Talk Therapy with Vera

Talk Therapy with Vera Reaching out for support is a courageous and admirable step; it's essential to find a therapist who'

Circle back to these when you need them!These affirmations have helped me over the years, and I still use them in my own...
08/25/2025

Circle back to these when you need them!

These affirmations have helped me over the years, and I still use them in my own personal life and with my clients.

Please take what you need, rewrite it to suit your needs better, or spend time truly accepting and understanding why these are important.

Some of the hardest work we will do is finally allowing these to ring true and help re-write the narratives stuck in our minds and bodies from history.

I’m rooting for you!

When your parent says “You never help me,” it’s easy to spiral into guilt.But guilt isn’t always the truth, It’s often a...
08/21/2025

When your parent says “You never help me,” it’s easy to spiral into guilt.
But guilt isn’t always the truth, It’s often an old wound being poked.

In that moment, you can:
✨ Remind yourself: I do help.
✨ Self-soothe: touch something grounding, take a breath, step outside.
✨ Walk away if you need to, without internalizing the shame.

You can still care for someone without abandoning yourself.

And sometimes, the most loving thing you can say is,
“I can’t help you right now.”

Therapy isn’t the only place healing happens.Sometimes it starts with a book that puts words to feelings you’ve carried ...
08/20/2025

Therapy isn’t the only place healing happens.

Sometimes it starts with a book that puts words to feelings you’ve carried for years.

Books can’t replace therapy, but they can deepen it. When we read language for your pain, we didn’t know how to verbalize before, stories that make you feel less alone, and tools you can bring into sessions.

What’s one book that’s helped you heal?

When a parent leaves for another family, it’s not just “something that happened between the adults.”It’s a wound that ca...
08/15/2025

When a parent leaves for another family, it’s not just “something that happened between the adults.”

It’s a wound that can make anyone, at any age, feel like they were never chosen.

In many Asian diaspora families, this pain is often met with silence or brushed aside to “keep the peace.” But when your needs are dismissed, the hurt doesn’t just fade; it shapes how safe you feel in relationships, even years later.

Therapy isn’t about forcing yourself to “get over it.”
It’s about:
✨ Naming the truth of what you went through.
✨ Letting your inner child’s voice be heard.
✨ Learning that your worth was never tied to your parents’ choices.

If this resonates, know you are not alone in carrying this story. You deserved to be seen, heard, and chosen always.

Book a free consultation with me to see if therapy is right for you at this time or if we are a right fit!

If you grew up in a family where emotions were either tightly managed or suddenly explosive… you’re not alone.In Interna...
08/12/2025

If you grew up in a family where emotions were either tightly managed or suddenly explosive… you’re not alone.

In Internal Family Systems (IFS), we understand this through parts — specifically, the Managers and Firefighters.

✨ The Manager part is the one that tells you to stay in control. Work harder. Don’t slip up. Don’t be a burden. Be good.
🔥 The Firefighter part? It charges in when something emotional breaks and will do anything to shut the pain down fast.

Both parts are protectors.
They developed in homes where showing too much emotion wasn’t safe or simply not allowed.

But here’s the thing:
You’re not a child anymore.
And these parts?
They don’t need to run your life.

There is a deeper Self within you that is calm, curious and compassionate, who can begin to hold what those parts are so afraid of.

Healing doesn’t mean getting rid of your parts. It means befriending them.

It means saying: “You’ve done so much for me. You don’t have to carry this alone anymore.”

🌱 Be gentle with your protectors.
They were just trying to keep you safe.

If this hits close to home, you’re not broken. You’re human. And likely, overwhelmed.That nightly ritual might not be ab...
08/08/2025

If this hits close to home, you’re not broken. You’re human. And likely, overwhelmed.

That nightly ritual might not be about “bad habits” , it might be about quieting the chaos inside.

Numbing the exhaustion. Distracting from the feelings that feel too heavy to hold.

In therapy, we don’t rip away your coping. We get curious about it.
✨ What are you protecting yourself from feeling?
✨ What part of you is asking for relief and how else can we soothe it, slowly?

You don’t have to quit cold turkey. You don’t have to be perfect.
You just have to start where you are with honesty and gentleness.

Because even the part of you that’s scared to stop is trying to keep you safe.

And we can work with that.

Book a free consultation to see if therapy is right for you!

In many Asian diaspora families, we learn early how to "hold it together” by being strong, quiet, and not making things ...
08/05/2025

In many Asian diaspora families, we learn early how to "hold it together” by being strong, quiet, and not making things harder for anyone else. So we put certain feelings away, tuck them into a metaphorical storage room, and lock the door.

In Internal Family Systems (IFS), these hidden parts are called exiles: tender, wounded parts of us that were told, “Not now,” or “That’s too much.”

The healing doesn't come from forcing those doors open. It comes from slowly, gently returning to calm, curious, and compassionate.

👉IFS teaches us that you don’t have to fight or fix your past to begin healing. Sometimes it starts with a quiet moment of noticing, “Something is in there... and I think it matters.”

🌱 Be gentle with yourself. Especially with the parts you were told to ignore.

Want to learn more about how we can use IFS in therapy? Book a free consultation with me and let’s talk!

At a memorial recently, I found myself grieving more than just the loss being honoured.I was grieving what my family nev...
08/02/2025

At a memorial recently, I found myself grieving more than just the loss being honoured.

I was grieving what my family never got to have.

Why couldn’t my family be like that?
Why didn’t we get the kind of healing others talk about?

But then I remembered:
We’re only ever hearing a version of someone’s story.
And in our families, especially in the Asian diaspora, there are so many things left unsaid, so many apologies that never come.

In therapy, I often ask:
✨ “If your parents were in the room, what would you tell them?”
✨ “Are you still hoping they’ll finally say sorry?”

These are hard questions.
But they can help us find clarity around what we need, what we missed, and how we want to move forward.

Yes, you can feel jealous.
Yes, your grief is valid.
And yes, you still get to decide the kind of ancestor, parent, or elder you want to become.

You don’t have to fix your family to choose compassion.

Ever feel like you’re ten different people in one body?Same. That’s why I love Internal Family Systems (IFS).IFS is like...
07/30/2025

Ever feel like you’re ten different people in one body?
Same. That’s why I love Internal Family Systems (IFS).

IFS is like realizing you’re not just a cat with nine lives, you’re nine different cats.
🐱 One’s ready to fight.
😿 One’s still hiding under the bed from 1998.
😼 One’s pretending nothing ever bothers them.
And somehow, you’re all in the same nervous system.

IFS doesn’t try to “fix” your parts. It helps you get curious about them.
Because every part of you, even the avoidant one, the perfectionist, the people-pleaser, had a reason to exist.

Especially for those of us in the Asian diaspora, where survival often meant shutting down or splitting off parts of ourselves...
IFS offers a way home.

Want to learn more about your “nine lives”? Book a free consultation to learn more about therapy and Internal Family Systems!

Codependency. It’s when love turns into over-functioning. When your self-worth depends on how well you’re holding everyo...
07/25/2025

Codependency. It’s when love turns into over-functioning. When your self-worth depends on how well you’re holding everyone else together.

In many Asian diaspora families or relationships, it can show up quietly:
🌱 as people-pleasing,
🌱 as guilt when setting boundaries,
🌱 as feeling responsible for someone else’s emotions.

But this isn’t who you are; it’s a survival pattern you learned to stay connected.

Healing doesn’t mean you stop caring.
It means you stop abandoning yourself in the process.

✨ Bottom line, codependency can be a slippery slope to casting yourself aside for the sake of another. It can appear as though you are surrendering when, in fact, you are controlling the situation by over-relying on a dynamic.

Want to learn more? Book a free consultation to see if therapy is right for you!

If you're the child of immigrants, especially in the Asian diaspora, you might know what it feels like to be the emotion...
07/22/2025

If you're the child of immigrants, especially in the Asian diaspora, you might know what it feels like to be the emotional translator, the fixer, the one who had to grow up too fast.

This post is for the inner child who still thinks:
“If I fix it, maybe I’ll finally be safe.”
If this speaks to you, you're not alone. 💛

Swipe through for 4 gentle ways to begin releasing the fixer role while still honouring yourself and your family.

When you are in the heat of an emotion or an injustice done to you or the situation, not every moment is time to make de...
07/10/2025

When you are in the heat of an emotion or an injustice done to you or the situation, not every moment is time to make decisions.

Only you (and your therapist sometimes!) know your pace of getting through this spectrum and how you navigate each one.

Lessening harm to your future self and other important relationships (even if you want to throw it all away in the heat of the moment) means knowing where you are at and acting (or not acting) accordingly.

Want to unpack where you may have resistance, blockages or stuckness? Book a free consultation to chat more!

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