Affordable Counselling for any issue
Living Systems Counselling offers affordable counselling to individuals, couples, and families. People from all walks of life seek help with their personal dilemmas. Some of the problems people bring to counselling are anxiety, depression, physical illness, marital discord, behavioural problems, family relationship dilemmas, parents concerned about their children, and workplace difficulties.
Clients begin to take up the challenge of thinking in new ways about the difficult situations they face and of finding thoughtful ways to direct their own lives. While many people initially prefer weekly appointments, they quickly learn that the real effort lies outside the clinical hour in their important relationships, and they have clinical sessions less frequently.
Duration of Counselling
The length of time in counselling varies with the individual and the situation. The pacing of your counselling is up to you. Appropriate pacing of sessions makes counselling more affordable. Low-cost counselling is not limited to a specific number of sessions or pacing.
Quality of Counselling
Our counsellors and interns abide by a code of ethics as prescribed by their professional association and the British Columbia Association of Clinical Counsellors (BCACC).
Living Systems Counselling places a high value on the quality of counselling and professional competence. If you want to speak to someone about the quality of care, whether you are delighted or have had some difficulty or complaint, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Katherine White, Executive Director, at katie.white@livingsystems.ca.
Katherine White
Executive Director
Marriage and Couple Counselling
Marriages and couples vary in their level of fusion or differentiation. Couples that are more fused over-and underreact to each other, are more easily threatened by changes or differences in the other, fight about or avoid their differences, more frequently misinterpret each other, are more overtly emotionally intense or/or distant, or are unclear or inconsistently rigid about their positions on important issues in the marriage.
Marriage and couple counselling from a Bowen Family Systems theory perspective aims to help the couple better understand the patterns that govern their relationship and to choose healthier ways of relating to one another. Our approach to couple counselling may help each person in the relationship learn to tolerate and accept differences, be more self-directed, allow more room for each other to be themselves, have lower levels of dependence, and have a wider range of personal and emotional topics that they can talk about. If each person can learn to clearly define themselves on important issues in the relationship, be guided by thought rather than emotion and distinguish when to compromise and when to maintain a bottom line, sustain a sense of humor, and adapt to stressful events, the relationship will be more satisfying and with few symptoms.
Click here to find out more: Contact a Living Systems location nearest you today.
Counselling for Parents
Counselling for parents aims to provide parents with a broader lens of how to think about their child/adolescent’s well being. It shifts the focus to the parent(s) rather than trying to change the young person. Parents may learn to cope with their feelings and reactions towards their symptomatic child/adolescent and to consider their role in the family problem. Counselling is aimed at promoting more autonomy and responsibility in your child/adolescent by how you manage yourself. This is not a quick fix, but with changes to old patterns of interaction, the child may gradually improve the way he/she manages life’s challenges.
Click here to find out more: Contact a Living Systems location nearest you today.
Counselling for Anxiety & Depression
A systems approach to dealing with stress, anxiety and/or depression would invite the individual to take a broader view of his/her situation. A systems approach to counselling asks the client to understand how he or she functions in their own family and social groups and how things evolved over time.
Individuals are encouraged to notice how the situation varies over time and in different settings or circumstances as this can provide clues to allow the client to better direct their lives. If you suffer from Anxiety and Depression, our Counsellors can help. Contact a Living Systems location nearest you today.
Relationship Counselling
A systems approach to relationship issues would invite individuals to look at things differently. People in a relationship respond to each other in very automatic ways, some consciously, some un-consciously. Often the issue is in the interaction, in the relationship patterns. These mostly automatic responses (or reactions) to each other can become dysfunctional.
The relationship patterns are influenced by outside stressors (money, work, tiredness, etc) and other important relationships (kids, parents, siblings, bosses, friends). Our goal is to help a person think about how they react to various situations and choose healthier ways to respond. If you have Relationship Issues, our Counsellors can help. Contact a Living Systems location nearest you today.
Substance use counselling
An addiction can be understood as a symptom that reflects the level of difficulty one is having in their important relationships and with other stressors in their life (e.g. health, work, finances).
A systems approach to counselling would address any physiological dependencies, but also how one functions in their relationship systems, as well as other life stressors to get at the root of the problem(s). If you suffer with Addiction(s), our Counsellors can help. Contact a Living Systems location nearest you today.
Low self-esteem, assertiveness, anger, communication or career issues
A systems approach to counselling to working on these types of issues would involve understanding how one acts and reacts in the system, or in relationship to others, whether it is with family, friends or in the workplace.
It is very common for individuals to want to avoid conflict, rejection, not rock the boat or stir things up. As a result, an individual can learn to give in and go along with the group or another person. This process of giving in, going along, or wanting to please can contribute to lower self-esteem, frustration and anger, and communication issues, at home or at work. It is not simply a matter of being more assertive.
Our approach to counselling would encourage the individual to identify dysfunctional patterns of relating to others and then coach them on responding more effectively so they can better direct their lives. If you are suffering from interpersonal and career issues, our Counsellors can help. Contact a Living Systems location nearest you today.
