Do you find yourself constantly worrying about every possible scenario that could go wrong? You’re not alone. Constant worrying, overthinking, and feeling out of control can take a big toll on your mental health and well-being. This makes it incredibly difficult to focus on daily tasks or enjoy life to its fullest. But there is a solution: Coping Ahead is an effective technique from Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) that helps you prepare for stress and manage emotions ahead of time.
Eventualities
When I was 19 years old I learned to pilot gliders (airplanes without engines, also called sailplanes). Before each flight, we would always go through our pre-flight checks, even if the aircraft had just landed from a previous flight. We would make sure all of the controls worked as expected, the instruments were reading correctly, and of other important things worth double-checking when you’re propelling yourself two thousand feet into the sky!
The very last step of every pre-flight check was to review “eventualities.”
Though it’s been many years now since I last flew, I still remember vividly what I would say out loud to myself at this step, time and time again:
“If a wing drops on the launch and I cannot recover, I will release the launch cable and land ahead. At a safe height and speed I will start to climb. In the event of a launch failure, I will release the cable and lower the nose to a recovery attitude, and gain sufficient speed before maneuvering. I will land ahead if possible. Otherwise, I will turn downwind, which today is [left or right] and complete an abbreviated circuit or find a safe landing solution. The wind today is ___ knots which means my minimum approach speed is ___ knots.”
Coping Ahead saves time and effort.
The reason for talking through these eventualities in so much detail on the ground is that you’ve already made all of your decisions in the event of an emergency. In an unlikely situation where the pressure is on and seconds count, you don’t need to waste precious time or mental effort deciding what to do. You’ve already thought it through, and simply must follow your plan.
And this skill isn’t just for pilots! In DBT, coping ahead is an emotion regulation skill that can help you rehearse strategies ahead of time to better handle stressful situations or uncomfortable emotions. By visualizing and planning out how you will cope with challenging situations in advance, you start to feel more confident in your ability to face them, boosting your self-esteem and reducing stress.
What’s the difference between Coping Ahead and overthinking?
Overthinking is a common response to stress that can be counterproductive. It is also a common feature of anxiety that involves dwelling on worst-case scenarios, often leading to a cycle of negative thoughts and emotions. It can be triggered by a wide range of every-day stressors or perceived threats.
On the other hand, rather than going in circles about problems, Coping Ahead involves thinking about solutions. It is a deliberate and proactive skill, rather than a reactive response that actually impairs your problem-solving abilities.
How do I learn to Cope Ahead?
If you want to learn how to Cope Ahead, there are some practical tips you can try.
Identify potential stressors in your life, such as upcoming deadlines or social events.
Plan coping strategies that work for you, such as deep breathing, positive self-talk, or seeking support from friends.
Rehearse your coping strategies in your mind, visualizing yourself using them and picturing how they will help.
Lastly, remember to take some time to relax and ground yourself. Well done!
If you are struggling with…
Overthinking
Low self-confidence
Anxiety
A sense of low control in your life
Borderline personality disorder (BPD)
Other conditions that cause intense emotional reactions to common life stressors
…then consider seeking support from a mental health professional. Coping Ahead is a skill that can be learned and practiced, and therapy can provide a safe and supportive environment for developing this skill. Contact our clinic to learn more about how we can help.
Director’s note: The following article is written by our Registered Clinical Counsellor, Marcia Moitoso, in conjunction with Bell Let’s Talk Day. If you haven’t met us yet, you’ll find out quickly that we’re about being real. We’re all here because we are on our own journey, and want to help others on theirs. Marcia’s article is a very real, personal account of her own journey with mental health and trauma and how it led her to where she is today. I want to express my gratitude to Marcia for being willing to share her journey with others, and I hope you find it helpful. Please be aware, the article describes some traumatic events that may bring up some emotions while reading. – Andrew
My Journey To Becoming A Counsellor
I came to a career in counselling as part of a long, arduous struggle with my own mental health. I want to share my journey with you as a way to show you that whatever you’re going through, you’re not alone, things can get better, and we’re in this together.
My Story
My story toward healing really begins at 20 years old, when I hit the lowest low and far more psychological pain than I could have ever predicted. Laying on the bathroom floor of the courthouse after a two-year court battle against the person who sexually assaulted me, I remember thinking this is it, I can’t imagine continuing to live at this point, how can I possibly keep going? Unfortunately, like many of us, I had been through a lot of sexual assault in my early years. I had always felt immense shame about everything that happened to me, believing it was my fault and so I never told anyone how I felt, kept it inside and instead coped with eating disorders, self-harm, and substance use. This last incident in my late teens was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back. I couldn’t keep going like this, something had to change or I didn’t think I’d survive.
I wrestled a lot with the urge to give up and give in to self-destructive impulses. One part of me wanted to survive and get better, a second part wanted to give up, and a third part of me wanted desperately to change the world for other women like me. Frankly, that part kind of wanted revenge (or at least justice) too. I think that third part of me is the one that started to carry me toward healing. At this time in my life, I was learning about feminism, and while it made me confront some very difficult truths about myself and what had happened to me and what I was also complicit in, it made me get in touch with all the rage I felt, and my rage (though sometimes overwhelming) motivated me toward change.
It wasn’t – and still isn’t – a straight line. I remember sitting in my very first counsellor’s office week after week and refusing to speak. She was kind enough, she would recommend interesting female empowerment movies and give me little snacks. I liked her, I just wasn’t ready to talk, and I’d had years of learning to push all of my emotions way down and disconnecting from my body and myself. I wasn’t ready for her to change that. She gave me the notes I needed for extensions on my university assignments that I couldn’t write because the flashbacks were so overwhelming, and I was grateful for that. I don’t think I’d have graduated without her. At that time I also started kickboxing at a small gym that quickly started to feel like a family. I didn’t have to talk, which was important to me back then, but I could punch and kick and secretly cry my heart out. It was everything; I started to feel what powerful could feel like.
But as life goes, more devastations occurred that set me off balance and back into my self-destructive behaviours. I left kickboxing and withdrew into my own world ruled by fear and dissociation. My social anxiety got to the worst point it had ever been, and I lost the majority of my friends. This was another point where I could have lost myself completely, but I had managed to retain one friend who wouldn’t let me go despite the many times I disappeared and definitely let her down. During this time I had started to realize that my self-destructive behaviours needed to stop, but I was still unable to ask for help or admit that I had a problem. I got lucky though, one night at about 2am this friend of mine texted me asking if I’d want to go and travel South America for a year by bicycle. I wanted to get as far away from the place where I grew up as possible, so I didn’t even hesitate, I immediately said yes and with very little planning we got out bikes and just went.
The Ride That Changed My Life
Since that time I’ve tried to put my finger on just what it was about that year on my bike that was so healing. I think it was a combination of things. I finally really felt like I had a friend who loved me unconditionally (she also had no choice because we depended on each other for survival, traveling by bike with almost no money). I also started to feel powerful and connected to my body for what it could do for me for the first time, instead of focusing on what it looked like or what other people wanted from it. For the first time my body was mine and it was carrying me thousands and thousands of kilometres just by sheer force and will. I also learned to get in touch with my intuition and figure out which situations felt safe and which ones I needed to get out of right away. I experienced some luck, and happened to meet incredible people in every place I went who reminded me that people actually are fundamentally good and that those few who did some bad things to me are not an indicator of all of humanity. And bonus: I didn’t have access to my unhealthy coping means of choice, so my addictions started to fizzle away.
I met so many people from so many backgrounds, and heard their stories of devastation and transcendence, and slowly I started to share mine too. Hearing about the ways people make meaning from tragedy and find ways to survive and make life beautiful again after being in the absolute gutter of life was healing beyond belief. I learned that suffering is part of living and that it actually connects us to others. We suffer tragedies and then we find each other and we heal together. After hearing from these beautiful people in various towns, I’d always have a day or a few of riding my bike to the next place, getting in touch with my body and mind and processing everything I’d heard. It was in one of these in-between cycling times that I realized I wanted to become a counsellor. It was actually a need. I was in awe of how incredible humans are, and their innate urge to move toward growth and healing, and I wanted to be a part of that for myself and for others.
The Journey Is Ongoing
When I moved back to Canada, I spent several years in personal counselling before going back to school to become a counsellor. I was finally ready to talk and ready to continue the healing that had started on my trip. I knew I couldn’t do it alone, and I knew the triggers would come back now that the excitement of cycling from country to country was over. I’m endlessly grateful for the counsellors who helped me. I started in CBT to rework my self-shaming thoughts and my social anxiety, then I moved into somatic trauma counselling to learn how to heal psychologically through the power of my body, and then I continued the trauma processing work through EMDR. I still have sleepless nights with flashbacks but they’re few and far between now, and when they happen, I know how to ground myself, breathe through it, and look for my body’s wisdom to heal and do what it needs to. I still sometimes get urges to go back into those self-destructive behaviours, but I now know what to do with those urges rather than giving in to them. I’ve developed great friendships, thanks to my counsellors who helped me get out of my own way and soothe my social anxiety. And every day I get the massive privilege of walking with my clients on their journeys toward healing. I’m still a work in progress and know I will always be, and so I continue to work on myself, see my counsellor, and challenge myself to talk to friends and my partner when I need to. I’m endlessly grateful to the people who have helped me along the way, and continue to help me. We’re all in this together and we all have the capacity to grow and heal even if it sometimes really doesn’t feel like it.
I hope my story encourages you, and reiterates that we are all on a journey toward hope and healing. If we can help you on your journey, please
This article talks about some skills and strategies to heal the traumatized part of your brain and move toward the intimacy you deserve. If you missed the last article about the ways that sexual abuse/assault impacts intimacy and sexuality, I’d recommend going back and reading that article before beginning this one.
Remedies
Every nervous system is a little different. What works for one person may not work for another. There are many options for healing trauma and developing a healthy intimate and sex life, so I encourage you to choose options that resonate best with you.
Shift Ideas about Sex
A good place to start might be with the ideas you and your partner(s) hold about sex. Often survivors of sexual assault hold negative beliefs about sex. These beliefs result from parts of our brains confusing sexual assault (violence) with sex (consent, pleasure, equality). The two are not the same, and we need to rewire our brains to reflect this. I recommend having a look at Wendy Maltz’s comparisons chart here https://healthysex.com/healthy-sexuality/part-one-understanding/comparisons-chart/. This will help explain the difference between ideas about sex that come from experiences of abuse, versus healthy ideas about sex.
You can continue to develop a healthy sexual mindset by avoiding media that portrays sexual assault or sex as abuse or talking about sexual attitudes with friends or with a therapist. You can also educate yourself about sexuality and healing through books and workshops. One book I strongly recommend is Come as You Are by Emily Nagoski.
Communication with Partners
This may be the most important recommendation in this article. You cannot have consensual sex without communicating about it. That’s true for anyone, whether they’re an assault survivor or not. Sex remains a taboo subject in our culture, even though sex is very normal and most people have some form of sex at some point in their lives. When things are taboo and not widely talked about and understood, people develop feelings of shame about the taboo subject. Shame lurks in the darkness. This feeling of shame or embarrassment or even just awkwardness keeps many people from talking about sex with their partners despite engaging in sex.
Consent is dynamic: It can be given and withdrawn at any time
All people, and especially survivors of assault/abuse need to be able to give and withdraw consent AT ANY TIME during a sexual or intimate act. Many survivors will experience flashbacks or triggers at various times through physical or sexual activities. Because they don’t feel safe to tell their partner to stop (often out of fear for making them feel bad), they will instead dissociate and push through the sexual experience. When you do this, you are telling your brain and body that what you feel doesn’t matter and that the other person’s pleasure or comfort is more important.
While it may feel frustrating to have to stop mid-sex or mid-kiss or mid-hug because something has triggered you, listening to your body will actually help the healing process go much faster. Each time you override what your brain and body needs, the trauma gets reinforced and the triggers continue to come back. Slower is faster when healing from trauma. This is something partners need to understand. If a survivor is saying no, it’s because they trust you enough to say no, not because they’re not attracted to you. Every “no” is sexy because it’s getting you closer to an enthusiastic, consensual “yes”
Understand and Communicate your preferences
In addition to understanding and respecting the need to withdraw consent at any time, it’s important to talk about sexual preferences. What feels good, what feels neutral and what doesn’t feel good. Communicate when something felt uncomfortable and explore together to find what does feel comfortable. When sex is approached with curiosity and exploration rather than rigidness and shame, it becomes increasingly safe and pleasurable for both parties.
The need to take a break
Sometimes survivors of sexual abuse and assault may need to take a prolonged break from sexual activity. This can happen when the individual is in a relationship or not. The break allows space to focus on healing and figuring out what feels good and what doesn’t without worrying about the anxiety of managing their partner’s advances. When you are ready to engage in sexual activity again, do so when you want it, not when you believe you “should.” You have a right to be an active participant in your own sex life. Communicate your likes and dislikes and give yourself permission to say no at any time.
How to Manage Triggers and Flashbacks
As mentioned above, some survivors will experience triggers or flashbacks during physical touch or sexual activity. Flashbacks and triggers are often thought of as images of the traumatic experience. But they can also be experienced as unpleasant sensations, or a lack of sensation, an experience of disconnection, or an experience of overwhelm. When this happens it’s important to stop whatever is triggering the flashback, i.e. stopping the sexual activity or the physical touch. When you have a flashback, a part of your brain thinks it is in the past when the trauma happened, You need to remind that part of your brain that you are in the present moment and that the danger has passed. Another word for this is “grounding.”
Grounding Strategies/Orienting back to the present moment
5,4,3,2,1
Name 5 things you can see, 4 you can touch, 3 you can hear, 2 you can smell, 1 you can taste
Deep breaths
Breathe in for 4, hold for 7, out for 8 (or any variation of that where you breathe out longer than you breathe in
Box breaths: in for 4, hold for 4, out for 4, hold for 4 (repeat 4 times)
Stand up and move your body – get the adrenaline out
Run on the spot, go for a walk, jumping jacks
Watch youtube video that makes you laugh (laughter is grounding)
Play a categories game
Say the alphabet backwards
Show these strategies to your partner and do them together
Once you’ve successfully grounded (and give yourself as much time as your nervous system needs for this, remember slower is faster), take some time to rest and find comforts. Your nervous system has just gone through a lot. It can also be good to think about what triggered you and to discuss with you partner how to change that in the future. You may want the help of a counsellor to determine this.
Counselling
Trauma counselling can really help you to overcome the impacts the trauma has on your life. You may also want to incorporate some couples counselling to help improve communication so that the two of you can work as a team on this.
There are 3 types of trauma counselling that can be beneficial. You may benefit from a mix of all three.
Top-Down counselling:
This type of counselling helps you to change the thought patterns and behavioural habits that have formed as a result of the trauma. You will learn to notice the emotions and to change the behaviours and thoughts that tend to come as a result of the emotions. Some examples of this include CBT and DBT.
Bottom-Up Counselling:
Emotions and survival responses are physiological. You may notice a tightness in your chest when you feel anxious, a lump in your throat when you feel sad, a pit in your stomach when you feel embarrassed, or any variety of physical manifestations of emotions. When we feel an emotion our bodies are automatically mobilized to do something with it. For example, if you see a grizzly bear, your body might instinctively run or freeze or even try to fight it. You don’t even have to think about it, your brain does it automatically! Your body also knows how to heal from the trauma, but often circumstances prevent us from being able to allow our bodies to do what they need to do. Bottom-up counselling approaches such as EMDR, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, or Somatic Experiencing can help you to process the trauma by mindfully allowing your body and brain to do what it needs to do to heal. This will also greatly improve your relationship to your body
Mindfulness Counselling or Practices
Through mindfulness practices you can train your nervous system (brain and body) to become fully present. You learn to notice when triggers are happening while keeping a foot in the present-moment so that you don’t become overwhelmed. With mindfulness you can learn to allow emotions to come and go naturally without being swept away. If you’d like to start mindfulness on your own I’d recommend starting with short 2 minute practices and slowly working your way up. Examples of mindfulness-based counselling include Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction.
I hope these tidbits can help you get started, or to continue on your healing journey. You deserve a healthy intimate life that includes boundaries, consent, pleasure and joy. Slower is faster; trauma takes time to work through, but it is very treatable, and you don’t have to do it alone.
Sources
Maltz, Wendy (2021). Healthy Sex: Promoting Healthy, Loving Sex and Intimacy. https://healthysex.com/
Nagoski, Emily (2015). Come as you Are: The Surprising New Science that will Transform your Sex Life. Simon & Schuster Inc: New York.
Note: This article speaks in broad terms about sexual assault and abuse. If you feel overwhelmed at any point reading this article, I encourage you to stop reading (or skip to the section on “grounding”) and allow your body to do what it needs to do to come back to the present. Whether it’s going for a brisk walk, doing some deep breathing, or calling a trusted friend. As this article will discuss, there’s no need to push yourself past the point of overwhelm. Healing can only take place with patience.
Many survivors of sexual assault face difficulties with intimacy and/or sexuality at some point in their lives. While this is a very common experience, it’s certainly not the case for all survivors. Traumatic events affect people in a variety of different ways dependent on each person’s life experiences and their unique nervous systems. This article will focus on the people who do struggle with sex and intimacy after traumatic events. It will show that even though it can feel really hopeless at times, there are some amazing ways forward to achieving a healthy and satisfying sex life. We have some powerful innate abilities to heal trauma, but it often takes patience, support and work to get there.
Understanding the Impacts
Sexuality and the Central Nervous System – Stress and Love
Sexuality is impacted by the emotional systems managed by a very primal part of your brain often called “the reptilian brain.” This part of your brain is responsible for stress feelings as well as love feelings, all of which have helped us to survive as a species. Stress and love are also the main emotions that impact intimacy and sexual desire.
Stress responses are the neurobiological processes that help you deal with threats. Your brain prioritizes one of the following three main components based on survival needs: fight (anger/frustration), flight (fear/anxiety), or collapse (numbness, depression, dissociation).
Love is also a survival strategy; it’s the neurobiological process that pulls us closer to our tribes and bonds humans together. Love is responsible for passion, romance, and joy. It’s also responsible for the agony of grief and heartbreak.
Common Reactions
When a person lives through a traumatic event, the stress response in their central nervous system (brain and body) often gets locked into survival mode. It has detected that there is danger and so it learns that it must always be scanning for any sign of danger. As a result, there are two very common reactions to sexual trauma that affect a survivor’s sex life.
Sexual Avoidance/Difficulty Experiencing Pleasure
The main function of the central nervous system is to prioritize survival needs in order of importance. For example, if you can’t breathe, you’re unlikely to notice that you’re hungry until you get oxygen again. Similarly, although love is indeed a survival mechanism (bringing us together with our tribes), the brain tends to prioritize attention to stress over love because stress points to a more immediate threat: the possibility of another dangerous and violent act.
After a sexual assault, sensations, contexts and ideas that used to be interpreted as sexually relevant (like physical touch) may instead now be interpreted by your brain as threats. So sexual situations actually make your brain sound the “danger” alarm bell. Our central nervous systems confuse sex (an act of consent, equality and pleasure) with sexual assault (an act of violence and power over another). Remember, your nervous system’s primary function is to keep you alive and safe, so anything that feels in any way similar to a violent situation from the past will sound your brain’s alarm bell.
Basically, you may be experiencing love or desire, but your brain is still stuck on survival mode. This makes it almost impossible to experience pleasure, desire and closeness.
Engaging in Compulsive Sexual Behaviours
Remember how love is also a survival strategy? It draws us closer to others and makes us feel whole. So instead of stress hitting the sexual brakes, some people get locked into patterns of feeling out of control sexually and having multiple partners. In this case, sometimes the innate survival strategy prioritizes closeness for that feeling of being whole; however, when this is a survival mechanism, it’s often happening from that “collapse” stress response, or a more dissociated place. People stuck in this pattern may experience a brief feeling of relief but may still struggle with the deeper components of intimacy.
Additional common symptoms
sexual avoidance/anxiety
sex feeling like an obligation
dissociation during sexual activity/not present
negative feelings associated with touch
difficulty achieving arousal/sensation
feeling emotionally distant
flashbacks/intrusive thoughts or images during sexual activity
engaging in compulsive sexual behaviours
difficulty maintaining an intimate relationship
vaginal pain in women; erectile dysfunction in men
feelings of shame
negative beliefs about sex
This is a short list of reactions, there are many more impacts on a person’s sense of self and experiences in relationships. If you’d like to get a better sense of how your traumatic experiences may have impacted your sex life, you can have a look at Wendy Maltz’s Sexual Effects Inventory here https://www.havoca.org/survivors/sexuality/sexual-effects-inventory/
Remedies: Developing a Healthy Sex Life
This short article was just to give you an idea of some of the many ways that sexual assault can impact intimacy. These impacts sometimes show up directly after the assault and sometimes show up years later.
Stay tuned for the next article which will talk about some of the many ways to heal the parts of your brain that are impacted by the trauma and to help you to find safety and pleasure in intimacy.
Sources
Maltz, Wendy (2021). Healthy Sex: Promoting Healthy, Loving Sex and Intimacy. https://healthysex.com/
Nagoski, Emily (2015). Come as you Are: The Surprising New Science that will Transform your Sex Life. Simon & Schuster Inc: New York.
My name is Nik, and it’s a pleasure to be joining the team at Alongside You for my counselling internship! I will write a little about myself here. In short: I am a highly motivated counselling psychology student and science graduate with hands-on experience supporting people with autism, ADHD, anxiety, and other needs. I am committed to inclusion, mental well-being, and care of the highest possible standard. Please do get in touch if you think I or anyone else at Alongside You may be able to assist you!
Life Growing Up
I grew up in a diverse neighbourhood in Port Coquitlam. I was a quirky kid who did not have many close friends, much preferring the library to the soccer field. My bedroom was full of microscopes, telescopes, and amateur electronics. My love of science was matched only by my love of helping others; I came to be known as a calming and compassionate shoulder for others to lean on in times of need.
After graduating from high school, I had an urge for a change of scenery from Greater Vancouver. My British heritage and innate curiosity about the world helped me decide to study Natural Sciences in the United Kingdom at University College London. This interdisciplinary programme explored many different scientific fields, but I ended up focussing on neuroscience. I was fascinated by how little we knew about the human brain and the magic of consciousness. The brain is still very much “uncharted territory” with many new and intriguing discoveries made each year. However, as I progressed through my integrated master’s degree, I realized that these discoveries come at the cost of long and tedious hours in dark and lonely laboratories. Many of my peers who were a few years ahead in their careers found the work unfulfilling. It is valuable work, and I have much respect for those who do it. Still, towards my fourth year of university I realized I found greater meaning in working directly with real people. I started taking psychology electives and shifted from learning about the physical brain to understanding the mind and the soul.
After completing my M.Sci., degree and researching the presence and impact of autistic personality traits in the general population, I spent several years working in the non-profit social services sector. I primarily supported adults with autism, developmental disabilities, bipolar disorder, depression, and other concerns in various residential and community settings. In 2017, missing my family and the beautiful scenery in British Columbia (and also put off by the rapidly rising financial cost of living in London), I moved back to Vancouver. I started working for Family Services of Greater Vancouver to help children and adolescents with autism, ADHD, and anxiety build life skills and independence.
Finally, in September 2019 I started my M.A. in counselling psychology at Adler University. Now entering my second year of graduate studies, I can say I feel absolutely confident that this is the right path for me. My sincere gratitude to those who join me on this journey!
How I Approach Counselling
My approach to counselling is still very much in development, but right now I find myself oriented towards narrative therapy. This approach helps us unpack the story of our lives, read between the lines to gain new insights, consider alternative interpretations, and regain our sense of authorship to write the next chapter as we wish it to be.
That said, I do not draw exclusively on narrative techniques: the right style of counselling is whatever works best for the client! I also incorporate humanistic, person-centered values, meaning I have absolute respect for your choices, autonomy, and independence. It is not my job to make decisions for you or lead you in any particular direction. We will collaboratively explore options together, but you have the final say in any work we do.
Finally, it is important to me that my work includes well-researched, tried-and-true methods for effective and long-lasting change. Therefore, I aim to offer evidence-based exercises from practices such as cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), motivational interviewing (a style of discussion which helps you prepare for change), and dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT). I also aim to resource my clients (only if they wish) with proven strategies for building resiliency such as mindfulness, grounding techniques, and self-reflection skills.
My interest in research
As an aspiring scholar-practitioner, I believe it is essential to always work towards better understandings of the human mind. I think that this work should be substantiated by reliable data and evidence (although there is undoubtedly a place for intuition too). I am actively engaged in psychology research, keeping up to date on the latest peer-reviewed discoveries worldwide. I regularly collaborate with experienced clinicians and scientists on my own projects.
My current research interests include:
The impact of exercise on cognitive abilities
Relationship between personality traits and mental well-being
Improving the counselling experience for people in alternative relationship structures
Psychosocial development outcomes of using digital technology (e.g. apps, video games, robotics) versus physical toys and in-person interaction for children with autism in educational settings
Mechanisms underlying the transmission of intergenerational trauma
How social media and concerns (or ambivalence) about mass surveillance impact mental health, particularly in young people
Let me emphasize that my counselling clients are not research participants nor the subjects of experiments. I provide the above information just to give a better sense of who I am and what I engage in.
How I practice self-care through hobbies and interests
My energy, my fire, most certainly comes from music. I enjoy listening to most genres and have played various instruments since I was five years old (primarily guitar nowadays, and saxophone on occasion). I’ve found song-writing and composition to be personally therapeutic.
Travel is a large part of my life, and I also enjoy photography, which fortunately go quite well together! I prefer a more adventurous travel style, intentionally making myself uncomfortable to see what I discover about the world and about myself. In August 2017 I completed a challenging but incredibly rewarding 800km bicycle trek from London to Glasgow in five days. In April 2019 I participated in a charity event called The Rickshaw Run, driving 3,000km across India in a motorized tuk-tuk (essentially a 7-horsepower glorified lawnmower) while raising over $3,000 for cancer research. This past summer, my plans to backpack around eastern Europe were thwarted by the covid-19 pandemic. Instead, I took the opportunity to go on a 9,000km socially-distanced camping road trip to the Arctic Circle and back. I am incredibly grateful to have experienced how vast and beautiful this part of the world is! (Gratitude, I believe, is an important and too often neglected value nowadays)
I am also a big fan of fitness — or at least the idea of it! There are certainly many days when it’s challenging to muster the energy or find the time to exercise. Nonetheless, I’ve come to appreciate how vital physical activity is and that a healthy body yields a healthy mind.
Another significant hobby of mine is aviation. When I lived in the UK I learned to fly glider planes with long wings and no engines. We would launch ourselves into the sky and hunt like the birds for warm air currents to provide lift. It was a continuous fight against gravity, but there was something simply magical about the experience of quietly soaring among the clouds. I’ve not had an opportunity to fly since moving back to Canada, but I hope to resume gliding someday.
That’s all I have to say about that
My commendations if you’ve read this far! When I started writing this introduction, I did not think I would have so much to say about myself! Yet, in some ways, this has barely scratched the surface of who I am; we are all incredibly complex beings with indescribable depth. I know I still have plenty of self-discovery and personal development to do. But I hope this gives you some sense of myself, and if we do end up working together, I look forward to learning more about who you are and who you are becoming. I’d love to be a part of your journey.
