Proximity

I am grateful.  I have colleagues that I work with daily in our offices that I respect and admire.  They wow me with their insights and wisdom. If you could hear our walls talk, you would hear stories of wonder–the work with the therapists do with our clients is incredible. Sabrina Friesen is one of …

Nudging and being nudged

One of my favourite things that happens in therapy is this: A couple comes in for an initial session.  There is tension between them.  They are fighting.  They have forgotten how to be friends…they have forgotten they are friends. They begin with the complaints…He works too hard.  She complains too much. yada yada As the …

Redemptive Suffering

Sometimes a conference is just a conference. Sometimes, a conference pokes pretty deep. Today–well, I got poked. Deep. I attended the Storyline Conference this week, hosted by Donald Miller.  He has written one of my favourite books, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years…something I wrote about several times almost 3 years ago when I …

Don’t rain on my parade

I love when art imitates life.  I love watching a 16 year old girl say its her dream to sing, and as she starts singing, “Don’t rain on my parade”…guess what…Simon Cowell rains on her parade.  He pours monsoons over it, drenching her parade soaking wet. And I love how she lives her song. She’s …

Mindfulness

Join me in a little experiment? Get comfortable.  Shake out your arms and legs.  Take a couple of deep breaths. Check to see if your shoulders are relaxed. Breath in and out again slowly. And spend a long minute simply noticing this picture, and also notice what you notice about this picture: What did you …

Conexus Counselling blog on family gatherings: Family is eessential because we all yearn to feel like we belong to something greater than ourselves. Laura Ramirez

The Ups and Downs of Family Gatherings

This weekend is Thanksgiving.  In a couple of months will be Christmas.  Several months after that will be Easter, then Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and July Long Weekend…all of these occasions for times with family. The week running up to Thanksgiving can be a preoccupied one at a counselling centre.  And the week after it, …

Trust is an emotion.

Trust is an emotion–a distinctly human feeling. And normally business likes to think it runs on facts, and we think that feelings don’t belong. People who “deliver” regularly–who do everything they promise they are going to do–they are reliable…it doesn’t mean people will trust you.  You know…you have a good long term friend who messes …

#imenough

Sigh…so many of the things I talk about with people in my day boil down to a simple, but terrifying doubt around the issue of “Am I enough?” The question comes out in various ways: “Am I pretty enough?”, “Will people like me?”, “Have I done enough to impress them?”, “What will people think of …

The Influence of Others

We are wired for connection… Yeah, I know…you’ve read that a time or two on this blog, right? What it means is that we are social creatures, wired to want to belong.  We feel better when we have people surrounding us…and it is helpful to split up chores and responsibilities, to band together against the …