Specialized Services
Therapy for Military, Law Enforcement & First Responders
Book a Free 20-Minute Consultation“The strongest people are not those who show strength in front of the world but those who fight and win battles that others do not know anything about.”
— Jonathan Harnisch
When other people depend on you, you deal with what is in front of you. You react. You don’t stop to sort through what the situation is doing to you.
When the adrenaline wears off, that’s when you start to realize where you’ve been, what happened to you, what you’ve just witnessed. You tell yourself that it’ll just “go away” and you’ll “deal with it.” But it doesn’t go away, and you can’t seem to deal with it.
The ability to just relax feels like a distant memory. You can’t shut off your mind, it’s always working. Even when you’re off duty. Sometimes, you only have a few moments on the drive back to recenter yourself before you see your family.
The impact of trauma accumulates and compounds with repeated exposure. It’s rare for first responders or military personnel to deal with just a single event. More often, it’s the accumulation of incidents throughout their career.
Sometimes, it can feel like taking care of others is easier, because we don’t want to take care of ourselves. But if you’ve dedicated your life to protecting, serving, and caring for others, it’s imperative to keep your own life in balance.
You love your job and you’re passionate about what you do. There’s no question about that. The relationships you’ve made mean the world to you. Yet, you may wonder how much more you have in you if you keep going this way.
You’re sacrificing a lot, and you’re expected to sacrifice even more. That’s why reaching out for help can be so difficult. It’s also what makes it so important.
Sometimes, we need to give ourselves the space to get back on our feet, and recovery takes time. At first, the memories control you. They’ll consume your thoughts and your emotions. But through therapy, you’ll be able to take back control.
Therapy builds on your strengths, it does not replace them. It does not take away what you’ve built.
Your identity is not defined by just one part of who you are. Whether you are continuing your work or changing your path, being able to build a new identity takes a lot of strength. That identity can mean a new life within or outside the job.
Therapy helps you remain effective because it helps you leave work at work once you go home at the end of the day. With treatment, you’ll be able to feel like you’re not on duty in your head every hour of the day.
Therapy changed how I see my life and helped me feel like myself again. Being able to talk through the flashbacks and fight or flight reactions, learn coping strategies that actually worked... it made a huge difference. I sleep better now, my anxiety went away, and it feels like a weight finally lifted off my shoulders. In many ways, therapy saved my life. I could not recommend it more.
Psychotherapy helps you reconnect with the people and things that are important to you. It’s a practice of letting go of the pain that you’ve been holding onto. We learn tools to help ourselves accept and move on, and to cope with stress so that we can process what happens, fully.
A lot of what you face on the job leaves you wondering if you could have made a different decision, and how that might have changed what happened. Your mind judges you. You feel that you’ve done something wrong. Sometimes, you find it hard to accept that there was nothing you could do. You’ve been put in impossible situations on a daily basis.
Through therapy, memories won’t consume your thoughts as much. You will learn that they can be there, but they don’t have to be as intense. Therapy helps you change the perspective you have on painful events while also delving deeper into their somatic and emotional effects. Sleep improves, and so do your relationships with people you care about and love. The Pathway to Self method is designed to help you regain your balance.
Direct billing available. Direct billing is available for eligible Veterans Affairs Canada, Canadian Armed Forces, and RCMP clients through Medavie Blue Cross. Other military, law enforcement, and first-responder clients may also be eligible for direct billing through TELUS Health, depending on your workplace or extended health insurance plan.