Repose Therapy | Therapy

We believe in change, in hope, and in transformation: this is the core of our work at Repose. The integration of our body, heart, mind, and spirit is where we feel the most freedom and wholeness. Our beings are made to heal and have health. At first, facing our own beings and pursuing healing might not feel great, but in embracing all of who we are, we find peace and rest; from this place, we thrive.

We believe that within each person, we want more for our lives; even our most destructive behaviours or debilitating emotional state has an underlying message that we want more. Sometimes the patterns of our brain are stuck in the old ways of knowing how to meet our needs, the things we learned through spoken and unspoken messages in our lives. That is not working for us anymore. We can learn new ways. We can access the innate wisdom of our body, the desires of our heart, and the truth of our spirit to move towards health and wholeness.

Repose Psychotherapy and Counselling Services is anything but formulaic. Each client will journey through a co-created experience with their therapist to establish deep and lasting change both internally and externally in their life.

Our therapists draw from many theoretical models, and are most grounded in AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy) and Satir Transformational Systemic Therapy (STST). We draw from the ground-breaking work of Emotional Focused Therapy (EFT), concepts of Narrative Therapy, Internal Family Systems Theory, Somatic Respiratory Integration, Trauma Sensitive Yoga, and utilize EMDR for work with trauma (centering around attachment).

You will find that through our experiential work together, your whole being is honoured for each part of you and how it can contribute to your own healing journey.

Every client has their own pace and timing. Consider the example of what is required to climb a mountain: if you move too fast, you might experience injury; as you pace your journey, you will break down the steps required; as you gain elevation, awareness of your body and strength allows you to make adjustments; as you walk the path, you will encounter different views, aware of things that may come in the way.

Our meta-goals for our clients are to:

Be more responsible
Be better choice makers
Be congruent
Have higher self-esteem

Every question, theory, direction, or goal, is framed under the umbrella of moving toward these meta-goals. We seek to help our clients cultivate an internal experience of acceptance and love, that cannot help but spill over into other relationships in life.

COUPLES

There is a unique dance that every couple creates in their relationship. Sometimes this dance is enjoyable, sometimes it feels redundant or boring, and sometimes there are misleads and stepping on toes. Regardless of the experience, each person contributes in their own way to this dance. Our philosophy at Re.Pose is that neither partner is the problem: the dance can sometimes become a problem, and our work will largely be redefining it.
Each partner has a need to preserve the self, and a need to preserve their relationship. These are both extremely important needs. It is how these needs are expressed in the dance that must be explored. Expression of needs are sometimes learned from the environment we grew up in; there’s always an opportunity to learn something new. The difficult yet also exciting, part is discovering the unconscious ways of meetings our needs that are not working in relationship.
Couple therapy may include some traditional work to look more intently at how to shift old patterns. The intent is always to strengthen the attachment of the couple, rediscovering the enjoyable part of the dance. Together, you will re-create new steps, movement, and flow in which to move forward.

FAMILY

Our families are our mirrors. This begins from day one when a couple forms, reflecting the parts of each other that are known and unknown. When a child comes into the mix, their brain is formed out of how their caregiver mirrors to them who they are. When the baby cries, their caregiver will look at them with sadness. When the baby smiles, their caregiver will smile back. Children learn who they are and how to meet their needs from the mirroring of their caregiver. Our perception of who our family is, and who they think we are, can have a lot of weight in the choices we make. Sometimes we operate independently. But often, we do not check out what is connected. Therapy can be a safe place to do that, to start to understand how the family experiences one another, and the desire for how they would like to connect with each other.
Just as in couples work, each person in a family system has to find a way to meet their needs around preserving the relationship. Even the littlest of our family members have needs, they just look different.
Contact us today to talk to a Repose team member to see if Family Therapy is for you.

PRENATAL & POST-PARTUM

The area of prenatal and post-partum health is often somewhat neglected emotionally. This time of life can feel raw, vulnerable, and scary, while at the same time exciting and exhilarating. Often when we enter this prenatal stage, or even start considering the idea of starting a family, past concerns can revisit us in new ways. This “revisiting” happens in many ways through memory we are aware of, and through our body memory which we may not have awareness of. Science is showing us more and more that not only do we carry memory in our brain, it also exists within the cells of our body. Since this stage of life involves so much from our body, things often start to surface. This makes prenatal loss incredibly complex and difficult. As a loss that is not readily acknowledged in our society, the journey can be confusing, and create lots of new and different body sensations and emotions. Each person experiences a different journey through grief; what each person needs is a space held for them, as they make sense of what this painful experience means in their life.
Our therapists collaborate to find creative and compassionate pathways through these new and difficult seasons of life. You may find birth art to be a helpful way to access what is in the way of unresolved concerns, EMDR to deal with past birth or other trauma, or traditional talk therapy as a way to hold safe space and discover what you need in this new season of life.

TRAUMA THERAPY

The word ‘trauma’ is not very appealing to most people. Many fear the word itself, as if speaking the word aloud has power to hurt. Yet, I have found that naming an experience as traumatic often brings empowerment. Our view of trauma is complex yet simple. What is traumatic for one person may not be for another person. In some situations, a traumatic impact can simply be linked to an experience that was completely unexpected, that came out of nowhere. And then there are other experiences of trauma that are more complex and repetitive, and thus hold a deeper impact.
Whether trauma is a one time experience, or chronic from a young age, it is stored in our body and brain in many different ways, both unconsciously and consciously. When we experience a traumatic incident, our being has an automatic response to help us survive on some level. This is totally unique to each person in how their being has registered these experiences. When someone has lingering traumatic symptoms, they can present in many unexpected ways: One might have a recurring ‘inaccurate’ emotional response to a situation that seems out of place; they may have actual visceral flashbacks of an event; or they may have a persistent sense of anxiety or depression. This list is not exhaustive of traumatic symptomology, but all of these can indicate an unintegrated traumatic experience that continues to have power in the present, even though it is a past event.
It is our belief that we as humans have within us what we need to heal and move toward wholeness. As a result, we believe that traumatic experiences do not need to hold the power in our lives that they sometimes do. Over the last ten years it has become a passion of mine (Danielle) to co-create goals and experiences with my clients that can aid in the healing of trauma. I use many experiential and expressive forms of therapy to allow the brain to integrate these experiences in new ways. Some of these include: Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR), art therapy, sand tray therapy, and Somatic Respiratory Integration (SRI), visualization, meditation, and yoga.
The research of Bessel Van der Kolk has informed my strong belief that trauma lands in the cells of our body, and thus the body needs to be accessed for the healing of trauma. With this understanding, I have recently been trained in trauma sensitive yoga. Re.Pose offers restorative therapeutic classes to help the body release and reconnect in a new and safe way. (Bessel van der Kolk research).
Each person’s journey towards healing is completely different. It is in the full validation of their experience, with understanding that they have what they need to heal, that one can move into an new experience of oneself and one’s life.

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