Couple and Family Counselling
Repair Your Relationships and Improve Communication
Do you find communicating with your partner, kids or loved ones difficult? Is it hard to talk about daily matters, or more complex situations without emotions escalating?
When communication becomes difficult or breaks down, people can become distressed and reactive, problems can seem unsolvable.
We all need a safe haven and a secure base to turn to when life gets difficult or presents us with challenges.
Attachment is an emotional tie or bond that provides the safety and comfort essential to a child or adolescent's development. Romantic relationships perform the same function creating intimate attachment bonds that lead to the development of secure and lasting relationships between adults.
This need for attachment is "hard wired" in the human brain. But when we experience disconnection, periods of prolonged or permanent separation, or worse, infidelity, attachment bonds can become frayed, injured or broken.
When we feel safe, secure and supported in our relationships, whether by parents, partners or family members, we develop a secure bond. The security of that bond provides individuals with a deep and lasting psychological resource.
It allows you to experience more positive emotions, be more patient, understanding, curious and tolerant, cope more effectively with stress, and express your emotions more safely and openly.
Indicators of a safe haven: Indicators of a secure base:
Distressed partners are always asking the same basic questions,
"Are you there for me? Do I matter to you?
Will you come when I need you, when I call?"
Dr. Sue Johnson
.
NEW!! We now offer Affordable Counselling at our Intern Counselling Clinic for just $45.00/hr.
Our Approach:
Emotionally Focused Couple and Family Therapy
Our therapeutic approach when working with couples is Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). Emotionally Focused Couples therapy helps couples learn to Understand Their Attachment History allowing them to better understand each other's attachment fears and needs, recognize cycles that lead to avoidance and emotional escalation, and Stop Overreacting to Emotional Triggers so they can heal attachment bonds and communicate in more helpful ways.
Emotionally Focused Family Therapy teaches, encourages and helps parents provide a safe haven and a secure base that allows kids to explore, build skills and engage in the world. This increases autonomy and confidence. It also allows kids the freedom to be vulnerable and express their needs so that they can participate and collaborate in family life.
These approaches can help you:
How can we help you?
Select a topic below to learn more:
Couple and Family Counselling
Individual Counselling
Intern Counselling Clinic: Affordable Counselling
At Five Star Wellbeing we believe quality counselling therapy should be affordable and accessible to everyone. We work with Masters Counselling programs to match clients in need of affordable therapy with therapists working toward certification.
All Interns are supervised by Derrick McEachern, an Approved Candidacy Supervisor with the Nova Scotia College of Counselling Therapists.
Get Started With Five Star Wellbeing Counselling
Feel confident you have the right support, tools and practices you need to achieve your goals.
Why we're different
At Five Star Wellbeing, we know wellbeing is more than an absence of problems.
Wellbeing can be understood as one’s psychological, social or physical ability to meet and manage challenges. It can be defined as “how people feel about and experience their daily lives.”
Wellbeing is different from happiness. It's possible to be unhappy and still have wellbeing. While we work together on what you are struggling with, we'll ensure you won't lose sight of your strengths and what's already working for you in your life.
Click on the boxes below to learn more.
Even when things aren't going well, people who have a sense of purpose and meaning in their lives are happier, more productive, more resilient and less likely to experience mental health problems.
What inspires you? What breaks your heart? Answers to questions like these will help you find things that give you purpose.
A few positive supportive relationships in your life can make a big difference. Social relationships act as a buffer against stress, improve immunity and cardiovascular function. They also protect against depression, anxiety and substance abuse.
Who can you rely upon when things are tough? Who can rely on you?
Mental health is dependent on physical health. Seventy-five percent of medical expenses come from mostly preventable illnesses. People who attend to their physical health experience less stress, take fewer sick days, are happier and more productive.
Do you provide your body with the right nutrients, rest and movement it needs to function optimally? To avoid mental and physical illness?
Financial wellbeing and mental health are closely linked. People with mental health problems are 3.5 times more likely to be in problem debt, and half of those in debt, have mental health problems.
How financially stable, secure and confident do you feel about your financial future?
Feeling a sense of connection and belonging to the communities we live and work in prevents loneliness, increases immunity and promotes positive mental health.
Do you feel emotionally and physically safe? Do you feel like you you matter? That you are relied on and cared for by the people in your community?
Stronger wellbeing is related to improved mental health.
The Five Star Wellbeing Assessment will help you understand where you are suffering, surviving or thriving in five areas of life.
Try it now for free. You'll receive personalized results and tips and tools to improve your quality of life and mental health.
Take the Five Star Wellbeing Assessment
Benefits of Counselling
For those seeking alternatives to medication, counselling is:
For those requiring medication:
Medication can help you turn down the volume. Counselling will help you change the channel.
Approved provider for:
Nova Scotia Victim Services Criminal Injuries Counselling Program
Nova Scotia Department of Community Services Child Welfare Services Program
Indigenous Services Canada Non-insured Health Benefits Program for First Nations and Inuit
Interim Federal Health Program
Public Service Commission of Canada