Barbara Balshaw-Dow
Private Practitioner Counselling Services , Registered Yoga Teacher
Are you anxious, sad, feeling emotional? Are there challenges in your life that you want to sort out, approach directly or put behind you and don’t know where to start? Are you seeking new opportunities, relationships, employment or career changes? Have you experienced negative adverse events or trauma that may be impacting your life today?
Counselling is an opportunity to talk to a trained professional who can help you make sense of difficult feelings and emotions; help resolve complicated issues or find ways to manage them. Counselling can assist in recognizing unhelpful patterns and behaviours and find ways to change them.
Our mountain is the block between you and the life you want to live. Facing it is also the only trail to your freedom and becoming. You are here because a trigger showed you to your wound, and your wound will lead you to your trail and your trail will show you to your destiny. " - adapted from Brianna Wiest
It's not just brain biochemistry and physiology that's impacted by chronic and traumatic stress. The gut changes too and this can have an enormous effect on your digestive health, as well as your thoughts, moods, money, concentration and emotions - Malan-Muller, 2018
Master of Social Work 2007, University of Manitoba
Hatha Yoga Teacher Training 2014 and 2023
Certificate in Essentials of Supervisor Oct 2009
Certificate in Public Sector Management Sept 2012
Academic Health Sciences Leadership Program Feb 2016
MB Indigenous Cultural Safety Training Oct 2020
Ethics and Standards E-Learning Oct 2021
Solution Focussed tools (Homewood Health) January 2021
Critical Incident Stress Management Feb 2021
Motivational Interviewing-APT Accreditation Level 2 May 2021
I help clients by having them tell me their story; what is their current experience and what have they done in the past. Together, we develop strategies to do things differently and move forward by using tools such as; solution focused questions; strategies from CBT; and Basic EMDR therapy. Tools can include: action plans, journaling, meditation, mindfulness practice, and breathwork to gain direction, insight, and self care. I have had clients tell me its helpful to talk to someone without judgement and find ways to cope with current issues.
Cognitive Behavioural Strategies (CBT)
Trauma Focussed
Strengths-Based
Solution Focused Couples Therapy
Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT)
Person-Centered
Motivational Interviewing
Mindfulness-Based Strategies (MBCT)
Family Systems
Basic EMDR
My clients are amazing people. They come in with their struggles, their hurts, their fears, their insecurities, their difficult stories, their trembling hands, their breaking hearts, and they lay it on the table. They bravely take a look at their lives, and inside themselves, and take steps to grow and shift so they can finally experience the changes that they have wanted to see in their lives.
So often my clients come into session feeling defeated, broken, isolated, anxious, or hurt, but I also see their courage, their resilience, their tenacity, their strength, their joy, and their unwavering desire to connect in meaningful ways with people in their lives.
I am so deeply honored that my clients trust me to see and walk alongside them.
Anxiety
Self-confidence
Relationships
Depression
My passion for therapy grew out of the observation that when people are in personal or relational distress, not only is human support the best medicine, but they often need someone to walk with them or guide them back toward finding their connection, place of centre, or sense of wholeness.
To my mind there is no greater work. I really care about people and find it very fulfilling to watch people step back into their power, enjoy better relational health, or more personal wholeness.
I am the proud mother of four amazing teens, 2 doodles, and 2 cats who avoid us. I like to tinker with a guitar, and am a persistent but unsuccessful gardener. You can often find me having coffee with a friend or walking on the nature trail close to my house.
"What we resist, persists."
Episode 99 - Reflective Counselling with Barbara Balshaw-Dow