A Holiday Message from Your Vancouver Island Counselling Team In March of this year the world changed for all of us. Since then, like one continuous earthquake, the ground has not stopped moving under our feet. Ongoing tremor and aftershock still rock and ripple around us, within us and sometimes between us. Much has been Read More
Category: Newsletters
Choices Monthly Newsletter
November 2020 – Leading with Kindness
There are certain scientifically validated activities that can be done every day that bring us many physical, mental and emotional health benefits. Examples of this include a regular exercise, mindfulness or gratitude practice. However, did you know kind acts – even secret ones – can do wonders for your overall health and well-being? Kindness behaviors Read More
October 2020 – The Healing Power of Gratitude
“Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life” – Rumi Gratitude is an awareness of the good things that happen. It is both a fleeting emotion, and a quality anyone can acquire. In other words, you can be a grateful person, and experience a grateful moment. Gratitude is one Read More
September 2020 – Serving Workplaces and Communities for 40 Years!
Who is Vancouver Island Counselling?Vancouver Island Counselling is your EFAP (Employee and Family Assistance Program) and is a very important component of your employee benefit package. Your EFAP encourages people with personal concerns to seek confidential counselling help as soon as possible before issues seriously affect family and work life and individual health and safety. This Read More
August 2020 – COVID Burnout Resiliency
Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to meet constant demands. Although burnout is often associated with work and life imbalances, it has become associated now with the continuing nature of the COVID 19 pandemic. Burnout can be recognized Read More
July 2020 – Could I Benefit From Counselling?
Perhaps you have been thinking about seeing a counsellor for a while. Some days you feel really low or agitated or angry or trapped and feel like you need to speak to someone right away. Then the next day you feel okay and the thought of setting up a first appointment with a counsellor goes away. But the issues Read More
June 2020 – A Timely Self-Reflection on Courage, Hope, and Personal Growth
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” – Viktor Frankl We are over 10 weeks into the pandemic. Each one of us truly has their own unique and individual experience to overwhelming loss and transition; yet, a sense of relief may have occurred knowing we are Read More
May 2020 – Coping with Loss & Grief and COVID19
Since the recent lock-downs, social distancing and other remote measures that have been implemented, people have been affected by it in various ways: anxiety, fear, grief, loss, even anger and irritability. For some, anxiety and fear comes up along with many difficult questions: “What will I do, now that I’ve been indefinitely laid off?” “How Read More
April 2020- Compassion
“When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it’s bottomless, that it doesn’t have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space”. -Pema Chödrön With the Read More
Special Edition – The Importance of Relationships during COVID-19
Human beings are social by nature and we need social connections to function at our best. Perhaps most noteworthy as a theorist on this topic is Abraham Maslow who created Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and conceived that after basic physiological and safety needs are met, loving connections to others is most important to the human Read More