Verdant Counselling
3633 Deal Street B3N 2Y6 Halifax, NS, Canada

Watching this is just strangely reassuring. Stop, unclench your jaw, take a deep breath, and pause on it for a minute if you get a chance.

There are lots of stressors around. They're hard to avoid. Even if your personal life is great, the world is a constant source of uncertainty and threat, it can seem. See if you can inventory what you've been doing to deal with this. Surely 2020 necessitates some sort of coping strategy, so what is it?... What has worked for you before? What feels most available or easiest to start? If coping eludes you, consider reaching out for help. See more

Unheralded, at least to the level I would hope to see, 211 launched a 24 hour help line for men a month ago. Confidential help that can even include emergency counselling. Now, men are not the only people who need a hand (or even the group that MOST needs it) but we all do better when men aren't in crisis - that's for sure. ... Part of the trap of some masculinities is that you can't ask for help. Reaching out is a revolutionary act. It can break cycles and heal communities. Reach out if you think you can. https://ns.211.ca/service/68607646_68541157/mens_helpline

It may sound simple, but the first step to processing an emotion is often to name it. Broadly, does it feel happy/sad/angry/scared? Ok, sad? Then, more specifically, can you drill down and get more granular; is it ashamed/lonely/remorseful/inferior? Where does that feeling show up in your body? And when were other times you felt this way?... All of this can help to integrate the feeling and therefore to move past it. Paradoxically, giving it all sorts of attention (at least this sort of attention) can make it go away. See more

You know that nagging feeling that things are harder lately? Or that you're really reactive or defensive to things that might have slid off your back in the past? Have you considered that it might be pandemic-related? We can measure the size of the amygdala increasing for people living through this. You might predict all of those reactions, reactions about response to stress or threat, from this. I write this to encourage reflection, recreation, relaxation and (if it feels r...ight) therapy. It might be more important to your brain now than ever before. https://www.discovermagazine.com//has-the-stress-of-covid-

You have value no matter what you're achieving (or not).