What is Anxiety and How do I Manage it?
Anxiety is a natural response to stress, but when it becomes overwhelming, it can interfere with daily life. This post explores what anxiety is, common symptoms, and evidence-based strategies to help manage it.
We all experience anxiety from time to time. It's a normal and necessary part of being human. Anxiety consists of feelings of fear, physical symptoms in the body, and worrisome thoughts. While often uncomfortable, it’s actually a natural survival mechanism—an evolutionary response designed to keep us safe. Anxiety alerts us to potential danger or threat by activating the body’s “fight or flight” response system.
Understanding the Fight-or-Flight Response
When we encounter a real or perceived danger, our body’s nervous system shifts into high alert. This “fight or flight” response triggers physiological changes such as a racing heart, tense muscles, and quickened breathing. During this time, the primitive part of our brain takes over, while the logical, thinking part of the brain temporarily shuts down. This shift has a survival purpose—by reacting quickly, we increase our chances of escaping danger. Once the threat passes, our body is meant to return to a calm, regulated state where rational thinking resumes.
When Anxiety Becomes Unhelpful
Although anxiety is helpful in short bursts, it can become problematic when it lingers or intensifies. If anxiety causes ongoing fear, excessive worry, intrusive thoughts, avoidance of important activities, or interferes with work, relationships, or everyday life, it may no longer be serving you. Chronic anxiety can leave the body stuck in a heightened state of stress, making it difficult to relax, think clearly, or feel emotionally safe.
Managing Anxiety: Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviours
Anxiety affects how we think, feel, behave, and how our body responds. The good news is that these same areas can also be targeted for relief. By becoming aware of how anxiety is showing up, you can begin to take action and shift your experience.
One effective strategy is using grounding techniques to calm the body. When you notice yourself becoming anxious or panicked, grounding exercises like deep breathing or focusing on your senses can help regulate your nervous system. As your body begins to settle, your thinking brain comes back online. This allows you to challenge irrational or fear-based thoughts and assess the situation more realistically.
You can also shift anxiety by making behavioural changes. Try switching your environment, talking to a trusted friend, or doing something nurturing for yourself. These small actions can have a big impact on your emotional state.
Identify Triggers and Break the Cycle
Managing anxiety also involves identifying what’s triggering it. Understanding your personal patterns—such as certain environments, situations, or thoughts—can give you insight into how anxiety is being maintained. For example, if avoiding social situations reduces anxiety in the short term, it may reinforce the fear over time and increase anxiety in the long run. Awareness of these cycles is key to interrupting them.
Building a daily routine that includes calming and restorative activities can also make a difference. This may include regular exercise, mindfulness practices, adequate sleep, and healthy boundaries around technology and work. Consistency helps the nervous system find balance and lowers overall anxiety levels.
How Counselling Can Help
If you’re finding it difficult to manage anxiety on your own, therapy can be a valuable support. A trained counsellor can help you explore the root causes of your anxiety, identify triggers, challenge negative thought patterns, and develop personalized coping strategies. Counselling offers a safe, non-judgmental space to build emotional resilience and gain practical tools for everyday life.
Begin Your Journey Toward Calm
Anxiety can feel overwhelming, but you don’t have to face it alone. With the right support and strategies, it’s possible to feel more grounded, in control, and emotionally safe. Whether you're struggling with anxious thoughts, panic, or stress, help is available.
If you’re ready to take the first step, our practice offers compassionate, evidence-based therapy for anxiety. Reach out today to book a free consultation and start your path to relief.
Additional Resource:
Anxiety Canada is a helpful resource to learn more about anxiety, anxiety disorders, and tools to manage the symptoms.
Are You and Your Partner Speaking the Same (Love) Language?
Sometimes love feels confusing—not because it’s missing, but because you and your partner may be speaking different love languages. Discover how understanding these can bring you closer.
In every relationship, how we express love can vary based on our upbringing, culture, and family of origin. We might show affection by giving gifts, spending quality time, offering physical touch, using words of affirmation, or helping with acts of service. These differences can lead to misunderstandings—especially when partners speak different "love languages."
The concept of love languages was introduced by Dr. Gary Chapman in 1992. He identified five primary ways people express and receive love:
Words of Affirmation
Acts of Service
Receiving Gifts
Quality Time
Physical Touch
Understanding your partner’s love language can improve emotional connection, reduce resentment, and help you both feel more seen and appreciated.
Why Love Languages Matter in a Relationship
When two partners speak different love languages, what begins as simple miscommunication can turn into feelings of rejection, resentment, and emotional distance.
For example, imagine one partner values words of affirmation, while the other shows love through acts of service. The first partner might feel unloved if they don’t hear “I love you” or receive verbal encouragement, even though their partner is showing love by doing helpful tasks like making coffee or cleaning the car. The result? One partner feels emotionally neglected, while the other feels unappreciated.
Over time, this disconnect can lead to:
Emotional withdrawal
Misunderstandings
Resentment
A breakdown in communication
How Misunderstanding Love Languages Affects Emotional Safety
If one partner feels unheard or unseen in how they understand love, they may begin to withdraw emotionally to protect themselves. On the other hand, the partner offering love through their own lens may start to feel rejected or unacknowledged. This mutual misunderstanding can erode trust, intimacy, and emotional safety.
The key is learning to recognize and respond to each other’s love languages—even when they differ. For instance, if your partner expresses love through acts of service, shifting your attention to appreciate those efforts can soften resentment and rebuild connection. Similarly, if your partner understands that you need verbal affirmations, they may begin to use words more intentionally to meet your emotional needs.
Building a Healthier Relationship Through Shared Understanding
When partners learn to speak each other’s love language, the relationship often becomes more:
Emotionally fulfilling
Connected
Resilient during conflict
Grounded in empathy and mutual appreciation
This deeper understanding fosters secure attachment and encourages more open conversations about needs, boundaries, and past experiences with love.
Additional Resource:
A free quiz to help you identify your own love language. Better yet, have your partner take the quiz too!
Read more about the benefits of marriage/couples counselling.
How Core Beliefs Shape Relationships: Why You and Your Partner See Things So Differently
Our core beliefs act as lenses through which we interpret the world, shaping how we see situations and others—explaining why perspectives often differ.
What Are Core Beliefs?
Core beliefs are the deeply held assumptions we have about ourselves, others, and the world around us. They influence how we think, feel, and behave—often without us even realizing it. These beliefs are usually hidden in our mental “blind spots,” but they shape how we interpret events and relate to others, including our romantic partners.
How Are Core Beliefs Formed?
Core beliefs are formed early in life, primarily through our experiences within our family of origin—the first community we belong to.
They are shaped by the messages we receive directly or indirectly through:
What we're told
What is modeled for us
How we perceive the world around us
These messages may be explicit ("You’re so smart") or implicit (emotional neglect or inconsistency). Over time, they become the internal framework through which we understand ourselves and others—what psychologists call a subjective reality.
A Helpful Analogy: The Tree and the Roots
Think of a person like a tree:
Core beliefs are the roots—hidden but foundational.
Just like roots are influenced by the soil, water, and space in which they grow, our beliefs are shaped by the emotional environment of our childhood.
If you grew up in a loving, stable home, you may develop core beliefs like:
I am lovable.
People can be trusted.
The world is safe.
On the other hand, if you grew up with criticism, chaos, or neglect, your beliefs might sound like:
I’m not good enough.
Others will hurt me.
The world is unpredictable or unsafe.
By around age five, our beliefs begin to solidify. Like the top layer of soil covering the roots, we may no longer be aware of these beliefs, they continue to shape how we respond to life and relationships.
Core Beliefs in Romantic Relationships
Because core beliefs operate beneath the surface, they can lead to misunderstandings, assumptions, and emotional conflict between partners. Two people can interpret the same moment in very different ways:
One person might view a missed text message as rejection.
The other might see it as no big deal and assume everything’s fine.
These differing interpretations are often driven by unconscious beliefs, not the actual behavior.
Core beliefs can also affect how we perceive our partner’s intentions. If I believe deep down that I’m not important, I may interpret my partner being late as proof that I don’t matter—even if they were stuck in traffic.
Understanding Core Beliefs Can Strengthen Your Relationship
When you become more aware of your own core beliefs, and take the time to understand your partner’s, you gain powerful tools for:
Building empathy
Reducing conflict and misunderstanding
Strengthening emotional intimacy and connection
Creating a more compassionate and supportive relationship
Final Thoughts
Your core beliefs shape the lens through which you view your partner, your relationship, and even yourself. By becoming more curious about these hidden influences, you open the door to deeper understanding, healthier communication, and greater emotional connection.
Interested in learning more about how core beliefs affect your relationship?
Read more about our counsellors who can help you explore these patterns in a safe, supportive space.
Understanding Core Beliefs: How Early Experiences Shape Your Identity
Discover how your core beliefs shape your authentic self — and unlock the path to true self-awareness and growth
Ever wonder why certain thoughts or behaviors seem to play on repeat in your life? Or why some patterns feel so deeply ingrained that they’re hard to break?
The answer may lie in your core beliefs, the deep-rooted ideas you hold about yourself, others, and the world around you.
What Are Core Beliefs?
In psychology, particularly in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Adlerian theory, core beliefs refer to the foundational assumptions that guide your thoughts, emotions, and behavior. These beliefs develop early in life, often shaped by your childhood environment, including:
Direct messages from caregivers or authority figures
Observed behavior or emotional modeling
Implicit experiences and unspoken assumptions
Your personal interpretation of events
Although core beliefs are highly subjective, we often treat them as absolute truths, even when they don’t serve us.
The Self-Reinforcing Nature of Core Beliefs
Core beliefs act like internal filters. Once they form, we tend to:
Accept information that confirms them (confirmation bias)
Reject or question anything that contradicts them
Behave in ways that reinforce them (self-fulfilling prophecy)
In this way, core beliefs become self-perpetuating loops that shape our emotional lives and decision-making—often without our awareness.
Common Negative Core Beliefs
Negative core beliefs are often rooted in early emotional wounds. Some common examples include:
About the Self:
I’m a failure
I don’t belong
I’m not lovable
About Others:
People will always let me down
No one can be trusted
People are only out for themselves
About the World:
The world is dangerous
Life is chaotic
Bad things always happen
How Core Beliefs Shape Your Life
Let’s look at how core beliefs silently influence thoughts and behavior:
If you believe you’re a failure, you may minimize your achievements and avoid challenges, which reinforces feelings of inadequacy.
If you believe people are untrustworthy, you may be overly guarded, unintentionally pushing others away—then interpret their distance as proof of your belief.
If you see the world as unsafe, you might avoid unfamiliar situations. The anxiety that results becomes more “evidence” for the belief, even if the threat isn’t real.
These are classic patterns in emotional reasoning and behavioral avoidance—tools your mind uses to protect you, even if they limit you in the long run.
How Core Beliefs Affect Your Connection to the Authentic Self
Your authentic self is who you are beneath the layers of conditioning—your natural personality, interests, boundaries, and values.
When negative core beliefs dominate, they act like internal censors, distorting your self-image. You might:
Dismiss your strengths
Avoid new opportunities
Cling to old patterns rooted in childhood survival
Over time, you may continue reacting as if you're still the vulnerable child who first developed these beliefs—rather than the capable adult you are now. This keeps you locked in a narrow, outdated version of yourself.
How to Identify Your Core Beliefs
You don’t need to consciously “remember” every childhood experience to uncover your core beliefs. Instead, start by noticing:
Recurring negative thoughts or emotional reactions
Repetitive behavior patterns in relationships, work, or self-image
Situations that cause disproportionate emotional distress
Ask yourself:
Where might this belief have originated?
Is this belief helping or harming me?
Exploring your family dynamics and early life experiences can provide additional insight. Working with a therapist can also help reveal blind spots and facilitate self-discovery.
How to Challenge and Change Limiting Beliefs
Once you identify a limiting belief, the next step is to challenge it with curiosity and compassion—not criticism.
Try these evidence-based strategies:
Ask: What would I say to a friend with this belief?
Collect real-life evidence that contradicts the belief
Invite feedback from people you trust and who view you differently
Use a thought journal to track and reframe recurring beliefs
You can also experiment with new behaviors that challenge your belief. For example, if you believe you’re incapable, try a small task that proves otherwise.
Reclaiming Your True Identity
Breaking free from limiting core beliefs allows you to reconnect with your true, multifaceted self. Start by:
Exploring your values, interests, and boundaries
Trying new experiences to see how you've grown
Practicing self-compassion when old beliefs surface
Replacing outdated narratives with ones that reflect your current reality, not your childhood lens
Final Thoughts: You Are Not Your Old Story
Your early experiences shaped your beliefs—but they don’t have to define your future.
By learning to recognize and challenge negative core beliefs, you give yourself permission to grow, change, and finally meet the version of you that was always waiting underneath.