All of us will go through crises. It is a matter of when, not if.
Examples of this are getting a new health diagnosis, losing a loved one, relocating your home, experiencing a trauma, career loss, a change in your sense of identity, the end of a relationship, financial issues, and feeling like you just can't cope.
Counselling can be a good short-term support for crisis, and can help you plan to move towards solutions.
If you are a First Nations person, you may be entitled to free counselling for crisis, provided by the First Nations Health Authority. A counsellor like myself can support you for 20 weeks fully funded, and can increase your sense of stability and connection to other resources, should you need them. This benefit can also be a stop-gap service, if you are in between one service ending, and are waiting for longer-term support.
Contacts me for more information about working with crisis, and any questions about benefit eligibility.

Please take the word 'should' in the title loosely. I do not believe in telling trauma-survivors what they should do. However, when it comes to suffering in silence I have a strong opinion; don't do it.

Coming out about my sexual assault in a national campaign, #ShoutOut4Survivors, has had me thinking a lot about survivorship and all the twists and turns I experienced after my rape. In particular, I've been re-experiencing the time I told one of my best friends that a man I was dating had raped me a week before.

Like so many people I too carry the visceral knowledge of what it is to have survived rape. I have experienced countless incidences of gendered violence in my lifetime. I see it everywhere, and yes, I talk about it every day.

I continued to date my rapist after the assault. I was young and woefully ignorant of the realities of rape: I thought a rapist was a stranger, I thought a rapist was someone I would never date. I thought a rape was something horrifically physically violent and you'd know it happened because you'd be covered in injuries. When I was 18 and this man raped me, I had no idea that the myths of rape listed above would paralyse me from action. In my paralysis I became ashamed, self-blaming, and alone.

It wasn't long before the pain and dissonance of this got me away from him. It was very jarring on all levels, I was in a state of shock about who he was, who I was, what life was about. I felt deeply scarred and humiliated. My body felt strange, I had uncomfortable sensations often, which I know now are anxiety.

and were THERE. I see now from media coverage of rape cases, and from the social alienation some of my clients face that support systems are not always adequate to provide the caring response that I received.

When I spoke to Charmaine de Silva on the Simi Sara show last week I wanted to show how imp0rtant it is to know the realities of rape. Our communities need to know what's really going on in order to both prevent and respond to sexual assault.

First: most of us know our rapist. It's our dad, our husband, our brother, or our friend. Knowing the person often entails have feelings for them that are not straightforward, which  causes immense difficulty in processing the reality of what happened.

Secondly: most of us go into survival mode during the assault and don't realise it. The most common survival response is not fighting back, and dissociating in some way from your body. Our bodies and minds act in ways that are not guided by our thinking or intentional action: this is the neurobiological reality of much trauma. It's after the fact, sometimes years later, that we piece together how survival kept us safe during the rape.

Thirdly: a huge proportion of rape and sexual assault is drug-facilitated. Rapists and molesters know that alcohol, some prescription drugs, and illicit drugs make it easier to control another person's body. They use this to their advantage.

Fourth: survivors experience a vast and endlessly diverse set of reactions after rape. Rape Trauma Syndrome describes this well. There is a lot of self-blame, a lot of chaotic feelings, confusion, or in some cases no feeling at all. In some cases survivors minimise what happened and question if it was consensual sex or not. This is all healthy and normal. It's rape. Things that are this horrific cause intense disruption.

When my boss asked me to be part of Faces of Courage #ShoutOut4Change I had mixed feelings: fear, excitement, responsibility, joy, curiosity, and the list goes on. What would happen if my trauma history was known to more people?

What has happened since I've come out? Two people in my life have come out publicly as survivors. Two people who told no one. It takes my breath away. I've gotten to thank the friends who heard me back when I was a teenager. I've gotten to open up about my survivorship to friends and family who didn't know, allowing them to understand me better and know more parts of who I am. And perhaps most importantly, I have had a larger arena in which to address the realities of rape.

The greatest gift that I've received from being part of this campaign? I see that I am resilient! I am capable of healing, year after year, in new and beautiful ways. If this campaign is any indication of what is to come, I have more love, respect, care, education, empowerment, and support to look forward to.

This is why you should come out about sexual assault. Pick the person well, maybe it's someone like me who works in the victim service's sector and knows how to provide the kind of care, respect, empowerment, love, education and support survivors deserve. Maybe you have a safe person to tell in your support network. Whoever it is, I want you to know that there is so much healing you can look forward to, especially if you have help. This has been my experience.

Sometimes certain themes come up in my life, one that has recently repeated is the theme of the relationship between 'who I am and who others think I am.' In particular, how other peoples' behaviour influences the receiving person's identity.

When we think about the type of person we are, we often use our name, our gender, our age, our profession, who our family is, and we name our geographical location. We say if we're partnered or not, parenting or not, where we went to school (or dropped out), how we relax and recreate, maybe the purpose we've identified for our life. Our greatest challenge. We talk about values, dreams, longings, nightmares. Identity is dynamic, layered and rich. Totally subjective, which is part of the intensity of the human experience.

I encounter wonderful people. Each one of my clients is a unique treasure, a being whose world I get to enter for a time. I have noticed that some of my clients experience a low-level suffering in their daily lives, which undermines their decision-making, their empowerment, their self-love, and their identity. I want to name this as 'taking how you're treated as a reflection of who you are.'

A fictional vignette: A young woman, widely skilled and educated, cannot find full-time work. She goes to WorkBC religiously for employment counselling, she wakes up every morning at 6 am to exercise and go online to apply for jobs. This goes on for six months, and she is called for interviews, but is not offered a position. The woman is frustrated, impatient, and frankly feels like she is going crazy. She has no savings, and is living in credit. She's afraid she won't make ends meet ever again.

After the sixth month of this hamster-wheel she starts to believe she isn't hirable. No one is hiring her. Other people have jobs. There is something wrong with her approach, and it is all she can do to continue applying for jobs. She walks around her community feeling vulnerable, as if people can tell her bad she is inside.

The world can be hard as hell. We have experiences which are very challenging to survive. And often there is an emotional impact when we're pushed to our edges. The woman above started feeling bad about who she is as a person, because the mirror the world seems to be showing her is that she is incompetent. But the truth is, she's not.

In this woman's case, she is living in an area where the labour economy is insufficient ot meet her needs.

Has this happened in your lifetime? Whether it is your sense of the world, or how people close to you behave towards you, has your identity been impacted by how you're treated?

What profound challenges you have with decision-making, empowerment, self-love and identity, and how have those challenges been informed by what's going on around you

What qualities about you can you identify that come from inside you instead?

The Vancouver Coastal Health authority has been quietly running a fabulous free alcohol and substance use treatment service- Daytox- since 2002 in Vancouver's Mount Pleasant neighbourhood.

Daytox is an 'outpatient,' meaning non-residential, service designed to help people to work on making changes in their alcohol and substance use. This model is especially beneficial for individuals wanting to maintain the major time commitments of their life- school, work et cetera- while working on their substance and alcohol use goals.

The program offers withdrawal management, case management and group interventions for clients, and there are a variety of choices available. The service boasts groups with both harm-reduction and abstinence-based approaches, and is a wonderful treatment as a compliment to individual therapy.

Daytox groups include:

Medical acupuncture for addiction
Mindfulness Meditation
SMART Recovery

...and more! Call 604-585-5610 for information about intake and services available.

Ask me how Daytox can be part of your bigger treatment plan.

There are many reasons people come to counselling, the most broad reason being wanting some form of change. What we call 'psycho-education' is sharing information based in research and training, in support of the 'shift' a client seeks. An example is my sharing the theory of how one's own trauma as a parent can influence parenting. Last week I posted about communication styles, this too is psycho-educational.

It is truly incredible for me as a practitioner to be able to offer information that provides context for my clients' experiences. Working with adult survivors of incest, for a final example, I have found it vital to explore the normal psychological responses to these traumatic experiences. There is a great potential for relief in understanding.

If you want support in learning more about things which impact your psychological well-being, I may be able to help.

http://www.annagranuzzosilverman.com/contact.html

When is the last time you had a fear-based thought? Noticing when fear drives our thoughts can help us to have agency in our lives. This is because many times we think, feel and act as if we were under threat. The threat could be one of illness, rejection, poverty, judgment, or of violence. The list is long. If you want to improve your emotional, psychological, spiritual, and physical safety, you can explore what is and what is not dangerous to you.
The article below shares Buddhist perspectives. One writer suggests that simply sitting alone can be an opportunity to learn about your fears.
http://www.lionsroar.com/fear-and-fearlessness-what-the-bu…/
If you are experiencing violence, there are many supports to which you are entitled. Contact me for information on resources in your area, and call 911 in an emergency.

Increasingly the public is learning how mental health consumers are in need of better understanding and support, and efficient services. Also in dire need of such things are the support-people. The parents, partners, children, friends, and colleagues. Major health-outcome research outlines how important having social support is for surviving and thriving. Yet we do not need research to know this truth. We have all known the difference between having- and not having- support. If you're supporting someone you love who's having a hard time with mental health, your health can be impacted. Feelings of being overwhelmed, confused, numb, exhausted, resentful, and so on can pile up. You may notice new physical health complaints. Finding your own resources can help, as can making decisions about what you can sustainably do for your loved one. If you are in this place of offering support and concerned about the impact it's having on you, reach out to someone. If counselling is the outlet you need, contact me for more information.