Resources & Insights
Counselling Resources & Blog
Insights, tools, and support from the registered clinical counsellors at
Safe Haven Counselling in Surrey, BC
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Counsellor vs Psychologist vs Psychotherapist in BC: Who Should You See?
Counsellor, psychologist, or psychotherapist? Learn what each title means in BC and what to check before booking, including whether your benefits will cover it.
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How Long Does Grief Last? Honest Answers to the Questions Grieving People Ask
There’s no set timeline for grief, but there is change. Learn why grief stays with us, how our capacity to carry it grows, and what it means to slowly build a life around loss.
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Understanding Trauma Bonding: Breaking Free and Healing
Most people look at an abusive relationship and ask, Why don’t they just leave? But when you are inside it, you know it doesn’t feel like a choice at all. It feels like an addiction.
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How to Recognize Avoidant Attachment Early in Dating: Signs to Notice Before You Get Hooked
Dating often begins with hope, excitement, and the thrill of possibility. When someone shows up attentive, emotionally open, and deeply present, it’s easy to exhale and settle into the feeling of connection.
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Parentified Child: The Hidden Burden of Growing Up Too Soon
Do you find yourself taking care of everyone else’s feelings—your partner’s, your friends’, even your boss’s—while quietly pushing your own needs aside?
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Understanding Avoidant Attachment: Breaking Down Emotional Walls
In this post, we’re exploring the key traits and causes of avoidant attachment, how it shows up in relationships, and what you can do to start breaking down those emotional walls.
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What Is My Attachment Style? A Beginner’s Guide to Understanding Yourself
Ever wonder why some relationships feel secure and others leave you anxious, avoidant, or confused — even with people you care about?
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Emotional Boundaries: What They are and How to Create Them
When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. Learn what emotional boundaries really are and how to build them.
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Why Some People Dread Winter: Coping with Seasonal Affective Disorder
As the days grow shorter and temperatures drop, many people notice changes in their mood, energy, and motivation; if you tend to feel more tired, irritable, withdrawn, or sad during the winter months, you’re not alone.
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Status Anxiety: What If You’re Already Enough?
Status anxiety can leave you feeling as though you are always falling behind. Learn why it happens and how to build self-worth beyond achievement and approval.
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Attachment Styles: What Everyone Needs to Know
Attachment theory is a psychological understanding of human behaviour in relationship. Many psychotherapists will talk about it, or at least consider it, when working with clients.
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How to Stop Feeling “Too Much” for Other People
If you’ve ever felt the tension between wanting to be seen and fearing rejection, this isn’t a personality flaw. It’s a wound — and it’s one that deserves care.
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Is this a Midlife Crisis or Depression?
Are you in your 40s or 50s and feeling empty and low for no apparent reason? If so, you may be in the throes of a midlife crisis.
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How to Forgive Your Parents and Heal Your Attachment Wounds
If you’re in therapy and starting to explore attachment wounds or early childhood traumas, it’s normal to experience a surge of unexpected emotions—especially towards your parents or primary caregivers.
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Why Do I Always Think the Worst? How to Calm Catastrophic Thoughts
Your mind spins out of control, imagining worst-case scenarios until you ask yourself, “why do I always think the worst?”
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How to Deal With Grief When the World Has Moved On
Grief In the first days after a loss, people often gather around you. They send messages, bring food, attend the funeral, and ask what you need. Then, sometimes within only a few weeks, they return to their own lives. But grief has barely begun. You are still waking each morning into the shock of a…
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How to Heal After Betrayal (Even When Trust Feels Impossible)
Relationships Betrayal changes more than the way you see another person. It can change the way you understand your relationship, your memories, and even yourself. Perhaps you discovered that someone you trusted had been lying to you. Perhaps a partner shared something private, broke an important agreement, or maintained a hidden part of their life….
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How to Stop Overthinking When You Feel Trapped in Your Own Mind
Anxiety Your body’s tired, but your brain is on high alert; cycling through the same thoughts, scenarios, and what-ifs. Yet despite your best efforts, you don’t know how to stop overthinking. You replay conversations from earlier in the day. Then, you second-guess decisions you’ve already made. Before you know it, you’re bracing yourself for outcomes…
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Why Do I Cry So Easily? Understanding Emotional Sensitivity
Many people experience periods of heightened emotional sensitivity — here’s what’s behind it and how to respond with more compassion.
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Why Can’t I Relax? The Hidden Link Between TMJ, Jaw Pain, and Anxiety
Anxiety Ever catch yourself clenching your jaw without realizing it? Or wake up with an aching face, wondering what happened overnight? You’re not alone. For many people, jaw tension and TMJ (temporomandibular joint disorder) pain aren’t just physical issues; they’re deeply connected to stress and anxiety. We don’t always think of mental health as something…
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Why Do I Feel So Anxious at Night? Understanding Night-Time Anxiety
All day, you kept it together — showing up, handling the to-do list, smiling when needed. But now it’s quiet, the lights are low, and your thoughts are anything but calm.
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Talking It Out: 7 Ways to Better Communicate with Your Partner
One of the most common reasons couples seek counselling is not because they don’t love each other — but because they no longer feel heard, understood, or emotionally connected.
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Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS): The Therapy Everyone is Talking About
Internal Family Systems Therapy is based on the idea that the mind is naturally made up of different inner parts.
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Why Self-Love is a Necessary Part of Loving Others
Self-love is often misunderstood. It’s commonly associated with confidence, positivity, or self-esteem—but at its core, self-love is about relationship.
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Why Do I Struggle to Let Go of Past Relationships?
Why do we still look up our exes on social media, even years later, curious about who they’re with and what they’re doing?
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Women in Midlife: Strategies for Growth
Are you a woman in midlife? Hold on tight: there’s a wild ride ahead. It’s not good and it’s not bad. It IS whatever you choose to make it.
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Why Friendships Matter (And How to Maintain Yours)
One thing I have learned across the years as I have rolled in and out of seasons of community is the value of friendships.
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Have You Met Your Inner Child?
Self-Esteem “The most sophisticated people I’ve ever known had one thing in common: they were all in touch with their inner children.” – Jim Henson Most of us go through life without realizing that there’s a small, vulnerable part inside us, a part that holds the essence of our childhood self. This part, often referred…
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Healing Your Anxious Attachment Style: 10 Tools for Growth
Many people experience periods of heightened emotional sensitivity — here’s what’s behind it and how to respond with more compassion.
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Your Attachment Style and How It Shows Up in Relationships
Relationships Do you know your attachment style? Knowing and understanding how you relate to others via your attachment style will help you to create an emotionally safe and healthy relationship for yourself and your partner.Emotional safety is a foundational and necessary state of being for any successful romantic relationship. When people in relationship feel safe…
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Becoming Securely Attached: Navigating Attachment Styles In Love
Relationships “Help! Why do I keep choosing the wrong partner?” This is something many clients ask when they are trying to find lasting love. They notice themselves being drawn to partners with similar patterns and repeatedly ending up with the same painful outcome. It isn’t all in their heads. As human beings, we are naturally…
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Dating in Midlife: How to Trust Yourself and Choose Differently
Dating differently begins with learning to stay connected to yourself while you get to know someone else.
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Journaling Techniques for Busy People: How to Let Go in Five Minutes a Day
Anxiety Most people don’t avoid journaling because they don’t care about their inner world. They avoid it because they’re already overwhelmed. The idea of sitting down with a blank page can feel like one more thing to do, another demand on an already crowded mind. You may tell yourself you don’t have the time, the…
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How’s Your Sense of Worthiness?
Have you ever paused to wonder why you don’t pursue the things you want most in life? Why you hold yourself back, settle for less, or assume certain possibilities aren’t meant for you?
These patterns may be connected to your sense of worthiness. -
Emotional Neglect: The Invisible Childhood Wounds That Shape Us
Relationships Trauma is a prevalent topic these days. Look no further than Instagram and TikTok and you’ll be exposed to an abundance of posts about complex PTSD, emotional dysregulation, and dissociation. There’s a lot of information available—not all of it accurate—yet trauma has become an umbrella term for so many experiences that it can be…
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Attachment in Relationships: How EFT Helps Couples Reconnect and Heal
When couples seek counselling, it’s rarely just about the arguments. It’s about the longing underneath — to feel seen, understood, respected, or close again.
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Mind Matters: The Truth Behind Procrastination
Mental Health Procrastination is often misunderstood as just laziness or poor time management. However, it is actually a complex psychological behaviour that is deeply rooted in our mental and emotional makeup. Recognizing and addressing this behaviour can lead to significant personal growth and achievement. Procrastination is not just a simple act of delaying tasks; it’s…
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Regain Your Centre: Effective Grounding Techniques for Anxiety
Explore grounding techniques for anxiety and learn how breathing, movement, mindfulness, and sensory tools can help you feel more centred.
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Is Menopause Hurting Your Relationship? 5 Ways to Rebuild Intimacy
You love your partner, but lately the relationship doesn’t feel the same. The closeness that once felt natural now feels harder to reach.
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The Work of Grief: Making it Through the First Few Months
Grief The Honest Truth About Living with Grief In the early months after a loss, time stops making sense. Days feel long and heavy. Simple tasks take enormous effort. You may wake up each morning unsure how you’re supposed to keep going when everything you knew about your life has shifted. Grief doesn’t just live…
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Why Facing Your Biggest Fear Will Be Your Greatest Breakthrough
If setting emotional boundaries feels confusing, exhausting, or difficult to maintain, counselling can help you build self-trust and healthier relationships at your own pace, in a supportive and grounded environment.
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10 Ways To Ease Depression With Only Your Pen
If you would like to try journaling to see if it helps, I suggest giving yourself at least 20 minutes a day to sit and write.
