Spending 50, or more, minutes opening up to a therapist can feel intense! It is understandable that you’d want to feel comfortable when talking about your emotions and trauma. Here are 4 things to consider when you’re searching for a mental health professional to work with:

Identify your needs

It can get confusing fast when looking at types of therapy, what heck is Conative-behavioural Theory or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing? There is no need to deep dive into research about types of therapy (unless you want to!), but consider reading websites and blurbs about therapists to narrow down the support you’re looking for. For example, if you suffer from anxiety, then make sure it’s mentioned as an area of expertise in their bio. If you’re in Canada, try Psychology Today to search for a therapist or the American Psychology Association if you’re in the US.

Consider your needs

Do you feel shy about opening up or maybe you prefer hearing...

If you are on your therapy journey—in one-on-one sessions, online courses like First Step, or other—we applaud you! It takes a lot of courage to open up and decide to actively work on yourself.

You might be finding that after a session you don’t feel 100%. You may walk away feeling sad, angry, exhausted or anything in between. And we want to reassure you that that is completely normal. It can be emotionally and physically draining to be vulnerable when looking at your behaviours and digging into your past trauma—some even call this feeling “a therapy hangover.”

Here’s how to not let these after appointment feelings stop you from doing this important work. Many clients have shared that there are specific things they do to give themselves comfort.

1. Book your appointment or time for your online course at the end of your work day. This means you don’t have to shift back into a work headspace immediately after, putting back on a...

As an emotional eater, it may be difficult to separate the answer to this question. It is a classics chicken-egg conundrum.

When you feel strong emotions—grief, anger, anxiety—it is likely that you turn to food to sooth them away. Likely the foods you choose are ones that bring you a sense of comfort (you have happy memories associated with it) and give you a dose of the feel-good serotonin followed by a sugar crash that might made you feel dull or tired enough to sleep (and block out all feelings). These foods are likely high in fat, sugar, and taste amazing! But they are the kinds of foods that can lead to weight gain if eaten quickly and without mindfulness. In this scenario, weight gain comes from the food used to calm emotions like depression.

On the other hand, it is natural to gain weight as life circumstances change like becoming a new mom, after a breakup, or during a global pandemic. In these scenarios, you might find that you’ve gained weight and begin...

“Why do I eat emotionally? What do I get out of it?”

Sound familiar? We know emotional eating gives us feelings of shame and guilt, it can lead to weight gain, it can begin a spiral of negative self-talk, none of this we would volunteer to experience. But emotional eating gives us other things too; it is powerful. When you let your emotions guide what you eat, it isn’t about what you eat but why.

Eating emotionally…

… works as a distraction: you’re focussed on the food and not how you feel. In some scenarios, you eat so much you can only focus on the physical discomfort of overeating and not on the emotional discomfort.

… gives us pleasure: we reach for foods—like mashed potatoes, doughnuts, and pizza—that overload our senses (our mouth waters, our nose loves the smell). Sometimes the foods we reach for can even remind us of happy memories: meals at grandma’s house, birthday parties with friends, or even incredible meals...

1. Why did you create the First Step Course? 

After 11 years of working with clients on emotional eating, I noticed that there are common patterns and strategies that all clients can benefit from. So, I set out to package these great pieces of information into a course that could be accessible to more people—and it became the First Step Course!

Also, my client roster is currently full, but I wanted to make sure I could still help people who struggle with emotional eating. It is much more common than our shame would have us believe.

2. Who is the course for?

This course is for anyone who feels they need support with emotional eating. There is a focus on what is emotional eating and why we do it (and how we get stuck in the cycle).

The great thing about this course is that while there are common triggers for emotional eating, this course will not only help you identify them, it will also help you build strategies to support your own needs. That way you are...