Starting couples counseling often involves more than deciding to ask for
help. Cost can be a big deciding factor in whether or not to seek help,
especially when a relationship already feels strained and it is hard to
know what support will actually be covered. In Canada, there isn’t any
universal mental health care, despite more than a third of Canadians
wanting it, and provincial healthcare plans generally only fund mental
health services delivered through hospitals, community programs, or
physician-based care, rather than psychotherapy in private practice.
Every family experiences moments of tension, uncertainty, or transition
where communication can become strained and misunderstandings may grow,
often affecting the entire family. Family therapy offers a supportive space
where relatives can slow things down and work through challenges together.
At Oak & Sands Counselling, our mental health professionals and trained
family therapists can work collaboratively with the whole family to
strengthen connection, improve family communication, and support healthier
dynamics within the family unit.
Marriage and family therapy is a form of psychotherapy that focuses on
relationships, communication, and the patterns that develop between people
over time. It can involve couples, families, co-parents, or one person
attending alone to work on relationship dynamics. At Oak & Sands
Counselling, we provide relationship and family-focused counselling as part
of a broader practice that also includes support for children, teens,
women, and men. If you’re trying to understand what this type of therapy
actually looks like in practice, the sections below walk through the most
common questions we hear.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a structured form of psychotherapy
that was originally developed to treat borderline personality disorder
(BPD). It is widely used because it targets problems that commonly occur in
BPD, including intense emotions, impulsive behaviour, and self-harm risk.
DBT is also used for mental health conditions where emotion regulation is a
core difficulty.
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, is a
structured mental health method used to help people work through traumatic
memories and other distressing material. It’s best known for its role in
treating post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and its use has expanded to
include other concerns as well.
At Oak & Sands Counselling Services, EMDR is one of the therapy modalities
we offer alongside couples therapy, family therapy, therapy for women,
counselling for teens, therapy for men, and counselling for children. If
you’re exploring EMDR for the first time, it can help to know what the
appointment itself looks like, including answering questions like how long
does a typical EMDR therapy session last and why the timing is part of the
work.
CBT is one of the most researched forms of psychotherapy, and it’s also one
of the most misunderstood. It often gets boiled down to “just think
differently,” when it’s really a structured way of tracking how your
thoughts shape your emotions, then practicing new responses until they
start to feel natural.
At Oak & Sands Counselling Services, we offer CBT as part of an
evidence-based therapy practice that also includes EMDR, couples
counselling, family therapy, and support for teens, children, women, and
men. If you’re looking for a clear starting point, our breakdown below
explains what CBT can change, how it works, and when it may be the right
fit.
People rarely arrive at therapy looking for theory. They come because
something keeps repeating, and they are tired of feeling caught in it.
Cognitive behavioral therapy, often shortened to CBT, offers a practical
way of understanding those patterns and changing them. It is a structured,
goal-oriented form of talk therapy with strong evidence behind it for
concerns such as anxiety disorders, depression, grief, stress, insomnia,
chronic pain, and many mental health conditions.
In high stress moments, it’s common for emotions to feel intense and the
space between feeling and acting seems too narrow. Dialectical Behavior
Therapy (DBT) is a skills-based therapy grounded in mindfulness and
behavioral change, and developed for helping with mental health conditions
that cause intense emotions and have difficulty with emotional regulation
skills such as borderline personality disorder or people with suicidal
behaviors.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), was developed for people who experience
intense emotions and have difficulty with emotional regulation. It is most
often associated with borderline personality disorder, though it is widely
used with teens, adults, couples, and families facing emotional reactivity,
relationship strain, trauma, and mood-related concerns.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)
are often mentioned in the same breath, which can make them sound
interchangeable. In practice, they are not.
