Counselling for Individuals

Primarily working with young adults and adults, individual sessions at Ataraxia can help those struggling with a variety of issues including: depression, anxiety, trauma, low self-esteem, addiction, guilt, grief, low motivation, life changes, loneliness, body image, anger, shame, and life dissatisfaction. 

Regardless of life’s challenges, your emotional wellbeing is important, and psychotherapy can help you work through hard times and build resilience, acceptance, and confidence. Please reach out to see if individual couselling is right for you.

Focus and Approach

Counselling services at Ataraxia involve an eclectic approach, incorporating emotion focused therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, and mindfulness-based practices.

Emotion focused therapy (EFT) is a collaborative approach to counselling that looks specifically at our relationship with our emotional selves. Together, we will explore the meaning of your emotional experiences and how your unique attachment and bonding experience are impacting your daily life. Through non-judgmental exploration we can begin to make not only emotional changes but physical healing too.

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is one of the most popular forms of therapy in the 21st century. It is an evidence-based approach that is shown to be highly effective with numerous mental health issues. CBT focuses on the interactive relationship between our thoughts, emotions, physical responses, and behaviours. In bringing attention to these relationships and how they directly affect each other, we can work together to break the negative cycle that is impacting your life.

Sometimes, when a disturbing event occurs, the reason we seem unable to put the event behind us is because of how our brain stores the memory; it gets locked in our brains with the original pictures, sounds, thoughts, feelings, and body sensation, making it extremely difficult for us to separate ourselves from the past. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (EMDR) is a method that uses bilateral stimulation (activation of both halves of the brain) to help the brain reprocess the experience properly to reduce the vividness of the memory, so it is no longer as intense. EMDR is an evidence-based approach rooted in extensive research. It is used in the treatment of trauma and anxiety disorders.

Mindfulness is a method of maintaining presence on a moment-to-moment basis and keeping the awareness on the present thought, emotions, bodily sensations, and the external environment. This practice keeps the frontal lobe online and allows us to maintain a non-judgmental and curious openness towards ourselves, because only through awareness of ourselves can we begin to make changes. Mindfulness has been shown to be effective in reducing stress, increasing working memory, regulating emotion, and increasing focus. Mindfulness practices are incorporated into each session in small aspects to help in the process of therapeutic change.