Welcome to Kaleigh Russell Counselling and PsychotherapyProviding in-person counselling in Kitchener and virtual counselling in Ontario
Counselling Services
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Individual Counselling
Individual counselling can help people explore their emotions, thoughts, and behaviours to achieve personal growth, overcome challenges, and improve mental health. It can be effective for various mental health concerns, such as anxiety, depression, trauma, addiction, and relationship issues.
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Couples Counselling
Couples counselling can help couples identify and work through conflicts, improve communication, strengthen their relationship, enhance intimacy, and build trust. It can be beneficial for couples at any stage of their relationship, including premarital counselling, couples in crisis, and couples seeking to improve their overall relationship satisfaction.
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Teen Counselling
Counselling can help teenagers deal with various issues unique to their age group and give them a space to express themselves freely. The aim is to improve overall mental health, enhance coping skills, and help navigate the challenges of adolescence such as anxiety, depression, self-esteem, relationship problems, academic stress, and substance abuse.
Therapeutic Specialties
If I could describe the presenting problem that I treat the most in one word, it would be trauma. Except most clients I treat don’t know they have trauma until they walk through my door. Their trauma doesn’t look like sexual abuse, neglect, domestic violence, etc., although to be fair, sometimes it does too. Most of the time, their trauma looks like social anxiety, relationship issues, poor coping ability, depression, addiction, self sabotage, negative thinking patterns and so on. That’s because their trauma source doesn’t fit the widespread definition of trauma and their symptoms are viewed as separate problems, not a manifestation of what happened to you.
My therapeutic specialty is trauma, specifically attachment and relational trauma. I work with a variety of issues and problems, however listed below are three areas I specialize in that often have unknown and unresolved trauma as the source.
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Relationship Issues
Some examples are your family and relationship history; attachment wounds and/or abandonment fears; your relationship patterns; individual factors that may have a negative impact on the health of your relationships; specific behaviours that you may or may not be doing that are holding you back from having better relationships; establishing healthy boundaries with toxic people in your life (and with self); and acceptance of relationships that may no longer serve you or are beyond repair.
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Self-Worth & Self-Esteem
Some examples are negative narratives and core beliefs about self; unresolved trauma, past experiences and emotions; unhealthy or no coping skills; dysfunctional relationships; negative thinking patterns about self, others and the world; self-sabotage behaviours that prevent you from success or hinder progress; ego-driven thoughts, feelings and behaviours; wounded inner child reacting through the adult, authentic self; and self-criticism and lack of self compassion.
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Self-Sabotage & Problematic Behaviours
Some examples of these behaviours are procrastination, perfectionism, lack of boundaries, codependency, self-harm, eating and food issues, substance abuse and/or self medicating, addiction, withdrawal or isolating, hyper independence, controlling or micromanaging behaviour, picking fights, commitment fears, quitting or giving up, imposter syndrome and social media overuse.
