iMentalHealth Counselling Services offers counselling to Veterans, Canadian Armed Forces members and first responders in the City of Saint Albert, Alberta and Edmonton area, with Registered Psychologist Geordy Murphy.
We bill directly to Medavie Blue Cross. If you are a Veteran or in the Canadian Armed Forces we are able to support you with Psychological support. Within the Canadian Armed Forces there are certain modalities they caution that we are not to use unless there is a reason you are needing a specific treatment such as EMDR for PTSD. We are skilled at working with PTSD, anger, anxiety, depression and relationship issues.
If you are a Veteran and you would like to apply to Veterans Affairs Canada for compensation for psychological injury, we will fill out a medical questionnaire (Pen6248) and send off to Veterans Affairs.
If you are a first responder you know first hand that each day you are dealing with situations that can be unspeakable and traumatic to see, while having to continue showing up to work day after day. When we show up to an environment like this each day, it can do a few things to name a few.
1. Desensitize us- We learn to be desensitized to difficult events. You may even develop a dark sense of humor as a way of coping with it. Your norm becomes distress, so you may think that it doesnt have an impact on you.
2. Make us Hypervigilant- We may find that it makes us anxious, worried, paranoid. We are more agitated and angry with others.
3. Hypoarroused – we are not present with more focus on numbing activities. We may be into using substances or behaviors to cope. Feelings of numbness or detachment.
It can be helpful to discuss your symptoms with a Psychologist and if there are any ways of coping that are detrimental to your health we can work together on strategies that help you process through what you have seen rather than using strategies that keep these thing under the surface. It is kind of like a beach ball we are trying to push down. The ball will eventually pop up out of the water.
We want to help you to stay within what is called the window of tolerance, where you can bring your self from a state of distress into a state of calm.
Laurel Parnell
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Spiritual Unfolding
This is a video with a peaceful place exercise at the end. It is a way of helping calm the nervous system.
When we deal with trauma it is a careful process that we take in ensuring you are not opening up wounds that are going to retrigger and make you feel worse; however, counselling can often feel uncomfortable for people.
Therefore, the first thing we want to do when dealing with trauma is to ensure safety and stability before we start talking about anything difficult. We want to help you feel resourced emotionally before you process any difficult trauma in you life.
We may work on Breathing Techniques, Tapping, Visualization, reframing thoughts, and education around trauma and the brain.
One treatment that we can use for trauma is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a body based approach that uses Bilateral Stimulation and works with the Adaptive information Processing system.
If you are unsure of which service area to book, you can simply book an individual or couples appointment and specify with your therapist in your intake what it is you are wanting to work on. Our categories are a way of helping explain our approach to different presenting issues. It is also not limited to these areas. Also if you are in need of immediate support please call the distress line or 811 to reach someone immediately. Thank you for visiting our site.