How Reframing Grief Helped me Heal
By: Leah Hovey Having a loved one die, at any point in your life, is one of the most challenging experiences one can go through. Death is...
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thoughts &
notes
Debunking Mental Health Misconceptions
By: Admin Team Mental health has become a commonly discussed topic in our everyday lives, especially in the past year. Although the...
The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the LGBTQ2+ Community
By: Admin Team As we continue to experience the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to recognize the communities...
Coping with Pandemic Related Hardships
By: Isabella Bifolchi If you have felt discouraged, repressed, and anxious during the current COVID-19 pandemic, you are not alone. This...
Understanding and Developing Resilience
By: Alessia Cecatini By using trees as a representation of human nature, we are able to compare their traumas and hardships to individual...
Understanding Our Thoughts
By: Alessia Cecatini The way we carry ourselves does not always represent the way we feel inside. It may look like we are happy through...
Parenting in the Pandemic
By: Alessia Cecatini During these unprecedented times, many of us have made modifications to our everyday lifestyles. As parents, it is...
How I went from being a pessimist to an optimist
By: Leah Hovey My entire life I have been a pessimist. I always expected the worst and I justified my pessimism by saying that I...
Improving Communication with your Partner: Gottman's 4 Horsemen
By: Cristian Renzi Your partner is a person in your life who you are likely extremely close with. They are possibly the person in your...
Expectations: Cost-benefit Analysis
By: Shaila Anjum Though it is quite natural to have expectations, especially in a relationship, it can also present itself as a...
Acceptance
By: Shaila Anjum Why is acceptance so hard? Perhaps it is because it involves a sense of defeat or failure in your level of...
What Psychologically Resilient People do Differently
By: Julia D’Addurno Beyond their capacity to disrupt and injure, adversity and distress often help people to develop in positive ways. In...
Mental Health Effects of Exercise
By: Cristian Renzi At the time this is being written, countries around the world are currently under lockdown/quarantine due to COVID-19....
How Addiction Affects the Family
By: Cristian Renzi Addiction is not something that only an individual goes through. Everyone around the person who is in the act of...
Codependency
By: Leah Hovey At some point in your life you have probably come across the term “codependency”. Whether it be in self-help books or used...
What Everyone Should Know About Mindfulness Meditation
By: Julia D’ Addurno Mindfulness meditation has garnered a lot of attention in recent years due to all the empirical research that has...
Moving Through Trauma from Past Toxic Relationships
By: Leah Hovey Maybe you were cheated on, or in an abusive relationship. Maybe there was gaslighting, manipulation or controlling...
Helping your Partner through Depression
By: Cristian Renzi Relationships are a huge part of anyone’s life. When we begin a relationship with someone, not only are we letting...
The Role Stress Plays in your Relationship
By: Julia D’Addurno Most people understand how long-term stress can impact one’s life. Stress has an effect on our bodies, thoughts,...
Dealing with the Highs and Lows of Relationships
By: Cristian Renzi Relationships can be beautiful, blissful experiences. They can make you want to stay up until 3 AM talking on the...
Ways to Manage Loneliness When Isolated
By: Leah Hovey There has been quite a bit of change that has happened within our world and now more than ever we are seeing the effects...
What to Do During Isolation
By: Shaila Anjum While many of us are fed up with self-isolating and consistently looking for a way out, some of us have started to see...
If You Think You Are Self-Aware: Read This
By: Julia D'Addurno Generally, self-awareness is having a clear perception of who you are. Goleman (1995) proposed that self-awareness is...
How to Handle Rejection
By: Leah Hovey We all can agree that rejection, on a romantic level, is painful. While the intentions may not be overly critical, when a...
Patience and Dealing with Ongoing Problems
By: Shaila Anjum When is patience enough, too little or too much? What is a healthy balance? You don’t want to get stepped on by your...
The Power of Effective Communication
By: Shaila Anjum I was giving advice the other day to a friend regarding relationships. Now, I am not some relationship guru or anything,...
See a Different Perspective, Transform Your Relationship
By: Shaila Anjum One of the most frustrating things in any type of relationship is being accused of selfish acts you didn’t intend or...
Relationship Loss: Grieving the Downfall of a Romantic Relationship, Part 2
By: Leah Hovey In a former article, I wrote about relationship loss and the grieving process that goes along with it. That article...
Vulnerability and the Science of Falling in Love
By: Julia D'Addurno A key component in love is mutual trust and vulnerability. Building a close relationship requires “sustained,...
Mistrust: Dealing with Disappointment
By: Shaila Anjum When we think trust issues, we think romantic relationships and cheating. Trust takes a long time to build and an...
Relationship Loss: Grieving the Downfall of a Romantic Relationship Pt.1
By: Leah Hovey When we lose someone close to us, we experience grief. Grief is characterized by an array of emotions including but not...
Recognizing and Understanding Addiction
By: Shaila Anjum It’s not rocket science that most (if not all) addictions affect not just your own mental health but possibly even the...
How to Tell if Someone Has High-Functioning Alcoholism
By: Leah Hovey Most people have heard the term (either in a joking or serious manner) “functioning alcoholic” before. This term is used...
What Really is Sex Addiction?
By: Leah Hovey Recently there have been countless news stories of individuals who have an addiction to sex. Whether scandals such as...
Technology and Internet Addiction
By: Shaila Anjum Many technology tycoons like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are known to limit tech time for their kids and have age...
What is a Relationship Addiction?
By: Leah Hovey Have you ever met a person who is constantly looking for a relationship? All their focus is on finding a partner? Do they...
The Science Behind Mental Illness
By: Shaila Anjum I feel this is a very important topic to talk about. Many people are either misinformed or do not have enough...
The Two Types of Addictions You Can Have
By: Leah Hovey Addiction is something that is rampant within our society. Addiction can be a word used very loosely or a word that is not...
The Disadvantages of Being Picture Perfect
By: Julia D’Addurno I truly believe that we were not meant to have as much access into other people’s lives as we do through social media...
Mental Health and Memes
By: Shaila Anjum When we are down, sometimes social media feels like a source of comfort. Memes and quotes we see about mental illnesses...
What Does "Relationship Goals" Really Mean?
By: Leah Hovey CONTENT WARNING: While the following image is a staged portrayal of abuse, some readers may find the violence it simulates...
How Social Media Can Distort Reality
By: Leah Hovey Social media has given us a lot of wonderful benefits through the years. It gives individuals access to more information,...
A Relationship Will Not Increase Your Self-Esteem – That's Up to You
By: Leah Hovey It seems that wherever I turn, I am bombarded with couples around me. I can’t look at social media and not see photos of...
Why We Should Aim for High Self-Compassion Over High Self-Esteem
By: Julia D’Addurno It seems like it is so easy to be extra hard on ourselves when negative events occur or when we make mistakes. In...
What is Self-Care and Why is it Important?
By: Shaila Anjum Self-care, self-care, self-care! Feels like the word has lost all meaning, hearing it over and over and over again!...
Spring Fever is a Blessing
By: Shaila Anjum Most of us are well aware of the phenomenon that is ‘winter blues’ or seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which is often...
Why Your 20s Can Be Confusing and Damage Your Self-Esteem
By: Leah Hovey This month, our theme at Conscious Counselling is self-esteem. We all know what self-esteem is, and we all struggle with...
How to Take Control of Your Happiness and Build a More Positive Perspective
By: Julia D’Addurno Spring is in full swing and most of us have begun to clean out our spaces as well as try new things to make way for a...
The Importance of Being Vulnerable
By: Julia D’Addurno Finding purpose in your life looks a little different for everyone. Researchers in social work and psychology have...
The 3 Most Common Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
By: Leah Hovey Life can be stressful, chaotic and consistently busy. It can be hard to find time for ourselves and even when we do find...
Seeing yourself in some of our articles is common. If you would like to speak more about your concerns, feel free to give us a call or book an appointment.
If this is an emergency, or you or someone you know is in immediate danger,
please call 9-1-1 or go to your nearest hospital or emergency department.
If you are in crisis, please call the following:
Mental health helpline: 1-866-531-2600
Ontario Crisis Line: 2-1-1 or 1-866-330-3213
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