C&C Counselling offers a complete range of therapy approaches. Discover more about each of the follow six therapies we offer to our clients.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) deals with how your current thoughts and behaviour affect you. It is based on the premise that our thoughts, not just external situations, cause us to feel and behave the way we do in certain situations. This form of therapy focuses on changing one or more behaviours by changing the way we think about or respond emotionally to events. By implementing the strategies involved in this type of therapy, we can feel and act better even if the situation does not change, and we can feel more prepared to respond to future stressors more effectively.

CBT is considered among the most rapid in terms of achieving results many issues, including: depression, panic attacks, generalized anxiety, phobias, socially-based worries, insomnia, stress, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, relationship challenges and decision-making difficulties.

(source: National Association of Member Login Area Cognitive-Behavioral Therapists)

Impact therapy

Impact Therapy is an approach to counselling that shows respect for the way clients learn, change, and develop. The emphasis is on making counselling clear, concrete, and thought-provoking. It is a multi-sensory approach: change or impact, comes from not only verbal, but also visual and kinesthetic exchanges. This form of therapy serves as a solid bridge between theories and creative techniques that provides a clear way to understand the process and progress of a therapy session. It calls for the client to be active, thinking, seeing and experiencing during a session. Helping clients think rationally about their issues is the goal of an impact therapist. Challenging clients’ self-talk and using analogies, props, movement, and additional chairs help make Impact Therapy sessions engaging and beneficial. Dependent relationships are rare in Impact Therapy, since the counsellor is involving the client in many different ways.

(source: Impact Therapy Associates)

Existential Therapy

Existential counselling incorporates a view of people as being in a process of continual change and transformation. The existential approach is about exploring meaning and value, and learning to live in accordance with one’s own ideals, priorities, and values. The goal of the therapist is to understand, work with, and reflect back to the client their own sense of meaning, assumptions and underlying life themes. This is meant to increase clarity and direction for the client. Existential counselling endorses a holistic view of a person and works to explore with the client, their experiences with respect to the following four dimensions: physical, social, psychological and spiritual. It is well-suited to the needs of someone attempting to clarify their own personal ideology, facing significant personal adversity or life change, and those needing to re-evaluate a direction taken in life.

(source: Counselling Resource)

Reiki Therapy (Currently not offering)

Reiki is based on the premise that the body is more than just a collection of functioning parts, and that everything, including the human body, has a frequency, or energy field. It is a natural therapy that gently balances the life-force energies/fields and brings health and well-being to the recipient. Reiki is a form of energy therapy that is facilitated by way of either light touch, or no touch. The effects of physical, psychological, and emotional distress are dissolved within the body’s inherent system of energy. Reiki has become an increasingly popular Eastern-influenced therapeutic treatment in mainstream Western society (you will see it offered in many spas and health centres). Its effects are known to be largely relaxation, reduced stress and revitalization. Reiki is a form of therapy that is complimentary to most physical and mental health treatments. While it is not meant to replace medical or psychiatric treatment, it can serve to enhance the benefits of both before, during, or after treatment.

Reiki therapy is beneficial on its own, or can be customized to complement counselling sessions at C&C Counselling Services upon request.

(Source: Canadian Reiki Association)

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

Mindfulness is another Eastern-influenced philosophy that has formed the basis for many therapies used increasingly in mainstream Western society’s physical and mental health services today. The most popularly known form of this therapy is the Stress Reduction and Relaxation Program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre, developed by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. (author of Full Catastrophe Living). People can use Mindfulness to better connect with their emotional, psychological and physical states for the purpose of uncovering nuances of change in ourselves and our environment. In doing this, we can be more aware of these changes that are meant to alert us, so we can adjust our thoughts and emotional and behavioural responses to situations more appropriately. By practicing these skills continuously, we can prevent relapse into past behaviours that have resulted in non-beneficial outcomes, and select behaviours that permit full engagement in our lives.

Mindfulness-based therapies have been used to help people deal with stress, anxiety, depression, Borderline Personality Disorder, mood disorders and chronic pain.

(Source: MBCT.com)

Play Therapy (Currently not offering)

Credentials: Current Status in Certification Process: Play Therapy Intern- Completed all three levels of training in play therapy through the Canadian Association of Child and Play Therapy (CACPT) December 2011
Play therapy is an effective form of therapy for children where play is used as a “language” or “medium” for children to express and better understand their feelings. “It is a therapeutic approach for human service professionals and as stated by Virginia Axline, “provides an opportunity for the child to ‘play out’ his or her feelings and problems just as, in certain adult therapy, an individual ‘talks out’ his or her difficulties”. A child’s self-understanding is one of the goals in this approach”. (Cite from CACPT Website: CACPT Mission Statement)

With increased opportunity through play therapy for this expression and self- understanding, distress (typically demonstrated through behaviour for children) is able to be better diffused and managed by both child and parent. Play therapy treatment for children will include parent-child and family sessions given the importance of integrating the child’s therapeutic experience and learning within the family system and the importance of facilitating improved communication and family relationships/ functioning.
http://www.cacpt.com/site

Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR)

Credentials: Completed EMDRIA- Approved, Canadian Basic EMDR training provided through the Niagara Stress and Trauma Clinic June 2013

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) is an integrative psychotherapy approach that has been extensively researched and proven effective for the treatment of trauma, namely Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), as well as many other types of psychological distress.

The model on which EMDR is based, Adaptive Information Processing (AIP), supports that our brain has its own natural adaptive healing response to experiences of distress. When we are not able to move forward due to psychological stressors or traumatic experiences, the model proposes that this is due to either the maladaptive coding of, or incomplete processing of traumatic or adverse life experiences to the point where our ability to process such experiences in an adaptive manner is impaired and the memory is “stuck” at mental, emotional and even physical levels.

The eight-phase, three-pronged process of EMDR therapy facilitates the resumption of normal information processing and integration by way of simulating the back and forth eye movement that is similar to that seen in REM sleep. No longer specific to eye movement, the back and forth movement has been successfully replicated through sound and tactile mediums (headphones, tapping, and handheld sensors) and is now referred to as Bilateral Simulation (BLS). “This treatment approach, which targets past experience, current triggers, and future potential challenges, results in the alleviation of presenting symptoms, a decrease or elimination of distress from the disturbing memory, improved view of the self, relief from bodily disturbance, and resolution of present and future anticipated triggers.”

http:www.edria.org http://stressandtraumarelief.com/trauma-therapy.php