As uncertainty continues during this unique time, we are often left with some overwhelming thoughts and feelings.

As clients come through my practice in the last few weeks, they are often coming for challenges that have been pushed aside for months and sometimes even years.

Kelly Mcgonigal talks about the different stress responses such as, palpitating heart, sweaty palms among other reactions as an energy to help you cope with the upcoming situation. What if you could shift your perception of stress to help you in stressful times?

Many neuroscientists have been studying this exact theory. They have discovered what happens to the various chemicals in your brain when you are under perceived threat.

Stress increases the levels of oxytocin which activates our prosocial tendencies.

Under stress it increases and activates these three parts of your brain, here’s a quick breakdown.

Typically during times of stress men often disappear into their offices or quiet spaces very contrary to women who tend to react by baking cookies for someone or caring for others.

Often research shows that stress leads to aggression and hiding out during times of stress but this wasn’t the research that Laura Cousino Klein was gathering.

She quickly noticed that almost 90% of stress research was done on males. Equally true of animals and humans.

We have been conditioned to think that stress is killing us and I am here to tell you that it is often a matter of your stress mindset that affects you more than the stress itself. In this 3 part series on stress mindset, I dive into how you can shift your mindset, create awareness and some tips on how to create ease in your life.

The first step is to notice how your current mindset shows up in your life. Usually we don’t see the effect of a mindset because we are too identified with the beliefs behind it. The mindset doesn’t feel like a choice that we make, it feels like an accurate assessment of how the world works.

I am a firm believer that anxiety, depression, addiction and substance abuse comes partly from traumatic experiences. (If you haven’t seen or heard Dr.Gabor Maté, check him out).

Most of us treat ourselves rather poorly when bad things happen to us. Most of us would state that they wouldn’t treat others the way we treat ourselves.

Sometimes when very bad things happen to us, we go even further and attack ourselves from all angles. I am bad because of this and this happened because I am bad.

Learning how to work as a team in your relationship.

As my husband and I sat in our counsellors office, I was reminded of something very crucial to our relationship. (YES we go to counselling and NO we are not on the brink of separating or divorcing)

As we enacted an argument we had had over the previous weekend, our counsellor said something that really struck a chord with me. He said, as a couple you are a team. You are both on the same team and working together and having each others back is essential to good team work. Now most of us would think that this would be obvious, but a lot of couples settle for a business, the focus of their arrangement is to raise the kids, then get divorced or fall into apathy.

If you have ever had intrusive thoughts the first thing you want to do is to silence your inner voice. It can be overwhelming to constantly hear this little voice dictate negative thoughts.

I challenge you to re-frame your inner critic. In this post, I break down a few ways to do so with a couple simple exercises and awareness tricks. Remember that our brains have been evolutionarily hard wired to keep us safe for millions of years. Over the course of time we have developed a component in the nervous system called a checker.. This checker checks for danger and has three parts to it: Scan, Alert, and Motivate. You now have the SAM process.

Taking the first step to talk to a professional about your challenges is a very daunting task, well quite frankly it can be terrifying. You could literally be sitting in your vehicle outside of the therapists office and wanting to barf.

The fact that you are reading this article and potentially thinking of seeking help is a huge step, so you can go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back.

Looking for a therapist can be a scary thing. Searching for a stranger to trust your most intimate thoughts , fears and challenges to, is quite daunting. I feel you. I have actually been there myself.

Delving into these difficult feelings can ultimately be one of the most helpful ways to cope and move on.

Being in a relationship is hard work. In this post, I share 10 effective yet simple strategies to help your relationship grow. It is perfectly normal for your relationship to get stuck in a rut from time to time, the key though is to be aware of the “rut” and help each other through that challenge.

Reassessing where you are both at in the relationship is a great way to see what needs to be worked on but this task can seem daunting when you are feeling frustrated with each other.