In this post I focus on one issue that comes up a lot in my counselling work: the distinction between effects and responses, and how differentiating between these notions is crucial when it comes to how we assign responsibility for our own and other people’s feelings and actions.
Read moreDon't Judge Resistance by How it Appears
Whenever we come up against adverse conditions or mistreatment, we resist. Sometimes the ways people resist are misleading: they appear to be negative or self-harming, but are actually important acts of self-care. In this post I take a closer look at how so-called "negative" emotions, actions, or attributes can serve the purpose of resisting adversity.
Read moreObscuring Perpetrator Responsibility
In continuation of my series on the Four Operations of Language, this post focuses on the second operation: Obscuring and Mitigating Perpetrator Responsibility.
Read moreUsing Words to Conceal Violence
This is the first post in my 4-part series on Coates and Wade's Four Operations of Language. In this post I focus on how we use language to conceal or reveal violence.
Read moreDignity-Informed Practice
Trauma-Informed Practice has been an increasingly popular topic in the world of counselling and community work. I look at how we can take this a step further, toward a practice informed by upholding others' dignity.
Read moreThe Power of Words & Social Responses
We’ve likely all heard counter-arguments and annoyed protest from those who wish to believe that words are just words – often to excuse themselves for saying things with harmful implications. But words aren’t just words. Language provides the building blocks for meaning, and meaning informs action.
Read moreLife-Affirming Resistance
“Resistance” is one of those words whose meaning changes significantly depending on the person talking about it. In social activist circles, it may be used to describe the act of standing against oppressive or problematic forces. In psychology, it’s a term with a history of mostly negative implications. But is that really the most helpful stance we can take on resistance?
Read moreRethinking Self-Esteem
It’s a word that most Canadians are intimately familiar with: self-esteem. In a nutshell, the term “self-esteem” refers to how much someone values her/himself as a person. Here I explore how some of what we label as "low self-esteem" is actually very self-full.
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