Clients come to me for many different reasons. Below is a list of some of the more frequent ones:

Anti-Black Racism

The term anti-Black racism comes from Dr. Akua Benjamin, Professor Emeritus and former Director of the School of Social Work at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). Benjamin wrote about the unique history and experience of Black Canadians and found that Canadian institutions were entrenched with the same sort of Anti-Black racism Black Canadians were subject to. These institutions mirrored and reinforced discriminatory and stereotypical beliefs to the point that they were normalized, or white society didn’t even see them. Benjamin looked at how racism affected Black Canadians in terms of individual health and adoption of harmful stress-coping behaviours. To get rid of Anti-Black racism, all levels of government and all institutions across the board must participate.

Anxiety

Asexuality/Aces

Asexuality has to do with a lack of sexual attraction (little or none). Asexuality is not a medical condition or disorder; it is an orientation that includes a spectrum. As with other orientations, it does not necessarily describe behavior and there is no single asexual experience. Some asexual people, for example, date and fall in love, while others do not. Some are interested in intimacy with others, while some are not. There are many identities that fall between asexual and sexual. You may have sex and still be asexual as the act of having sex is a behaviour not an orientation; additionally some people on the spectrum have sex. People that are asexual may be (or may not) be LGBTQ.

“BPD” or Symptoms Related to Borderline Personality Disorder (“BPD”)

“BPD” is a diagnostic category in the DSM-V. This diagnosis is often a way for clinicians to pathologize behaviours in their clients that they find frustrating to deal with. Clinicians frequently give up on these patients, branding them as being too emotionally unstable to help. These clients’ survival behaviours, however, are often responses to trauma and have helped these clients survive. People with “BPD” usually exhibit a lot of emotional pain; the symptoms that are observable are the ways they use to manage this pain. Women are overwhelmingly diagnosed with “BPD” and the diagnosis has misogynistic history. Symptoms of “BPD,” or more accurately, trauma responses, can be having intense emotions that seem out of place to others, having difficulty controlling impulses or having problems with emotional regulation in general.

Coming Out

Connection to Self and With Others

C-PTSD

CPTSD stands for complex post traumatic stress disorder. This type of stress disorder develops because of ongoing trauma, as it relates to experiences with another person. Because of this, there is often an element of betrayal with CPTSD. Some examples of CPTSD are child abuse, long-term interpersonal violence, incarceration, torture, or bearing witness to repeated traumas. Some results of CPTSD may be feelings of a loss of agency, difficulty in regulating emotion, chronic pain, alienation, shame, and autoimmune disease.

Depression

Dissociation

Usually, our experiences are associated with one another, meaning we have access to all our self-states. When we are traumatized or have intense emotions, having access to all our self-states may feel like too much to bear. This is when states within us may start to separate. A person’s defense system will naturally work to shield a person from harm. We may hold trauma in one part of us and then the day-to-day functioning of ourselves may hold another part. In our most difficult circumstances, the two parts may not communicate with one another. Dissociation operates on a spectrum. It is often a reaction to trauma that serves to protect the person who is traumatized. 

Drug and Alcohol use

Family Issues

Gaslighting

When an abuser manipulates someone psychologically while denying that this manipulation takes place and while also making the person being manipulated question their own reality of the abuse (specifically if it was real or not), this is gaslighting. Gaslighting is done to maintain the abusive relationship.

Gender (Nonbinary, Trans)

Gender is socially constructed and exists on a spectrum. It is not something that is necessarily static. It is our internal sense of who we are, that is male, female, nonbinary or other identities. Looking at someone does not give you the ability to know what that person’s gender is. We all experience gender differently and gender expectations change from culture to culture. Those that do not question their gender or sex at birth are considered cisgender. Those that do may identify as transgender or nonbinary, both, or other. Nonbinary identities exist (as the name reveals) outside of the gender binary. Some nonbinary people use they/them pronouns, she/they or they/she pronouns, or he/they or they/he pronouns. Transgender people are trans regardless of their anatomy, what gender they were assigned at birth, and whether they take hormones or have had any surgery.

Intergenerational Trauma

Science has proven that intergenerational trauma exists, although the way in which this trauma is transmitted is still being studied. One person who goes through a traumatic experience absolutely can transmit this trauma to subsequent generations. This trauma can be passed down biologically or nonbiologically (for example, through dysfunctional dynamics among family members). Transmission of traumas doesn’t have to be to from an individual to an individual. There may be collective traumas passed on to specific communities (ex genocide).

Internalized Oppression

If you are in an oppressed group and you believe the negative stereotypes that the dominant culture believes about you, while also believing the positive stereotypes that this dominant culture believes about itself, you are dealing with internalized oppression. This absorption of subordinate status is the result of being subjected to marginalization. Many (but not all) oppressed people grapple with some amount of internalized oppression.

Interpersonal Violence and Abuse

Interpersonal Violence has to do with someone using power and control over another person. This may include threats or abuse that are either verbal, psychological (emotional), physical or sexual. It may also include financial or economic abuse or control and isolation. Violence against a community is included in interpersonal violence. This means that the violence that someone experiences in the workplace or another institution as a result of their identity can be considered interpersonal violence. Interpersonal violence can also include violence against children and elders. Different types of violence can result in injury, death, or deprivation.

Intimacy in Relationships

Kink and Sexual Diversity

Kink is an umbrella term that covers sexual behavior, fantasies, and interests that exists outside of social norms. Kink practices are often stigmatized by the larger community. Being interested in kink is not a mental illness and is not something that needs to be cured. People with and without trauma histories can enjoy kink. Consent and communication are central practices in the kink community. To many in the community, being kinky is self-care.

Microaggressions

Microaggressions are aggressions that can be either verbal or nonverbal and that exist against members of marginalized communities. They are often rooted in implicit bias. They may come in the form of stigmatizing comments or questions, insults, and other general indignities. These indignities take a psychological and sometimes physical toll on the recipients. They are day-to-day experiences that have a cumulative, harmful impact on people.

Minority Stress (Including Racial Trauma)

Minority stress may be experienced by any individual as the direct result of their marginalization. Stigmatized communities must deal with stressors in their social environments that non stigmatized communities do not have to deal with. Discrimination and maltreatment can affect a person’s health. Minority stress can lead to mental and physical health issues including (but certainly not limited to) emotional fatigue, anxiety, increased risk for substance use problems and general psychological distress.

Neurodiversity

Judy Singer, an Australian Sociologist, coined the term neurodiversity in 1998. The term describes the infinite number of neuro-cognitive variability that exists amongst humans. Our nervous systems are all unique and they can be an important part of our identity. The way some brains function are more typical (hence people with these brains being called neurotypical) than others. People whose brains function in less typical ways are called neurodivergent. Neurodivergent people shouldn’t be assumed to need medical or therapeutic intervention. The existence of neurodivergent people as a natural variation should be embraced by the larger community. Humans need variation to continue their survival. People that are neurodiverse often have to fight against being perceived with deficit-based stereotypes. Their true gifts and needs often go unseen.

Parts Work (a Non-Pathologizing Approach)

See Internal Family Systems, under About Me > Theory and Concepts section.

Polyamory/Non-traditional Relationship Organization

Polyamory is an umbrella term that covers a relationship organization involving a person consensually having more than one romantic or sexual relationship, or partner. There are many individual styles from which this is practiced, but the polyamorous community believes these styles should be ethical and agreement-based contexts.

Psychiatric Survivors

Psychiatric Survivors are a diverse group of people. They may be individuals who are survivors of specific psychiatric interventions, or those who are current users of mental health services, or who are ex-patients. Their experiences with the mental health system often harmed them while they were being told they were being helped. Survivors challenge leading understandings of “mental illness” and “mental health systems.” They are a movement based on self-determination. The system often re-traumatizes survivors by re-creating the circumstances that lead to there initial entry into the mental health system to begin with. Survivors survived an entire system that was put in place to oppress them, not just their circumstances.

PTSD

PTSD stands for post-traumatic stress disorder. It can develop after someone has experienced or witnessed a serious, dangerous, or terrifying event like an assault, a disaster, or some kind of abuse. The events that cause PTSD are one-time experiences (as opposed to ongoing experiences). PTSD symptoms may include things like flashbacks, extreme anxiety and avoidance, hypervigilance, and social isolation. These symptoms can end up affecting one’s ability to carry on with life in the manner they had before the event that caused their symptoms. There may be co-occurring events with PTSD such as depression, substance use and panic disorder.

Racism

Relational Injustice (Marginalization)

Marginalization takes place when certain groups of people are denied access to certain parts of a society. Marginalization works against underrepresented, disadvantaged, and generally discriminated against communities. This can affect people’s ability to connect with meaningful health care, education, or employment, (to name just a few things). Marginalization can be economic, political, or social.

School

Self-acceptance

Self-harm

Self-harming behaviours take place to relieve a person from pain or intolerable feelings rather than to inflict pain. For those that self-harm, it is a very effective coping mechanism and is a way of calming the body. There is usually a lot of shame surrounding self-harm as it is rarely understood in this way.

Sex and Sexuality

Structural and Systemic Violence

Structural violence refers to the way in which institutions and structures operate by preventing specific marginalized populations from attaining their basic needs. Both structural and systemic violence are embedded in laws, systems, and policies that are discriminatory and cause preventable suffering. Systemic violence may appear to be natural or inevitable even though it is neither of these things and is just perpetuating oppression. If we are privileged in a certain area (meaning a self identification), we may not actually see systemic violence there, as we will not feel its effect. Systemic violence is intersectional and a cycle. It is ingrained in the systems of our society and can cause both active and passive violence.

Suicide/Suicidal Ideation

Suicidal Ideation means thinking about killing yourself. It is normal to experience suicidal ideation. It does not mean you will kill yourself; it just means that it is something you are grappling with. Suicidal Ideation often forms in a person’s mind as a way out of their existing pain and shame. In this way it can be about gaining control of one’s life (so about agency). Some people live with chronic suicidal ideation.

Transitioning

There are people who do not identify with their assigned gender at birth and may want to pursue transitioning to better match their internal sense of who they are with their expression or presentation. Transitioning can be any combination of social, legal, or medical measures.

Transracial Adoption (and Adoption in General)

Transracial adoption occurs when a child of one racial background is placed with adoptive parents of another racial background.

Trauma

Not every negative event that a person experiences is traumatic. Trauma specifically refers to those distressing events that overwhelm a person’s ability to cope with them. Anyone’s experience with trauma is a normal response to an experience that is abnormal. How trauma affects someone can largely be in relation to the type of supports available to that person after the trauma. The healing of trauma is relational because the experience of trauma causes disconnection. Our nervous system is impacted by trauma because it imprints something within us. It affects how we manage threats, leading to the development of adaptive states like flight, fight, freeze or fawn. Trauma is not what initially caused you to be hurt, it is how that hurt affected your mind and body.