​What’s holding you back from getting well and living the best version of your life? Writing a Mental Health Action Plan can help you figure it out. 

If you’re struggling with depression, addictions, PTSD, low self-esteem or other unwanted mental-health problems, are you doing everything you could to get better and have an amazing life?

Honestly, are you doing much of anything?

​Warning. This article contains some graphic truths. 

Media sources are reporting the worst of horrors after a terrorist detonated a bomb filled with nails, nuts, and bolts just after an Arianna Grande concert in Manchester, England.

A streak of blood across the floor. Survivors lying quiet on the ground stunned and shocked. Others crying out in pain waiting for their injuries to be tended to. Witnesses report children blasted to pieces.  

At the time of writing this, 22 are already confirmed dead. 
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For those that survived this terrorist attack, life will be forever changed. At least some (many) will develop the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

​In her quintessential book on codependent thinking, emotions, and behavior-Facing Codependence What It Is, Where It Comes From, How it Sabotages Our Lives, author Pia Mellody draws a direct line between an abusive childhood and struggling with life as a dysfunctional, damaged adult.

Mellody not only points to the usual suspects of sex abuse, physical abuse and emotional abuse in childhood as the origins of adult mental health problems, but she also talks about something often overlooked. Spiritual Abuse.
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So what is Spiritual Abuse? (HINT-It’s not what you think) And was it part of your home life growing up?

​Are you resisting the things in your life that you simply can’t change? And is this resistance a sign of codependency?

The emotions that we stuff deep inside are by definition the emotions that we aren’t allowing ourselves to feel. And trying to control what we feel is rooted deeply in fear and feeling threatened.

World renowned author, spiritual guide, and mental health advocate Deepak Chopra has written the following quiz to help you get a sense of how much you are trying to control your emotional state in what may be an unhealthy way. It only takes about five minutes to do this. 

​What does this have to do with The EMDR for Addiction Eye Movement Therapy Program? Nothing directly, but this quiz can give important clues about how we are feeling about ourselves, the overall state of our mental health, and how well we are dealing with our relationships with other people. In fact, a high score may indicate that we are in need of some EMDR sessions, one-to-one talk therapy, or even the support of a treatment group.

Vancouver-based counselor and EMDR Therapist Robert Grigore MCP,RCC thinks that people spend too much time, and too much money, in therapy without getting well. But he thinks he’s found a shorter and more effective way to help people get past their past, become healthy, and unleash their inner potential.

In March 2017, Robert is offering a free webinar on how to use EMDR in combination with traditional therapeutic approaches to permanently get over depression in three months or less. These webinars will explore where our depression comes from and also be filled with tips and techniques that anyone can use to deal with their day-to-day depression symptoms. Robert's talks fill up fast. You can sign up here.

When parents are absent, neglectful, abusive, or fail to provide a safe, stable, and loving environment, children grow up to be adults with problems. 

​The ACE Test is short, a mere 10 questions. But it is considered a gold-standard assessment tool in determining things like how well your career may go, if you’ll be addicted to drugs and alcohol, and even how long you’ll live.

Read More and take the test.

I never thought I could be happy, I had so many problems for so long that I thought I’d never crawl out of this hole in the ground. Then I took a chance and did the work. Here’s what happened.

The first time I encountered EMDR Therapy, it was in person with a therapist guiding me one-on-one. In fact, I think this was before any sort of online EMDR therapy even really existed.
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I was going to 12 step meetings at the time (AA) and even though I was not getting sober, I had met some pretty incredible people many of whom are still my friends now. During AA meetings I started to hear people share about their childhood and the word “trauma” came up when people talked about some of the violence and abuse they had been through. After our meetings, we would sometimes go out for a slice of pizza which was the first time I ever remember someone mentioning EMDR Therapy and talking about what it was. 

To make this easier for those who have not yet been through a session of EMDR Therapy, let me first explain what typically happens during a session.

Using your eyes you follow a moving light, or in the case of having an outdated therapist or therapy model, you follow their finger back and forth. You do this while mentally focusing on different aspects of your problem and it then changes the way that your brain responds to those problems.

In addition to using your eyes (visual stimulation) EMDR sessions may also feature audio tones or even little hand-held buzzers which vibrate to repeatedly stimulate the left and ride sides (hemispheres) of your brain.
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These sessions last anywhere from as little as 15 minutes for an at-home online session like those offered by The Virtual EMDR Eye Movement Therapy Program and the EMDR for Addiction Program, to more than an hour with some in-person therapists.