Show Notes:

Today we are kicking off our series on therapy for First Responders & Front Line Workers and the topics we’re hitting in this episode include: what therapy is all about, where to find a counsellor, and what to look for in a counsellor.

What a therapist is: This will vary depending on where you live. Here in British Columbia, and in many provinces throughout Canada, counselling and therapy are not “regulated” professions. What that means is that literally anyone can go out and call themselves a counsellor or a therapist without having any specific training, experience or demonstrable competency whatsoever. In other professions like nursing or medicine or even massage therapy, someone cannot call themselves a nurse or a doctor or an RMT unless they are registered with the appropriate professional college. This system ensures some amount of protections for the general public that when they are seeing someone with a specific designation they know that have met some minimum competency criteria to operate under that designation. Unfortunately in counselling, no such publicly held system exists to protect those seeking support at times where they are most vulnerable

** If you want to get involved in voicing your concern about public safety and advocate for professional regulation, check out the links provided below under “Additional Resources” to organizations working in various provinces across Canada to lobby provincial governments to do better. **

If you live in one of the provinces or states where counselling is regulated, it will be easier to find a therapist who is qualified and competent. If you live in BC or in an unregulated area, your efforts in finding a qualified counsellor will be a bit more difficult. 

When we talk about what therapy is about, it’s about finding safety with a professional who works to serve your best interests by ensuring their own competency and credibility in whatever area of practice you are needing support in. It is really important that we identify the shortcomings of our system so that we can seek out explicitly the kind of support that is most likely to result in beneficial outcomes. It let’s us go in with our eyes wide open, and not feel as tripped up when we see some of the challenges for exactly what they are. 

What therapy is for: Therapy, when done right, is intended to be a safe space to talk through and make sense of the various challenges you’re facing, alongside someone who is trained to walk you through that process in ways that are grounded in what we know to be effective from research. Much like many other medical professions, therapy is about listening to concerns, assessing needs and triaging interventions to support recovery and healing. Now, that’s a broad example and can apply to all kinds of different concerns, whether it’s trauma and PTSD related issues, or relationship concerns, or mood related challenges, or addiction issues, or general stress and difficulty coping, counselling works to give you a space to step back from the busy chaos of life, grow some clarity and work to develop tools to meet needs and make change. 

What therapy is about (and isn’t about): Many people think that “sharing” in therapy means divulging every minute painful detail of our lives. Reliving our traumatic experiences. Feeling all the feels of every hardship ever experienced. That’s not therapy. While therapy may involve some amount of some of these things, therapy is NOT therapeutic or effective if we spend every minute drowning in all the hard stuff. Therapy is a balancing act of acknowledging the hard, finding space for clarity, feeling what we need to feel to support us in making choices about what we need and navigating change. A therapist’s role is to help us hold that balancing act – to not let us drown in the hardness of it all. To hold the tension of all that is hard with all that is good; all that’s been lost with all that’s been gained; all that’s been hopeless with all that is hopeful. 

How to know when counselling is right for you: There is never a bad time. You may have times where your needs are not as acute or high, these tend to be times where we’re less inclined to seek therapy because we’re doing ok – but it also tends to be the time where we could be doing some really meaningful work from a place of greater capacity and internal strength to be preventative and proactive in supporting our wellness going forward. For example, if I have a history of depression but right now I am not feeling depressed, it might seem like I should wait to seek counselling for when I’m struggling…but what if I spent this time while I’m in my well place working to develop a plan for when I’m not doing so well? What if I used the energy, motivation and capacity I have in my well time to invest in developing some resources and supports, some interests and self-care, some strategies and tools for managing my depression long-term. Wouldn’t that be better than waiting for when my mood drops again and then desperately seeking out someone to help pull me out of it?

There isn’t a wrong time to seek counselling, but all too often our tendency is to wait until we’re in the deepest darkest hole possible. The hard thing about waiting for that place, is that it’s so much harder to get out. It takes longer. And it can feel too slow. On top of it, given some of the practical limitations we’ve already identified in getting into seeing someone and accessing support, the process of recovering can be even more delayed and prolonged. 

My suggestion would be to use the Beating the Breaking Point Indicators Checklist and Triage Guide to help guide you. If you are showing moderate to severe ratings on the checklist, you would benefit from seeking professional support. If you are in the mild to moderate range of the ratings, you would benefit from engaging in some pro-active and preventative measures to support your sustainability to help keep you from going down when hit by more stressors, or as the seasons change and it’s gloomy outside, or other factors hit. 

If you are in that mild to moderate range and not sure that therapy is the right fit right now, I would also encourage you to consider jumping in on our next round of the Self-Care Dare which is an intensive 5 day challenge designed specifically for First Responders and Front Line Workers to hone their self-care and grow their tool kit for wellness and sustainability. We’ll be launching the next dare in October 19th, so keep an eye out for that or sign up for our email newsletters to be the first to access registration.

Episode Challenge:

Check out the Beating the Breaking Point Indicators Checklist & Triage Guide and assess your needs for support. If you sit in the mild to moderate range, consider joining the Self-Care Dare 5 Day Challenge for First Responders and Front Line Workers to get a jump start on building a bombproof self-care plan to keep you sustainable.

Additional Resources:

Find the original blog posts on our clinic website (as well as a bunch of other awesome ar...