What is Counselling & Psychotherapy Support?

Counselling/Psychotherapy is the skilled use of relationships to facilitate self-knowledge, emotional acceptance and growth and the optimal development of personal resources.  The overall aim of counsellors is to provide an opportunity for people to work towards living more satisfyingly and resourcefully.  Counselling relationships will vary according to need but may be concerned with developmental issues, addressing and resolving specific problems, making decisions, coping with crisis, developing personal insights and knowledge, working through feelings of inner conflict or improving relationships with others” (Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association, 2014).

  • Addictions (Behaviourally based and Chemically based)
  • Anxiety
  • Grief
  • Depression
  • Insomnia
  • Self-Esteem, Self-Confidence
  • Major Mental Health
  • Life Transitions
  • Trauma and PTSD
  • Relationship Issues
  • Psychosocial Stressors
  • Perinatal Mental Health
  • Post Termination of Pregnancy Support
  • Chronic Health Challenges -self and family members
  • Co-Dependency
  • Emotional Regulation

The primary presenting issues Judy works with include support for traumatic experiences, women’s issues, and resiliency building.

Trauma support includes working together to contain, process, and bring resolution to challenging emotional responses and symptoms associated with experiencing distressing and/or disturbing life events. These might include some of the following:

  • Adverse Childhood Experiences within the Family of origin
  • Historic or recently experienced domestic violence, intimate partner violence, or sexual assault
  • Loss of a loved one
  • Witnessing or experiencing community violence
  • Motor vehicle accidents
  • Traumatic Medical Procedures
  • The impacts of working in a helping profession including first-responders
     
Support might include identifying and exploring perspectives and strategies to navigate and manage some of the following:
 
  • Life stages and transitions
  • Parenting challenges
  • Work-life balance
  • Maternal health
  • Perinatal mental health
  • Chronic illness
  • Self-Esteem
  • Relationship challenges
  • Chronic Insomnia – Primary or Secondary
  • Addictions
  • Emotional Regulation

Support with Resiliency Building includes exploring perspectives and practices to manage stress and the impact it has on our well-being. Building resilience helps us to adapt to difficult situations and manage the associated stress, adversity, trauma, anger, grief, and pain associated with some of the following:

  • Workplace Stressors
  • Family and relationship stressors
  • Challenging life events
  • Financial stress
  • Caregiver stress
  • Empathic Strain associated within work as a health care provider or helping professional

Trauma-informed treatment provides an acknowledgement of trauma, strength-based skill building, safety and trustworthiness, and offers opportunities for choice, control, and collaboration within the therapeutic process. Trauma-Informed services address the need for healing of traumatic life experiences and facilitate trauma recovery through counselling/psychotherapy.

A Solution-Focused approach offers a short-term, future-oriented, goal-directed, and solution-building approach to resolving personal presenting issues. 

A Strengths-Based approach builds on an individual’s strengths and recognizes an individual’s capacity for resourcefulness and resilience in the face of adverse experiences.  

A Narrative approach in Counselling seeks to support an individual to adjust and tell alternative stories about their lives in order to bring about positive change and improved mental health. Narrative Therapy views an individual as an expert in their own life and as separate from their problems as they strive to shift from seeing the problem as an unchangeable part of self to an external issue that can be changed.

Mindful Self-Compassion Coaching brings together a practice of the skills for mindfulness and self-compassion as a means to enhance an individual’s coping capacity and emotional resilience. Mindfulness is an approach to observing one’s difficult thoughts and feelings from a place of openness and curiosity while self-compassion offers an approach to responding to these difficult thoughts and feelings with kindness, understanding, and compassion to promote enhanced emotional well-being. 

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy – Insomnia is a set of techniques that involve scheduling your sleep and knowing what to do when you are not sleeping.  It works with your body’s sleep systems and does not involve medication.  It is the most effective long-term solution for insomnia. The prevalence in the general population of chronic insomnia is 10-15%.

The Non-Insured Health Benefits (NIHB) program provides eligible First Nations and Inuit clients with coverage for professional mental health counselling. To be eligible, a client must be a resident of Canada and one of the following: A First Nations person who is registered under the Indian Act i.e. has a status number or an Inuk recognized by an Inuit land claim organization.

 

Nurse Psychotherapy Support

Psychotherapy refers to a variety of treatment modalities that can help individuals to identify and change troubling emotions, thoughts, or behaviours. In Ontario, treatment using psychotherapy is regulated for use by six colleges, including The College of Nurses of Ontario.

When faced with mental health challenges that are so closely related to physical health (such as pregnancy and postpartum), Lindsay as a nurse has the education, knowledge, and understanding of both the mental AND physical challenges, and how they interact with each other. Lindsay can provide a safe, supportive, and compassionate space to address mind and body in relation to pregnancy and postpartum concerns.

  • Prenatal classes
  • Maternal or infant health (pregnancy, delivery, or postpartum)
  • Breastfeeding/Chestfeeding/Infant feeding
  • Baby blues
  • Perinatal anxiety and depression (PPA/PPD)
  • Perinatal mood and adjustment disorders
  • Scary thoughts
  • Sleep
  • Women’s Issues
  • Therapeutic abortions and miscarriages
  • Managing expectations
  • Stress and coping skills
  • Body image or self-esteem
  • Anger and resentment
  • Guilt and shame

Lindsay’s passion in her career is perinatal care. Being a mother herself, she acknowledges the many challenges that can arise and the support that women need during this time. Her goal is to meet clients where they are at, so they can journey together to where they want to be. Lindsay is grateful to be able to use her skills and knowledge to support the families in her community.

 

Lindsay works collaboratively with clients in psychotherapy sessions by focusing on their values and goals using integrative psychotherapy (supportive psychotherapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and mindfulness), while also incorporating education and health promotion. Her goal is to provide clients with support, resources, and skills to use as they journey to and through parenthood.

Nurse, Psychotherapist

Lindsay psychotherapist
Lindsay Scheerle
BA, RN, Psychotherapist & International Board Certified Lactation Consultant

Lindsay is licensed with the College of Nurses of Ontario as a Registered Nurse (RN), completing her Bachelor of Science in Nursing and also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree specializing in Psychology. Lindsay has also passed the International Board of Lactation Consultant Exam. Lindsay has spent her nursing career working in various areas of perinatal and women’s health including a postpartum inpatient unit, mother-baby outpatient unit, obstetrical offices, colposcopy clinics, and a perinatal residence for women in need. Lindsay has completed specialized training through The Postpartum Stress Centre in postpartum mood and adjustment disorders, as well as having completed many certifications in lactation and infant feeding.