Birch Wellness Services

Working independently, yet collaboratively, the members of the Birch Wellness Center provide excellent care to their clients. The opportunity to meet together for consultation, referral, and support enhances the independent practices of the professionals working at the Birch Wellness Center. Clients of the Birch Wellness Center have access to a best-practices collaborative professional group that facilitates and promotes overall wellness, mental health, and personal growth.

List of Services

Click on the service of interest to reveal the Birch professionals.

Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART): helps to reprogram the way in which the brain stores distressing memories. Using gentle eye movements, ART guides the client to process memories so they no longer trigger strong negative emotions.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT):  stems from cognitive behavioural therapy. This approach teaches clients to accept their difficult emotions, rather than avoiding or denying them. Using mindfulness, clients are encouraged to stay focused on the present moment and to accept their thoughts and feelings without judgment. ACT aims to help clients move forward through difficult emotions instead of dwelling on them and becoming stuck.

Acute Rehabilitation and Chronic Care:  stems from cognitive behavioural therapy. This approach teaches clients to accept their difficult emotions, rather than avoiding or denying them. Using mindfulness, clients are encouraged to stay focused on the present moment and to accept their thoughts and feelings without judgment. ACT aims to help clients move forward through difficult emotions instead of dwelling on them and becoming stuck.

Addiction: is a medical condition characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli, despite adverse consequences. Addiction can cover many areas such as substance use, gambling, sex, shopping, and social media. Addiction counselling helps the client understand, manage and overcome their addictions.

ADHD (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder):  can occur in both children and adults. Therapy can help clients learn strategies to address daily life struggles such as procrastination and poor time management, organization and planning skills.

Acupuncture: involves placing very thin needles into the skin on certain points of the body. Most people report feeling little pain as the needle is inserted. Studies have shown that acupuncture works well for addressing digestive, emotional, musculoskeletal, neurological and respiratory conditions, among many others.

Anger Management:  is the process of learning to recognize signs that you’re becoming angry, and taking action to calm down and deal with the situation in a positive way.

Anxiety:  is a normal reaction to stressful situations. However, anxiety disorders differ from normal feelings of nervousness or anxiousness and involve excessive fear or anxiety. Clients learn strategies to manage anxiety including mindfulness, relaxation techniques, breathing techniques, nutrition, exercise, cognitive therapy, and exposure therapy.

Attachment:  Many clients have had difficult early attachment experiences in childhood. Attachment–based therapy is an approach that explores the client’s attachment style and thoughts, feelings, communication, behaviours, and interpersonal exchanges to build healthy attachments with others.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): is a neurodevelopmental condition affecting a person on an intellectual, emotional and social level. However, with proper treatment and support, the individual can learn to self-regulate and communicate more efficiently as well as develop a greater understanding of social cues and have more optimal interactions in social settings.

Bipolar Disorder: is a chronic mood disorder that causes extreme shifts in mood, energy levels and behavior. The primary signs of bipolar disorder are manic and hypomanic episodes, often accompanied by depressive episodes. The therapist helps the client learn coping strategies, make lifestyle changes and explore other treatments such as medication.

Birth Trauma: Negative birth experiences can cause deep and lasting physical and emotions for the birthing parent. Birth trauma therapy is a form of therapy that focuses processing the birth trauma and help clients cope with a traumatic birthing experience.

Body Image Issues: involve feeling unsatisfied with your physical appearance. Body image concerns often occur simultaneously with eating disorders. Clients learn to accept their bodies and to develop a healthy relationship with food.

Brainspotting: is a treatment method that works by locating points in the client’s visual field that help to access unprocessed trauma in the subcortical brain. Brainspotting helps clients to identify, process and release core neurophysiological sources of emotional/body pain, trauma, dissociation and a variety of other challenging symptoms.

Child and Youth Therapy:  (also called child counselling) offers children and adolescents a safe space and an empathetic ear while providing tools to bring about change in thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Children receive emotional and goal support in their sessions.

Childhood Trauma:  For many clients, the traumatic events that they experienced as children were never healed so the impacts continue into adulthood.  Therapy involves helping the client to reprocess these traumatic events so they are no longer negatively impacting them in the present. Clients build coping skills and learn self–care strategies.

Chronic Pain:  is pain that lasts between 3 months and up to 12 months. In therapy, clients learn mind-body techniques such as relaxation, deep breathing, meditation and biofeedback to alleviate chronic pain. Individuals with chronic pain may also experience symptoms of depression and anxiety that are addressed in therapy.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT): is a structured, goal-oriented therapy that is effective for many mental and physical health concerns. CBT focuses on thoughts and emotions and how they affect actions. With the therapist’s guidance, clients learn healthier ways of thinking and behaving.

Coping Skills:  in therapy involve the client learning strategies to address personal and interpersonal problems in order to minimize or tolerate stress and conflict. Strategies may include relaxation techniques as well as developing positive thought patterns.

Cultural Issues: Culturally sensitive therapy prioritizes the client’s ethnicity, background, and belief system in therapy. The therapist is sensitive to how a person’s culture impacts their needs in therapy

Depression: is often used in conjunction with other forms of therapy and/or prescription medication. Therapists help clients explore the possible underlying causes of depressed mood and develop new coping skills to alleviate depressive symptoms.

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy:  Dialectical Behaviour Therapy is a treatment developed by a psychologist named Marsha Linehan. This is a treatment that focuses on your goals, skills, and the future that you want to build. This treatment was developed to help clients who struggle with regulating intense emotions, anger, impulsivity, addiction, eating disordered behaviours, self-destructive and suicidal behaviour, trauma, and/or borderline personality disorder.

Divorce: (or dissolution of marriage) Going through a divorce is a very difficult experience. Many clients experience grief, stress, anxiety and depression during a divorce, which can sometimes last months or even years. The therapist helps the client to process their grief and focus on developing a healthy way forward.

Domestic Abuse: is violence committed by someone in the victim’s domestic circle. This includes partners and ex-partners, immediate family members, other relatives and family friends. The term ‘domestic violence’ is used when there is a close relationship between the offender and the victim.

Dual Diagnosis: is the term used to describe patients with both severe mental illness (mainly psychotic disorders) and problematic drug and/or alcohol use. Personality disorder may also co-exist with psychiatric illness and/or substance misuse.

Eating Disorders:  The three major eating disorders—anorexia, bulimia and binge–eating. Treatment approaches for eating disorders include psychotherapy, medical care and monitoring, nutritional counselling, medications, or a combination of these approaches.

EMDR Therapy: Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is an evidence–based psychotherapy that utilizes bilateral techniques to process disturbing memories and events. It is highly effective with the symptoms of post–traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, phobias and many other mental health concerns.

Family Therapy: helps family members communicate better in order to develop a deeper understanding of each other, support one another and work through difficult situations.

Gender Identity:  is a personal conception of oneself as male or female, both or neither. This type of therapy is appropriate for anyone who is experiencing gender dysphoria, which is when one does not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, as well as for individuals who are exploring their gender identity in general.

Grief, Loss and Bereavement:  are terms to describe a response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something that has died or is no longer part of the person’s life. Grief is an emotional response to loss, but it also has physical, cognitive, behavioural, social, and philosophical or spiritual dimensions.  The therapist helps the client to process their emotions and explore the multifaceted impacts on them as they learn ways to cope and move forward following loss.

Indigenous Issues: Indigenous counselling explores and honours Indigenous knowledge, experience and healing and acknowledges the harmful impacts of colonization. The therapist treats mental health and life issues from Indigenous perspectives to relate to the diverse cultural backgrounds of Indigenous clients.

Inner Child Therapy:  Inner Child therapy combines many different therapeutic approaches with the goal of comforting and healing parts of oneself who were hurt in childhood so that the adult can reduce their feelings of sadness, anger, abandonment, or other emotional distress. Inner child work focuses on helping the adult client learn to meet needs that were unmet in their childhood.

Men’s Issues: Due to the stigma and expectations put on men to hide their emotions, men often don’t seek therapy or are not well understood. Men’s unique issues in therapy can include communication challenges, difficulty with emotional expression, societal expectations, and relationship dynamics.  Addressing these concerns fosters healthier emotional well–being and relationships.

Mindfulness:  is a skill in which the client learns to be aware of what they’re sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment. Practicing mindfulness skills involves breathing methods, guided imagery, and other practices to relax the body and mind and help reduce stress.

Myofascial Release Therapy:  is a type of gentle, constant massage that releases tightness and pain throughout the myofascial tissues (a network of tissue that spreads throughout the entire body). Myofascial Release Therapy can result in significant physical and psychological benefits by soothing the nervous system and providing pain relief.

Narrative Therapy: is a postmodern approach where the focus is the story we are telling about ourselves by reframing our reality and finding our own truth.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD):  Therapy for OCD usually includes cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) combined with exposure and response prevention (ERP).

Osteopathic Manual Therapy (Osteopathy):  Osteopathy provides treatment of various disorders through the physical manipulation and massage of the bones, joints, and muscles. An osteopath focuses on the whole body, including the soft tissues (such as muscles, ligaments and tendons), the spine and the nervous system, and may use a variety of different hands-on methods to provide relief and healing.

Parenting Concerns:  The therapist provides support, information, guidance and coaching to clients who are struggling with parenting, co-parenting, step-parenting, blended family issues and divorce issues. Parenting counselling can include one or both parents, as well as other caregivers. Issues often addressed are providing appropriate discipline, setting boundaries and increasing healthy communication and connection between the parent(s) and the child(ren).

Perinatal Depression:. Perinatal depression is a mood disorder that can occur during pregnancy and after childbirth. The symptoms can range from mild to severe. The therapist helps the pregnant and postnatal parent to learn strategies to cope with perinatal depression and anxiety.

Pet Loss:. The loss of a pet can be devastating to the owner(s) but is often dismissed or misunderstood. The therapist offers grief counselling for pet loss by providing an empathetic approach to validate the client’s grief. The therapist helps the client process the loss and find healthy coping strategies for managing the grief going forward.

Physiotherapy:  is the treatment of disease or injury utilizing physical methods such as massage, heat treatment, and physical exercises. Physiotherapy restores, maintains, and increases one’s mobility, function, and general well-being. This treatment approach encompasses rehabilitation, injury prevention and overall health promotion. It employs a holistic approach to treatment, looking at the patient’s lifestyle and engaging them in their own treatment.

Psychoeducation: refers to the process of providing education and information to clients, with the goal of helping them better understand (and adjust to living with) a variety of mental health and physical health conditions.

Psychedelic-assisted therapy: is an approach that uses psychedelic states of consciousness to amplify and accelerate the therapeutic process. These states of consciousness can be induced by various methods, including pharmacological (serotonergic, atypical), non-pharmacological (somatic, digital), and spiritual practices. Typically, in psychedelic therapy, we use pharmacological methods to induce these altered states by administering substances such as MDMA, Ketamine, Ibogane, and Psilocybin. The choice of which substance to use depends on many factors, and not all substances are the best (or safest) fit for each person.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that’s triggered by experiencing or witnessing a terrifying, dangerous or overwhelming event. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event, all of which can greatly impact functioning in daily life.

Relationship Issues: are situations and difficulties that have a negative effect on the short and long-term success of an intimate relationship.

Self-Esteem: is the positive or negative ways we see ourselves, which can impact our overall sense of well-being. In self-esteem therapy the therapist helps the client to change their negative beliefs, self-doubt, and self-criticism.

Self-Harm:  is an intentional act that is considered harmful to oneself, without suicidal intention. Self-harm can range from harming one’s body through to destructive and risky behaviours such as reckless driving and excessive substance use. It is a way to cope with emotional pain, sadness, anger and stress.  The therapist helps the client to learn healthy and safe ways to process and experience difficult emotions.

Sexual Abuse:  any non-consensual sexual contact as a result of force or violence, threats, fear, or deception. Child sexual abuse is when an adult (age 18 years old and above) engages in sexual behaviour with a child (under the age of 18 years old) to meet the adult’s sexual needs and/or to exert power and control over the child.

Sexual abuse can have long-lasting emotional impacts such as depression, anxiety and PTSD. Therapists work with clients to build safety, process emotions and develop healthy coping strategies.

Sexuality: The therapist explores sexuality to help clients discover healthy paths of sexual exploration and pleasure in all parts of their lives. The therapist also helps the clients share sex-related topics, educates the client on sexual health and helps them better understand their bodies and sexual experiences. The therapist dispels taboos of sex and sexuality, creating a nonjudgmental space to explore any topics related to sexuality and sexual health.

Somatic Therapy:  looks at the connection between the mind and body. The therapist incorporates mind-body exercises and other physical techniques to help release emotions or stress that is held in the body and which negatively affects the client’s physical and emotional well-being.

Stress Management: is a normal psychological and physical reaction to the regular demands of life. Extreme or chronic stress can result in a state of mental or emotional strain accompanied by a number of negative psychological and physical reactions, which can feel overwhelming. Therapists help clients explore the causes or stress, make changes where they can and learn healthy coping strategies where necessary

Trauma: is an event or series of events that can result in long-lasting emotional and/or physical pain. Experiencing a traumatic event can harm a person’s sense of safety and hamper their ability to regulate their emotions. A trauma therapist helps the client to process their emotions, learn positive coping responses and develop a renewed sense of safety in the world.

Unfinished Business:  is a therapeutic term that refers to personal experiences that have been blocked or tasks that have been avoided because of feared emotional or interpersonal effects. When an emotionally significant event happens, clients may have difficulty moving forward until they get a sense of emotional resolution. The therapist helps clients to complete unfinished business using certain therapeutic techniques in therapy or by helping the client communicate with significant others outside of sessions.

2SLGBTQQIA+ Concerns:. Oppression, discrimination and marginalization of2SLGBTQQIA+ people persists, often leading to higher levels of depression, anxiety, and other mental health concerns. The therapist validates and advocates for the needs of the sexual and gender minority client and demonstrates an affirming stance toward all expressions of gender and sexuality. The therapist helps the client cope with discrimination and oppression, assists in coming out, and helps the client develop and celebrate an “authentic” sense of self in the face of social expectations and pressures.

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