Bear Creek Counselling & Psychology

08/22/2025

This month's blog post, by Fay, tackles the difficulty of owning our grief. 🧡

In 2014 I was at a grief seminar in Calgary when the facilitator and author of the Grief Recovery Method, John W. James, asked the audience to raise their hands if, “… they hate being lied to?” Everyone laughed and hands...

07/22/2025

This week's blog post is by Fay and explores the emotions of grief and melancholy. 🧡

The emptiness that incapacitates us through grief.

07/11/2025

Now accepting participants age 13+ for Minecraft Therapy! 🧡
Only 10 spots available; price is $30 per month. Call our office to enroll.

Minecraft Therapy requires teens to have their own Minecraft Bedrock account, headphones, a good quality internet connection, and commitment to attend weekly group meetings (in-game!). They will also have 24/7 access to the Bear Creek Realm where they can practice their skills learned in group sessions.

Therapeutic goals include social skills, creativity, self-expression, frustration tolerance, and problem solving. Sessions are facilitated by a registered psychologist.

06/20/2025

We are so excited for a new program coming to Bear Creek starting July 14, 2025 offering 30-minute sessions called First Aid Friday’s with Fay. Offered (funnily enough) on both Tuesdays and Fridays beginning at 8:00 a.m, these session are based on Psychological First Aid with both Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) or Solution-focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) approaches being used.

What does that mean for clients?

When one only has thirty minutes to talk with someone – the need for focused thought, communication and listening become so much more important.

So here are a few tips to prepare for 30-minute First Aid sessions:

- There will be no time to address multiple issues – so come prepared with that one, most important thing, which needs to be addressed today. Let go of items that can be left to a later date.
- Resist the temptation for long explanations or conversations that do not necessarily lead to resolution.
- This may be a to-the-point, straight-forward, frank discussion that offers first aid to a tender spot in your life that will help you through the day or weekend - but does not allow to search for why that spot is hurt. Discovery is for longer sessions.
- Your clinician will be both compassionate and straightforward – and will not be beating around the bush. You may be prodded for answers to difficult questions and challenged in behaviour and thought.

Together, our purpose is to get to the point quickly, focus on the most essential issues or situation, and take action.

We offer a safe environment to help people acquire the skills, resilience, & insight to thrive.

02/08/2025

This week's blog is about Gottman's Four Horsemen: how to identify if your relationship is in trouble! 🧡

John Gottman is a highly sought after marriage therapist who has researched couples arguing for many years. He started out monitoring couples’ blood pressure as they became more and more argumentative. He began to predic...

02/07/2025

A huge welcome to Jen! Jen joins our team with lots of experience in play therapy and thoroughly enjoys working through difficult emotions with little humans. She also works from a narrative framework with her adult clients, making her process an ideal approach to facing those emotional experiences that are too big for words.

02/06/2025

Now on Bluesky!! 🧡
Come follow us at https://bsky.app/profile/bearcreekcouns.bsky.social

01/18/2025

This week's blog post helps us understand what anxiety looks like, as opposed to worry. It's part of a series of blogs exploring and identifying our emotions and is based on the book "Atlas of the Heart" by Brené Brown. 🧡

Most of us are fairly familiar with the feeling of anxiety, but for the sake of clarity I'll include Brené Brown's description from her book Atlas of the Heart. She describes anxiety as the feeling of escalating loss of ...

11/27/2024

This week's blog post is about accurately identifying the difference between stress and overwhelm, and then coping well with them. 🧡

Stress and overwhelm are both really familiar emotions. Especially during the busier times of year, like when fall begins to run into winter and holidays begin to loom ominously on the horizon.

11/26/2024

Now accepting registrations for our "Investigation" Group (age 18-21) which will start in January. Contact us to register.

This 6-week program uses the D&D 5e ruleset and is better suited to individuals who already have some experience building characters in 5th edition and are open to exploring personality through group play. Cost is approximately $90 per 1 1/2 hour group session.

offers a safe environment to help people acquire the skill, resilience, and insight to thrive.

11/05/2024

New post up on our blog today! "In Between and Waiting" talks about what it looks like to wait well when we're stuck waiting - especially if you're not sure whether it'll be good news or bad news. 🧡⏳

08/28/2024

This week's post explains what "embodiment" means and how to create more understanding for our irrational reactions. 🧡

There's been more talk in recent years about our experiences being "embodied," but rarely have I seen anyone break down what this means. Let me give you an overview.