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Navigating the Spiritual Journey: Psychedelics and Underhill’s Mystical Framework

Spiritual growth is a deeply personal and transformative journey. We often draw upon Evelyn Underhill's (1911) framework of mysticism to help individuals navigate their spiritual paths. Underhill outlines stages that many experience as they seek deeper meaning and connection in their lives. In parallel, there's a resurgence of interest in the potential role of psychedelics—such as psilocybin and LSD—in facilitating spiritual experiences (Richards,…

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How Social Media Disrupts Adolescent Identity: Narrative Development, Echo Chambers, and Emotional Radicalization

Developing a coherent and stable identity is a central task during adolescence. According to Erikson (1968), this period is characterized by a conflict between identity versus role confusion, in which young people begin to consolidate a sense of self by integrating personal values with those modeled by peers and society. However, this period is also a time when adolescents are particularly vulnerable to…

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Cognitive Reflection – Decoding Pilot Decision-Making

Cognitive reflection is the ability to override intuitive, automatic responses with deliberate, analytical reasoning to make more accurate decisions along with check-list utilization. An important aspect of which is its potential to facilitate awareness, control, and monitoring processes to help identify potential thinking errors and encourage the deployment of alternative strategies. A 2024 Ergonomics study by Mohan et al., provides some compelling results…

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Uberized Therapy: How “Convenience” Undermines Confidentiality and Care

“Uberized” online therapy platforms—like BetterHelp, or subscription based ones like Talkspace—have surged in popularity over the past decade, partly due to their promise of affordable, on-demand mental health care. But these services often trade away client confidentiality, compromise clinical quality, and treat therapy as a commodity rather than a relational process. Below, I explore how Uber-style mental health platforms betray core ethical principles…

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Discipline, Dopamine, and the Decline of Sustained Effort: The Lost Skill of Doing Things You Don’t Want to Do.

The ability to do things we don’t want to do often attributed to a construct called “discipline.” However, this framing obscures a more complex interplay of neurocognitive conditioning, environmental influence, and shifting cultural values. Increasingly, what is perceived as a lack of discipline may in fact reflect a neurological adaptation to novelty-saturated digital environments—particularly those designed to exploit dopaminergic reward pathways. The erosion…

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Letting Go Process: A Therapist’s Science-Backed Path to Release Anger and Find Peace

“Letting go” isn’t about erasing the past, pretending nothing happened, or admitting defeat; it’s an active journey that rewrites how our memories and emotions hold sway over us. Letting go involves a set of cognitive and neurobiological shifts—experiential acceptance, cognitive reappraisal, and memory reconsolidation. In letting go, there is a process of cognitive reappraisal, which means reframing how you interpret a hurtful event—shifting…

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Why You Still Feel Like a Fraud (Even After You’ve Earned It)

Understanding Imposter Syndrome and How to Break the Loop You’d think that getting the job, landing the client, or being handed the mic would settle things. That at some point, confidence would catch up to competence. But for many people—especially those in high-performance fields or creative industries—that feeling never really arrives. Instead, success brings something else: doubt. Sometimes louder than ever. What Is…

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The Role of Personality in Aviation Performance

Aviation professionals, particularly pilots, are often thought to embody a unique blend of skills and personality traits—the so-called "right stuff." While cognitive and technical abilities are well-established as essential for pilots, air traffic controllers, and aviation maintenance technicians, the influence of personality traits on aviation performance is more complex and nuanced. The "Honeymoon Effect": Personality’s Delayed Impact The role of personality in aviation…

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The Polarization of Society: Holding Fast to Your Values in a Fear-Based Compliance World

The polarization gripping society today is undeniable. It feels like a relentless tug-of-war, with mounting pressure to choose a side—failure to do so risks marking you as an outcast. For many, conformity seems like the only path to safety. With ideological enforcers seemingly everywhere and the demand to align intensifying, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, as if you’re sinking under a flood of…

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Overcoming Emotional Conditioning

Occasionally, we encounter rare moments of clarity and happiness, where the weight of sadness and anxiety seems to disappear even for a minute. These moments - a quiet summer evening at the beach, recovering from illness, or being moved by art or music makes us wonder whether life could feel less like a burden. What if we could let go of fear and…

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Navigating Value Conflicts at Work: Strategies for Depersonalization and Professional Resilience

By Keith Norris, Counsellor in New Westminster BC For many individuals, work provides a sense of purpose and a platform to live out their values. However, situations often arise where job responsibilities or workplace cultures clash with personal principles. This misalignment can lead to stress, disillusionment, and burnout. While not every role or organization will align perfectly with an individual’s values, it is…

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Counselling for Anxiety and Depression

Understanding the Link Between Anxiety and Depression: Two Sides of the Same Coin I often hear clients say, “I can’t tell if I’m anxious or depressed.” This confusion is common because anxiety and depression frequently go hand-in-hand, creating a cycle of overwhelming thoughts and emotions. While they are distinct conditions, their close relationship means that they often occur together, blurring the lines between…

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Understanding Grief: Beyond the Stage Models

The experience of grief is as unique as the individuals who go through it. For many years, theories like those of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and John Bowlby have shaped our understanding of bereavement, offering helpful frameworks for the types of reactions people may experience when faced with the loss of a loved one. These stage models—whether it’s Kübler-Ross’s five stages or Bowlby’s four stages—serve…

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Dispelling the Stigma: Men Seeking Counselling

Men's Issues in Therapy As suicide rates rise among middle-aged white men, there is a growing effort to break down the stigma around seeking help from mental health professionals. Many men find it difficult to ask for assistance—even something as simple as directions—let alone reach out to a counselor. This reluctance can have lasting effects on their well-being. Research increasingly shows that men…

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Writing for Therapy

Writing is often an integral part of therapy, such as using thought record sheets and mood or activity diaries. Additional therapeutic techniques that involve writing may be helpful at particular times. There are many benefits to writing, including “getting it out of our head”, seeing things from another perspective, a part of exposure work (distressing memories), or externalizing the problem. Just putting words…

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ADHD – Often Misdiagnosed

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most increasingly diagnosed neurodevelopmental disorders in children ages 6 to 11. This recent increase has created concern among clinicians and researchers who must consider that potentially, ADHD may be over-diagnosed. It is becoming more broadly understood that traditional assessment tools based on DSM-5 criteria for example, have limitations. Accurate diagnosis necessitates a more holistic and multifaceted…

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Symptoms of ADHD Overlap with those Found in Trauma-Related Disorders

The symptom cluster of ADHD often overlaps with those found in trauma-related disorders. Observations from clinical practice and research indicate that behaviors typically associated with ADHD could also stem from experiences of trauma (Burke Harris, 2014). For instance, a child exposed to significant stress may develop symptoms resembling ADHD, such as inattention and impulsivity, due to the brain's adaptive response to adverse conditions.…

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Exploring Psychedelic Therapy for Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Concept and Pilot Project

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is characterized by persistent grandiosity, a need for excessive admiration, and a pronounced lack of empathy, posing substantial challenges to psychotherapeutic efforts. Recent advances suggest that psychedelic therapies, particularly those inducing ego dissolution, might offer new pathways for treatment. This concept paper examines the potential of psychedelic-induced authentic self-construction for treating NPD, integrating Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and…

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