Alina Reed - Vancouver Island Child, Youth, and Family Counselling Services

01/27/2022

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11/05/2021

Behaviour is communication 💜

10/08/2021

I've mentioned this before here but I think it deserves to be mentioned again...

I once heard a well known person in the self-help world say to a group on a webinar, "If you aren't actually stepping toward the things you're wanting it's because you aren't trying hard enough or you don't want it bad enough." They were speaking to brave people who took the time to get on a call that they thought would help them figure out why they were stuck and why they couldn't step toward the things they desired.

I share this message because perhaps you've heard a similar one too. It's filled with shame and is isn't actually based in truth.

If you've been finding yourself stuck unable to step toward the things you deeply desire, I want you to know it's not happening because you aren't trying or because you don't want it enough.

This stuckness is happening because our self-protective parts are perceiving the things you're wanting as a cue of danger. If you're thinking, "yeah but I'm safe to have these things!" I want to explain something...often the things we are desiring are things that were ONCE a cue of danger.

Things like: intimacy, vulnerability, connection, receiving, being seen, taking up space, using our voice, being on our own, etc. And until we let the protective parts know that the things that were once unsafe are now safe, they will continue to keep us from what we're desiring.

What we often do is try to take steps toward these things that are too big. That means they are steps that our protective parts will see as an absolute cue of danger for us and they will quickly come online to protect us in the form of dysregulation or more stuckness.

Instead we want to take tolerable steps which looks like ones we can mobilize through and complete on. That is an absolutely imperative part of getting unstuck. Peter Levine says, "do less it does more." This is in part what he means by this. If we want to get unstuck faster, we need to break down the steps into ones we can mobilize through and complete. I invite you to try that in regard to any area you've been stuck in.

With kindness and belief in your healing,
Sarah

09/24/2021

Free workshop for anyone interested in understanding structural racism and embodying anti-oppression for Reconciliation 🧡

This lecture will provide participants with insight on how racism is a design element, not a flaw, of settler colonial states like Canada. Citizens of Canada (and those subjected to its power) unwittingly carry behaviours that manifest racism in our social, political and economic structures. Those w...

08/26/2021

This is how we roll at Vancouver Island Child, Youth and Family Counselling Services 🖤🤎❤🧡💛💚💙💜🤍

08/11/2021

Have you found relationships to be challenging?

Have you found them to be confusing, overwhelming, exhausting, scary, all encompassing, impossible, frustrating, tiring, or do you lose your sense of self or your sense of truth in them? Or do you find that no matter how much your partner verbally shows us that they want to be with you, you can't quite feel it? Or maybe you find that even though you want to let your partner close it feels so overwhelming to actually do it?

Those are just some of the things that can come up in our relationships.

And, I want you to know that it all makes so much sense, even if it doesn't feel like it makes sense. Let me explain a bit...

Our threat detector is always looking for cues of safety or danger. And it looks to a receptacle of past information to decide what is safe and what is dangerous. When it comes to our romantic partnerships our threat detector and protective parts look to how we were related to in our earliest childhood experiences in order to decide how we need to respond in the here and now to maintain safety.

So if the right choice was to: have no boundaries, lose connection with our truth, shut down, pull away, do whatever we need to do to stay connected, look out for how they might leave, etc. That's what we will do now.

And when ruptures occur, our self protective parts also look to that receptacle to decide how we need to respond based on how to needed to respond in the past. Often leaving younger parts of us activated in our adult relationships.

In order to repair, we have to come out of active self-protection where we are seeing our partner as a danger and back into connection and the here and now.

It's also important to understand we can't actually even hear one another fully and take in what the other is saying when we are dysregulated, our systems are simply seeing them as against us. Once back in regulation, we can come back into repair. Healthy relationships aren't void of ruptures, they are able to come back into repair quickly and that's what we're looking for. One step at a time.

With kindness,
Sarah

07/18/2021

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Credit: Play-Therapists.com

07/17/2021

Join our FREE presentation to learn how to keep kids safer online. Space is limited! RSVP to Courtney at cliem@plea.bc.ca

01/14/2021

Days like today, sandtray helps 🌻

*my tray, not a client's tray

01/04/2021

Vancouver Island Child, Youth and Family Counselling Services is offering a 6-week COVID-friendly online parent/caregiver support group beginning January 28 until March 4th!
The group will be Thursday evenings from 7:00-8:30pm.

This is an informative and interactive online support group based on the principles of authenticity, attunement, connection and neurobiology! Come join other parents/caregivers as we break isolation and learn from each other in a relaxed, intentional, and supportive space.

Cost is $225+GST per person

See poster below for more information, and contact us at
Alina (alina@vicyfcs.com) or Emily (emily@vicyfcs.com) to register.

OPEN TO ALL PARENTS/CAREGIVERS regardless of accessing services at VICYFCS 🌻

12/08/2020

💜🙌

Stoney Quarantine colouring day #96

It’s that time of year again ... people are decorating their tree. Here is my tree that you all can decorate. I’d love to see what you all do with it :)

Colouring book for sale in my Etsy shop .

***you have my permission to use this however you like, print it out, colour it on your phone , iPad , add to it, change it up, bead it , paint it ... anything goes ***

*** I just please ask that you do not use it for sale or for profit ***