Calgary and Cochrane Alberta counselling

Specialties

McNaughton & Associates Counselling Inc. offers help for individual and relationship problems in the following areas:

Don McNaughton

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Abuse
• Pre-Marriage/Marriage
• Spiritual Direction
• Clergy Counselling and Recovery

Dana Owen

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Abuse
• Pre-Marriage/Marriage
• Children with Mental Health Needs
• Parenting

Specialties Defined

Anxiety is an emotion signalling uncertainty and potential danger. Anxiety’s best contribution occurs when it is temporary and when it is combined with healthy decision-making. At McNaughton & Associates we will help you gain confidence in recognizing the good work anxiety is doing and separate it from the “nagging” work that anxiety also likes to do after the usefulness is gone.

Depression is part of our wonderful design. Depression can actually help us stay on track by bringing our attention to sad and discouraging elements in our lives, and inviting us to make changes that will improve our experience.

We will help you understand the messages that your depression holds, and use those messages to identify worthwhile changes for making life meaningful and rewarding again.

A key feature of our relationship/marriage counselling is the establishing of a safe and comfortable emotion/relational workspace, where couples are assisted to find solutions for problems or hurts in the areas of communication, commitment, conflict resolution, forgiveness and intimacy. (Worthington Big Five Model)

Family counselling has an immediate benefit to improved communication – everyone gets to hear what everyone else says!  Improved communication is a great starting point for resolving other issues.  Whether we are looking at understanding stages of family growth, or enacting family interventions or planning family goals.  McNaughton & Associates Counselling will help you safely and respectfully work out solutions. Through Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Emotionally Focused Family Therapy, sessions focus on building trust, honouring each others’ feelings and restoring relationships.

Raising children is a wonderful gift and brings great joy to our lives. Yet parenting can be a challenge, as we try to find the best ways to teach and guide our children in a busy and complicated world. We believe children are born persons, fully capable of good or bad, and that our role as parents is to provide a loving relationship where we nurture them and guide them toward what is good and true. We help you understand essential keys to parenting such as attachment, stages of child development, the child-rearing atmosphere, learning, play, discipline, authority, obedience, thoughts, emotions, and habit training.

Talking to a therapist can be a very rewarding experience for children. They may feel relieved to know that their struggle is common among children, and they are awarded helpful tools for coping with emotions, thoughts, and behaviours. They can also discover ways to create the wanted change for themselves and their relationships. Counselling children is done using the attachment theory model, CBT, narrative therapy, and solution-focused therapy.

Stress is good when it is motivating and encourages you forward in work and play. However, when there’s “too much on your plate” and things begin to get missed: deadlines unmet, goals not achieved, responsibilities not taken care of, etc. this is when stress becomes unhelpful. Besides these primary concerns of stress, many secondary issues may arise such as mental and emotional hardship, physical illness, and negative changes to our behaviour. Let us help you find ways to use stress for good and reduce the load when it is needed.

Burnout is the experience of feeling physically, emotionally, and mentally overwhelmed or exhausted as a result of unresolved stress. We can help you recognize the signs of burnout and help you make the necessary changes to reduce stress and avoid or recover from burnout. We can assist you in taking up self-care and help you build mental resilience so a burnout cycle is prevented.

Providing Hope - Equipping for Change

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