Safe Haven Counselling

11/17/2025

Welcome to the team therapist Gina Murdoch!

Gina comes to us with a clear passion for therapy, a deeply caring heart you can feel and a background and training as an EMDR therapist.
Gina has weekend and evening availability and works with both couples and individuals around trauma, life transitions, anxiety and depression.

Whenever I have the privilege of welcoming a new therapist to the team, I ask them the questions below to get to know them better.
So here you go! 🩵

1. Favorite country to visit: 

France (Paris, specifically). I love the blend of culture, great food, and beautiful architecture. It’s a place where I can lose track of time meandering through the old streets and window shopping.

2. Fave self care practices: 

I enjoy going for walks while listening to a podcast, taking a workout class to reset my energy, and following a morning routine that helps me start the day grounded.

3. Favorite books: 

Fantasy. I enjoy getting pulled into new worlds.

4. Why does being a therapist excite you?

One of my favourite parts of being a therapist is witnessing clients have ground-breaking “a-ha” moments. Sitting together in the quiet that follows, I feel honoured to share in their insight and the understanding that just unfolded.

10/31/2025

The invisible weight and mental load of motherhood is real!
Therapist Stephanie Evans from our team shares more about this in her latest Safe Haven blog post.
Check it out here:

What crossed your mind this morning before you poured your first cup of coffee? If you’re a parent, specifically a mother, you may have reminded yourself to book an appointment, contemplated whether the kids winter boots fit along with thinking about a dozen other things, all while checking the da...

10/23/2025

One of Safe Haven Counselling's amazing couples' therapists, Sam Kerr, explores how Emotionally Focused Couple's Therapy (EFCT) works to help clients become more clearly attuned to their emotions, their partner's emotions and how attachment theory blends in to all of this:

What is Emotionally Focused Couple’s (EFCT) Therapy?Emotionally Focused Couple’s Therapy (EFCT), developed by Dr. Sue Johnson, is an experiential, systematic, evidence-based talk therapy that has been proven to help reduce distress in love relationships. As its name suggests, the model prioritiz...

10/15/2025

Ever wanted to know more about ART (Accelerated Resolution Therapy)?!
I wrote up a simplistic explanation as a blog post to help demystify the process :)
Check it out here:

Witnessing clients go through powerful transformations using a modality called ART (Accelerated Resolution Therapy) has been one of my greatest joys as a psychologist. I first took my training back in 2022 and have been using this modality since then to help clients treat and heal from trauma and st...

10/09/2025

Accepting your emotions, not judging them....what?!?
So many of us have been raised to disregard, minimize and invalidate our own emotions as they arise.

A mindful approach to being with our emotional experience suggests that we accept them without judgement as a tool to help move through them.

In this post I describe the 3As: Acknowledge, Accept and don't Analyze.
Let me know what you think!

10/03/2025

Did you know we are hard-wired to seek out behaviours that help release dopamine in our brain which can lead to substance abuse and addictive behaviours?
Michaela with Safe Haven Counselling shares a bit more with us.
If you are looking for support around your addictive or troublesome behaviour, we have skilled therapists on our team that can help 🩵

02/24/2025

People often ask me "is this normal...to feel this way or act like this?" or "Am I normal?"
This is always a welcomed moment to explore how there is "NO normal"
We all very much have our own unique ways of coping and responding to the world around us. Yet, we all desperately want to know if what we're doing and who we are is 'normal' because we want to belong and be like others.

Imagine embracing the beauty of knowing that you are not like others and not supposed to be like others 🤹‍♂️🤸‍♀️🦊
We are all different, because we are supposed to be!
Goodbye 'being normal' and Hello 'being exactly who you're meant to be'
💛🧡❤💙💜