For Your Workplace

We've all heard the stories of Sigmund Freud, an Austrian Psychiatrist who started a clinical practice in 1886 in Vienna. He founded Psychoanalysis, a totally new approach to well-being that addressed mental health through talk therapy based on scientific research, rather than using a strictly medical model to reduce "pain or illness" with medicine. A lot has changed, including 130 years of research and evidence to support the efficacy of counselling, or talk therapy. 

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Did you know that Upper Island Counselling publishes an informative newsletter four times a year? Each issue of Live. Work.

This September 30^th, 2022 marks the 2^nd annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and Orange Shirt Day, an event that has been recognized annually since 2013. This is a day to honour and uphold survivors and intergenerational survivors of the residential school system, and to commemorate those who didn’t return home.

It’s already half-way through Pride Month! We wanted to take the opportunity to highlight some of the upcoming events happening in our community, share some resources, and talk about UIC’s commitment to providing a safe space for all. Pride Month recognizes the impact LGBTQ2S+ individuals have had locally and across the globe. It means many different things to people, it can be a celebration, but also a time of mourning and activism.

I have no doubt that over the past 2 years of living with Covid-19, feelings of fear and anxiety have surfaced for most of us. Sometimes these feelings can be overcome by anger, a natural response to a perceived threat. When anger takes over, our ability to reason and think logically decrease, while our instinctual motivation toward action can lead to confrontation.

A stressor refers to something in the environment that evokes an internal stress response. This environmental stressor could be something that poses a threat or challenge to your health, family, finances, schedule, or routine. When a stress response shows up it can be acute and intense or chronic. Your personal stress response is a dynamic process influenced by many variables including; coping style, support system, previous exposure to the stressor, underlying mental health concerns, personality traits, and cultural or systemic pressures.

On the 70^th anniversary of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Mental Health Week, the theme is Emotional Literacy. This includes the skills of naming, expressing, and coping with our emotions (the ones we like and the ones we don’t), and their importance for our overall mental health.

This quarterly newsletter is all about resiliency.  In these unprecedented times, we are finding that it is increasingly important to build resiliency and to ensure that we are taking care of both our physical and mental health.  If you would like to learn more, click on the link  www.uics/newsletter  and select February 2021.