Understanding boundaries is essential to caring for ourselves. Creating a feeling of safety, maintaining a healthy environment, defining appropriate behavior, and setting expectations for ourselves and within relationships, can help avoid feelings of frustration when our needs are not met.  In the article Understanding the Six Types of Boundaries, Dr. Nedra Glover Twwab, explains that boundaries can be created to offer intellectual, emotional, sexual, time, material, and physical protection and allow us to fulfill potentially unmet needs.   It is important to remember that the ..read more

Okay, so you have established a new boundary, and you were met with anger. Now what?  It is important to recognize that setting boundaries is a crucial part of maintaining healthy relationships. However, it is not uncommon for someone to respond with anger or defensiveness when confronted with new boundaries. If you have experienced this kind of reaction when setting boundaries with someone, it can be disheartening. On one hand, you don't want to back down and allow someone to continue ignoring your needs. On the other hand, you may feel guilty or responsible for the other person's react ..read more

Love finds a way, into the shadows of doubt and questioning. It opens a window, turns on a light, throws open the doors, and sets up shop. And invites the inquisition over for tea. You can't protest in the face of love. You can't argue with it. All you can do is feel it. That visceral shift. That warmth that washes over. That pull-up-a-chair-and-let's-talk-about-it sensibility. It is being known. It is belonging. It is an invitation. No fear. No coercion. No guilt-trip. Love absorbs the blaming, shaming, and fault-finding. Because love is gentle, and love is strong. It waits for permission, a ..read more

Photo by Benita Joy This past week, the World Health Organization recognized burnout as "a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed." It is characterized by: 1.) feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; 2.) increased mental distance from one's job or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and 3.) reduced professional efficacy.  Let's break this down. For starters, inherent in the definition is the suggestion that the one responsible for "successfully managing" workplace stress is the one experiencing wo ..read more

    At the Toronto Relationship Clinic, we open our virtual doors to a diverse group of individuals, couples, families, and groups who bravely step forward to engage on the path of personal growth and healing. It is common when thinking about the term “relationships” to create immediate links to that of the family unit, a friend, an intimate partner, or a social group. It is seldom that when the concept of relationships is discussed we think of the connection we ought to work on with our innermost self. When I reference this, I mean the version of us that has unique goals, dreams, f ..read more

No. Just no. No need for explanations or alternatives. Let them misunderstand. Let them speculate. Let them judge. You don’t always have to explain yourself. No matter how uncomfortable you feel. I write this like I’ve somehow mastered it, but the truth is that I’m the worst at it. Ever preoccupied with the feelings of other people, the need to cater is a constant unwelcome companion. I’m literally second-guessing myself as I write this. People pleasing is a difficult one to overcome. The thing is, most of my life, my saying yes to people has meant saying no to myself or no to something that ..read more

The holidays can be a time of great joy but can also be filled with complex layers of emotion in navigating tricky dynamics with difficult family members.  The reality is no person, and no family is perfect. We all come to the table with our own lived experiences, dreams, flaws, vulnerabilities, and expectations.  In a perfect world, we can recognize areas for growth and still hold space to love and respect one another. But the reality for many is that time with family – especially over the holiday(s) can create an impossible-to-avoid situation with dynamics that can be just the opp ..read more

    How often have you gone a week, maybe two, or longer without filling up your cup? I like to think of the act of self-care or respite as a figurative filling of a glass of water. Some weeks we may absorb the required amount, have just enough to work with, or have leftovers from our last refill. Other times we may struggle to meet our daily intake, not receive enough to fill our needs, or end up missing our refill entirely. As a society that is deeply influenced by social media, we are often bombarded with messages that either trivialize the importance of self-care or favor messag ..read more

There's a place called resentment where we sometimes go. Where it's cold and somewhat frightening. And the lights are off there. But the ways in which we find ourselves in its wake are not so straightforward. It's an expectation that wasn't met. It's an obligation that wasn't fulfilled. It's a hope that was met with pain and heartache. And now, it's hard to see straight. It's the worst when it's someone close to you. You want to make them pay. You want them to see how much they hurt you. You want them to feel just a little bit of that pain. You want to forgive, to be happy, but there's a part ..read more

I imagine most of us have settled into what seems to be the constantly changing new normal while also grappling with the fact that the old normal isn't coming back. Canada's response to the pandemic has been generally cohesive, and we managed to flatten the curve. I'm grateful for this. It goes without saying that the pandemic has affected us all to varying degrees. We all know somebody, or somebody who knows somebody, who had Covid-19. Some of us even know people who lost loved ones to Covid-19. Most of us have struggled with the mental health fallout of income loss, social isolation, and hei ..read more