Parent Counselling

Mental health is like a sponge. It draws everyone around us, and our lives get absorbed into this issue. Our schedules change, our conversations at the dinner table shift, and our emotional capacity becomes rocky. No matter how much love is shared between parent and child, mental health creates friction within a family.

When it comes to caregiving, parents carry a significant weight in helping their children. Watching our family members struggle with bullying, addictions, eating disorders, ADHD, or other stressors can leave us feeling helpless and overwhelmed. 

Offering support to a parent is one of the best parts of my job. While I work closely with individuals struggling with trauma and perinatal mental health, I know that I can only offer a small piece of healing. Caregivers like yourself are where true change can happen. Why is this? It’s because the commitment, nurturing and attachment you’ve formed over the years with your loved one is incredibly powerful. Even when working with the most skilled therapists, it would take years for them to create the level of change you could readily provide. 

What does Parent Counselling look like?

• Understanding your loved one’s mental health
  • Having a safe, non-judgemental space to talk about the difficulties of your loved one’s mental health
  • Discussing questions about your family members’ struggles
  • Acknowledging the impact of your loved one’s struggles on your well-being 
• Addressing parenting blocks: 
  • Taking a close look at what gets in the way of being the parent you wish to be (e.g. What are common triggers for you? When are you most susceptible to anger, frustration, or shutting down?) 
  • Reviewing your own family history and how this impacts the ways in which you nurture. This includes exploring your traumas and childhood experiences, which get triggered during parenting. 
• Improving attachment with your loved one: 
  • Using skills such as validation and emotion coaching to reduce intense conflict
  • Learning coping strategies to manage your own emotions during crises
• Establishing boundaries: 
  • Practicing assertive ways of communication
  • Learning to create a balance between supporting and enabling
  • Finding the right strategies to set limits within your family unit 

EFFT Caregiver Workshops: 

Kasi Shan Therapy offers emotion-focused family therapy workshops throughout the year in helping parents and caregivers to: 

• Recognize effective versus ineffective caregiving strategies
• Identify your own emotional response in moments of conflict (and learn strategies to find more balance) 
• Gain emotion coaching skills so that you can feel more confident in supporting your family member
• Learn strategies to reduce difficult behaviours. 
• Practice therapeutic apologies to heal traumas and old wounds that continue to affect the relationship. 

This workshop is available to all caregivers (parents, spouses, extended family).