Anton Counseling & Health Psychology

12/30/2025

How to Live a Good Life: A Calgary Psychologist’s Guide

Evidence-informed tools to build steadiness, presence, and meaningful connection. What Does It Mean to Live a Good Life? As Calgary psychologists, we often hear people ask what it means to live a good, fulfilling life. A “good life” is not a perfect life — it’s one where you feel grounded enough to handle challenges and connected enough to enjoy the moments that matter....

12/23/2025

What to Expect in Your First Therapy Session

Starting therapy can feel intimidating—especially if you’ve never done it before. Many people wonder: What will I have to say? Will I be judged? Will this actually help?Your first session is designed to feel safe, respectful, and collaborative, not overwhelming. Here’s what you can expect. 1. A Warm, Human Conversation Your first session is not an interrogation or a test....

Starting therapy can feel intimidating—especially if you’ve never done it before. Many people wonder: What will I have to say? Will I be judged? Will this actually help?Your first session is designed to feel safe, respectful, and collaborative, not overwhelming. Here’s what you can expect. 1. ...

12/10/2025

Creating Inner Filters That Make a Difference

“Creating inner filters that make a difference” is a powerful way to deepen presence. It improves decision-making and enhances your impact as a therapist (or in life generally). These filters are mental and emotional frameworks. They help you selectively notice, interpret, and respond to what truly matters. This prevents you from being swept up by distractions, biases, or habitual reactions....

“Creating inner filters that make a difference” is a powerful way to deepen presence. It improves decision-making and enhances your impact as a therapist (or in life generally). These filters are mental and emotional frameworks. They help you selectively notice, interpret, and respond to what tr...

12/10/2025

Therapeutic Resonance

Two Nervous Systems Remembering Safety Together Healing rarely happens in isolation.Even in therapy, insight matters—but it is resonance that changes a life. Therapeutic resonance is the moment when two nervous systems—the therapist's and the client’s—quietly begin to move toward the same state. It is not mimicry, not emotional contagion, and not the therapist “absorbing” the client’s pain. It is the subtle, biological remembering of…...

Two Nervous Systems Remembering Safety Together Healing rarely happens in isolation.Even in therapy, insight matters—but it is resonance that changes a life. Therapeutic resonance is the moment when two nervous systems—the therapist’s and the client’s—quietly begin to move toward the same ...

12/10/2025

Presence-Based Therapy

(Not Technique, Tone) Most people imagine therapy as a set of tools—questions, interventions, strategies, or frameworks. But presence-based therapy begins somewhere else entirely. It starts not with what you do, but with the tone you bring into the room. Clients don’t regulate to technique.They regulate to nervous systems. Your tone—steady, warm, grounded—does more than any clinical question ever will....

(Not Technique, Tone) Most people imagine therapy as a set of tools—questions, interventions, strategies, or frameworks. But presence-based therapy begins somewhere else entirely. It starts not with what you do, but with the tone you bring into the room. Clients don’t regulate to technique.They ...

12/10/2025

Presence as a Way of Being

Presence is more than a technique.It is a physiological stance. It is also a psychological posture. Eventually, it becomes a way of being that is inseparable from who you are as a healer. Modern stress science describes presence as a state shift. It is a movement from threat physiology to a mode of connection, curiosity, and openness....

Presence is more than a technique.It is a physiological stance. It is also a psychological posture. Eventually, it becomes a way of being that is inseparable from who you are as a healer. Modern stress science describes presence as a state shift. It is a movement from threat physiology to a mode of....

12/09/2025

The First Light

Every journey begins with a flicker—a brief, often unnoticed illumination that hints at something larger. It is the first light. It is the subtle stirring of awareness. You are more than the roles you play, the patterns you repeat, or the wounds you carry. This light is quiet, almost imperceptible, but it calls with a force you cannot ignore. In this section, we explore the earliest glimpses of who we truly are....

Every journey begins with a flicker—a brief, often unnoticed illumination that hints at something larger. It is the first light. It is the subtle stirring of awareness. You are more than the roles you play, the patterns you repeat, or the wounds you carry. This light is quiet, almost imperceptible...

12/09/2025

The Arc From Hurt → Healer

The First Fracture Where the wound begins… and the invitation hidden inside the break. It never starts with clarity.It begins with something quieter—a moment where something inside you gives way before you even realize it has happened. A sentence spoken too sharply.A betrayal you didn’t expect.A season of your life that demands more than you have.A childhood moment that was too big for the small self who tried to hold it....

The First Fracture Where the wound begins… and the invitation hidden inside the break. It never starts with clarity.It begins with something quieter—a moment where something inside you gives way before you even realize it has happened. A sentence spoken too sharply.A betrayal you didn’t expect...

12/03/2025

Identity Asks Different Questions

When you’re living from habit, you ask practical questions: How do I fix this? What should I do next? How do I get through today? These are the questions of survival, efficiency, and momentum. But when identity quietly awakens, the entire inner conversation shifts. Identity doesn’t ask how to do more. Identity asks who you are becoming. It invites slower, deeper questions—questions that rearrange priorities without force and reshape choices from the inside out....

When you’re living from habit, you ask practical questions: How do I fix this? What should I do next? How do I get through today? These are the questions of survival, efficiency, and momentum. But when identity quietly awakens, the entire inner conversation shifts. Identity doesn’t ask how to do...

11/29/2025

Discovering “The Living Thread”

I didn’t set out to find a unifying theme. I wasn’t hunting for metaphors or trying to invent a philosophy. But in the quiet hours of writing, I noticed a pattern. It was a faint, steady current running beneath everything I had lived, felt, and learned. I began to think of it as The Living Thread. It was there in moments of clarity and in moments of confusion....

I didn’t set out to find a unifying theme. I wasn’t hunting for metaphors or trying to invent a philosophy. But in the quiet hours of writing, I noticed a pattern. It was a faint, steady current running beneath everything I had lived, felt, and learned. I began to think of it as The Living … C...

11/28/2025

Back Jacket Cover

I didn’t begin writing because I thought I had a book in me. I began writing because my inner world was too dense and too layered. It was too full of unspoken threads to carry around without putting them somewhere. Writing became a way of clearing space. A way of sorting through the emotional weight I didn’t yet have language for....

I didn’t begin writing because I thought I had a book in me. I began writing because my inner world was too dense and too layered. It was too full of unspoken threads to carry around without putting them somewhere. Writing became a way of clearing space. A way of sorting through the emotional weig...

11/28/2025

When Writing Becomes a Way of Seeing

In the beginning, I wrote to make sense of myself. The page was not a stage—it was a clearing. A quiet place where scattered thoughts could settle and find their shape. What started as an attempt to organize my mind gradually revealed something deeper: that the act of writing was organizing me—my attention, my values, my inner life, my direction....

In the beginning, I wrote to make sense of myself. The page was not a stage—it was a clearing. A quiet place where scattered thoughts could settle and find their shape. What started as an attempt to organize my mind gradually revealed something deeper: that the act of writing was organizing me—m...