The Clearwater Blog: Exploring  ADHD, Trauma and IFS

It's important to choose the right support for you and your goals. When you're struggling, you just want things to be easier. And when you're ready to reach out for support, you want that support to actually help you in the ways you need to be helped. There are some key differences between the various types of helping professionals and the ways that they can help you with the symptoms and challenges you are facing, and knowing what kind of support you can expect to receive ca

If you've got ADHD, you're probably facing daily challenges like procrastination, distraction, and feeling overwhelmed. Medication can be a helpful tool for many people, and there are also situations where you might not want or be able to use ADHD medications. Treating ADHD naturally means we bring our attention to the various coping strategies you have developed to deal with the challenges of having a neurodiverse brain, gently bringing some curiosity to how these coping str

The other day someone said to me, "I know I need to rest, but I don't think I know how!" It's a predictable outcome of our always on, always online lifestyle. When work and leisure all take place in front of a screen, it gets harder and harder to get rest that really feels restful. If you've just come out of a weekend spent rotting in bed with your phone and are facing a week ahead that feels overwhelming, it might be helpful to learn a little more about rest and how we reall

While ADHD symptoms first show up in childhood, sometimes the adults around us didn't recognize our ADHD symptoms when we were a child. That doesn't mean the struggle or symptoms went away as we grew up. Many people seek counselling for something like depression, anxiety, anger management or substance use in adulthood, and later realize that ADHD is also part of what is going on for them. Here are 10 signs you might have adult ADHD: It takes a LOT of energy to get started wit

Recognizing, treating and working with ADHD when you're not a young white boy. Quick, think of someone who has ADHD. Did you picture a white boy in grade 3 jumping off his seat in a classroom? Most people do. Now imagine you're a middle aged mom who is struggling to stay on top of tracking your kid's homework and permission slips. Do you suspect you have ADHD? Or do you blame yourself for being disorganized or lazy, double down on self-criticism and hope you manage to get it

You know it when you're in it: the familiar whoompf as your nervous system and body take in the presence of a threat, followed by the narrow focus, repeating thought patterns, and undeniable pull towards something, anything that will distract you or make this awful experience go away. Welcome to the doom spiral. Ok, but how do I make it go away? As you probably know already, the doom spiral is both highly uncomfortable and hard to control. Part of you wants to feel anything

When the world around us is changing quickly, how do we cope? Whether we like it or not, the world we live in is constantly changing. Whether you're Gen Z or a Boomer, facing a world where constant, unpredictable, enormous change is underway can feel daunting at best or completely overwhelming and hopeless at worst. When we're dealing with uncertainty, we can feel like everything seems to be wobbly, nothing can be relied on, or the bottom is about to drop out from underneath

Dreams are ephemeral, mysterious, and can span the entire spectrum of emotional experience, from boring and unremarkable to vividly evocative, touching, joyful or even terrifying. You might have often wondered, "What does that dream I just had even mean?" Or have woken up with just a fragment of a dream that you can remember - one tiny image or a wisp of emotional tone - and everything else is gone. With everything else going on in life, what can be done with that bit of a dr

Change is a funny thing. We can want something very deeply, and then when we actually get it, we're terrified. Or we might go around making changes with one hand and undoing them with the other. Or we tell ourselves, "I'll quit that unwanted habit when work settles down," except the work never really does settle down. What's going on here? And how do we actually change in a meaningful and lasting way, especially in therapy? We change in therapy when we're ready What makes us

When the skeletons in your closet keep bursting out at the worst possible time, that's a clue that there is something in your past that needs some caring attention to bring healing and freedom today. Moving on from the past is possible The past influences the present It's the oldest cliche in the therapy world, and perhaps one of the first things people think of when they think of therapy. Picture someone reclining on a chaise lounge, while a man with a cigar and a beard says

Many of my clients are women who are struggling in one way or another with their anger. It's easy to spot when your anger is big and loud, spilling out in times and places that you later regret, or when you look back on events and wonder how things might have gone differently if your anger wasn't in charge. Anger management for women Other times women struggle to access their anger at all. You might be focused on taking care of others and making sure that you're giving and pr

If you're seeing a flood of content about ADHD and are starting to wonder if you have it, is it worth seeking an official diagnosis? Although seeking a diagnosis is ultimately is a personal choice, there are some important points to consider as you explore your options. Researching ADHD diagnosis What does an ADHD diagnosis mean to you? Receiving a mental health diagnosis can be a complicated thing. Unlike physical health diagnoses, which are often seen in a much more neutral

Inner parts and dreams both open up and unfold into experiences of deep meaning when we bring curiosity, compassion and courage to the way we relate to them. What is IFS Parts Work? Parts are aspects of our personality, or the different sides of ourselves. We often use this way of speaking naturally whenever we are describing the experience of having an inner conflict or difficulty making a decision. We've all likely heard someone say, "Part of me wants to leave my job, but

If you're doing therapy, you're already committing to a process of self-reflection. Journaling is something that can help support your work in therapy and help to develop the skill of noticing and reflecting on yourself and your life. Writing, especially by hand, also engages our mind and body in a new way. By writing out your thoughts, you have an opportunity to see them differently, in a similar way that saying something out loud can hit you differently than simply thinkin

How can therapy help us perform at our best?  Imagine trying to work with one hand tied behind your back. When we have a bunch of stuff in the back closet of our life that’s gone unacknowledged, it always takes some degree of energy to keep the closet door shut. Therapy can help us clean out that closet so that we can have both hands free for the work of our life.  When we’ve got stuff shut away in that closet, whatever is in there tends to burst out from time to time, no mat

As a culture, we’re more familiar with what goes into getting healthy physically than what it takes to get healthy mentally. However, these processes are more similar than you might think. Here are 6 reasons why going to therapy is like going to the gym. Going to therapy is an active process. When we go to the gym we expect to work. We expect to expend some energy, probably sweat, and most likely get a little out of breath and feel our muscles working. If we’ve never been to

If you’ve ever wondered, “what makes therapy work?” you’re not alone. Eugene Gendlin asked that same question back in the 1960’s when he was working alongside Carl Rogers, the father of humanistic therapy. Together they examined recordings of people doing therapy, comparing the people who got better with the people who didn’t. They noticed that the people who got better were doing something that could be identified reliably, and even taught. This became a practice called focu

We all know that it can be hard to change, even when you really want to. So when we actually begin to achieve the changes we have been wanting to make and then our relationships blow up - what the heck is going on here? Pushback reactions are one of the more confusing things that can happen when we start moving towards our goals. Sometimes they can even cause us to give up when we don't recognize what's happening. This is particularly true when we get pushback reactions from

I just want to feel happy all the time, what's wrong with that? So many people ask me, "what's the point of feeling sad?" This is actually a great question. For many people feeling or expressing "negative" emotions like sadness, anger or fear have only led to more negative experiences. It makes sense to ask what's the point of feeling emotions if they only lead to bad experiences. It doesn't have to be this way though - feeling emotions, even negative ones, can have a posit

Is this popular style of therapy right for you? Here's a little background on IFS and a guided reflection process that can help you find out. You might have heard of Internal Family Systems, or IFS, from a friend or content creator on social media. It’s become very popular over the past several years, to the point where the waiting list to join a Level 1 training through the IFS Institute had 7,000 people on it and the opportunity to apply for a training was awarded by a lott