivation
      • Depression
      • Memories of a traumatic experience
      • Unrealistic feelings of guilt and shame
      • Fear of being alone
      • Difficulty in trusting others
      • Relationship problems

      Your EMDR Therapists



      Relational Life Therapy

      Relational Life Therapy (RLT) was developed by Terry Real and is one of our main approaches to couples counselling.  The principles and methods are also applicable in individual therapy.  RLT helps us understand our relationship dynamics and how our reactivity is affecting our responses to the people in our lives. It gives a clear roadmap to develop healthy boundaries and self-esteem. Two essential skills in healthy relationships.  RLT also incorporates how the impact of our family of origin affects our relationship interactions.

      You will learn:

      How to discuss difficult topics without escalating.
      How to change the common losing strategies into winning strategies in expressing your needs. 
      How to make effective repairs to relational breaches.
      Heal childhood relational trauma and interact with your wise self rather than your wounded child.

      Most of our therapists have at least a level 1 training in RLT.

      Your RLT Therapists


      Somatic Psychotherapy

      There are a number of trainings that come under Somatic Psychotherapy such as somatic experiencing, sensorimotor, and somatic transformation that overlap in what they are focused on. Essentially they use interventions that focus on the release of trauma in the body.  This focus is rooted in the present moment awareness of somatic experiences  It highlights the importance of a regulated nervous system to enable a working through of the somatic experience. We draw on research from neurobiology and psychology in our understanding of how trauma and developmental trauma are responded to and held within the body and mind.

      From this perspective, the therapist will be paying attention to the specific language of your body and what you may be expressing through posture, movement, sensations, tension, and gestures. Regulation is when our body and nervous system can tolerate our experience. When we are regulated our emotions, sensation, and autonomic systems are energetic and flow smoothly without being stressed. Our inbuilt relational systems (bonding, attachment, social engagement) provide the mechanisms to create a secure attachment. Experiences of safety and security are developed through the therapeutic relationship.

      Some clinicians work solely from a somatic perspective.  We tend to integrate somatic interventions within a therapeutic process that includes cognitive reflections and other approaches identified here.

      Your Somatic Oriented Therapists

      Alisa Chirpicinic RCC

      couples counsellor
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        AEDP

        AEDP heals trauma and helps to undo aloneness by championing our innate healing capacity in a safe, attached therapeutic relationship.

        Through moment-to-moment, in-depth processing of difficult emotional and relational experiences, AEDP clinicians help clients recover their sense of core self and experience increased resilience and a renewed zest for life.

        The AEDP model of psychotherapy:

        • Is applicable across many human struggels such as;  trauma, depression, emotion dysregulation, negative thoughts, experiential avoidance and interpersonal problems
        • Establishes a therapeutic relationship of safety and trust
        • Enhances positive functioning such as self-compassion, well-being, and self-esteem in both therapist and client

        Your AEDP Therapist

        Ella Bolourian RCC

        counsellor, RCC
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