Whitney Regan Counselling

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ONLY 3 SPOTS REMAINING! 🙊

Hiking can be a powerful therapeutic experience. It incorporates our mind, body, and nature in a way that invites us to tune into both the physical and mental experience that the external environment evokes. This can be a meaningful context for identifying growth areas, practicing self-compassion, and developing mental resiliency, among other things... all the while under the guidance and support of a mental health professional.

Hiking Therapy is a reflective experience facilitated by Whitney Regan, a registered clinical counsellor, who is passionate about using hiking as a tool for growth and increasing self-awareness.

We will be meeting at Elk Mountain in Chilliwack at 9:00am on Friday, September 24, 2021.

Registration is $40. Please note that transportation to the hiking trail is not included. Register and find out more information here: https://panoramawellnessgroup.ca/workshop-group-offerings/hiking-therapy-workshop

🌲🏔Attention nature & self-awareness lovers!🏔🌲

I’m hosting a one day Hiking Therapy Workshop for women ages 21-50 on September 24th. Read on if this peaks your interest…

Hiking can be a powerful therapeutic experience. It incorporates our mind, body, & nature in a way that invites us to tune into both the physical & mental experience that the external environment evokes. This can be a meaningful context for identifying growth areas, practicing self-compassion, & developing mental resiliency, among other things… all the while under the guidance & support of a mental health professional.

The context of the outdoors serves as a mirror, reflecting parts of yourself that are perhaps worth getting curious about…

Possible Therapeutic Benefits:
• Establish the mind-body connection
• Identify limiting beliefs you carry
• Develop & practice self-compassion
• Increased mental resiliency
• Decreased anxiety & depression

If you’re intrigued & want to learn more, check out the link in my profile to read more about this workshop & how you can sign up.

This workshop is for women of all fitness levels! If you’re curious but feeling unsure, send me a message & I’d love to find a way to make this opportunity more accessible to you.

Therapy is a lot more than “cool.” It’s also good, challenging, beneficial, educational, and nothing to be ashamed of. But I like the point this t-shirt is making: therapy is for anyone.
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One of the first things I ask people in the initial session is, “How are you feeling coming in here today?” 99% of the time they answer with some version of “Nervous.” Of course they are - they’re doing something brave. They’re showing up to do the work of self-excavation, learning and unlearning, becoming and unbecoming. And that takes courage. But it’s also pretty cool.

When you think of what takes place in a counselling office, I wonder what comes to mind… A lot of talking? Crying? Question asking and listening? Silence? Yes, that’s all true… but what you might not expect is that there is often laughter. That might seem odd. Afterall, most people don’t come to counselling to talk about what’s going well in their lives (though we like to celebrate those things too!) and yet, laughter is common - even in the counselling office!
The presence of laughter struck me this week as I sat with clients… Not because everyone happened to be a comedian this week, and not because everyone happened to be having a great week… But because despite the challenges / fear / depression / anxiety / overwhelm / grief / stuckness... it is still possible to feel joy.
I often talk with clients about our tendency as humans to approach things with ‘all-or-nothing’ thinking, when in reality, life is often lived in dualities: light and dark, stillness and movement, fear and courage, hope and contentment, sadness and joy, tears and laughter. This is where much of life takes place – in the ‘both/and.’ What a hopeful concept: that we do not always have to wait for the clouds to lift in order to experience goodness in this life. There are lots of reasons I’m thankful for the work I get to do as a therapist. Today I’m particularly grateful for the opportunity to sit with others in the duality of their emotions; to laugh with them despite the reasons that brought them through my door.

Whitney Regan Counselling updated their website address.

Would you want to know what’s coming if you could? By nature we humans love certainty - we don’t want to ever be truly caught off guard. Knowing = control. I think about this often when I’m hiking back down a mountain. Fellow hikers still ascending will stop, heart pounding in their chest and ask, “How much longer would you say?”
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I wonder if they actually want to know. Is any honest answer ever what they expect? Can it possibly reflect the reality of experience? It seems there’s always a discrepancy between our expectations and reality. Sure, maybe some insight helps prepare us for what’s around the corner, but equally possible is that it robs us of the journey. If I told you the way gets much harder, would you carry on? What if I told you the most captivating view awaited you, would you rush to the summit? Is it sometimes better not to know?
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How would you live differently if you knew what was next? The only thing we can possibly know for sure is that there is much we don’t know. It’s the only way to guarantee getting to the end and being able to say, “I told you so.” To be certain even in the unknowing: this is the paradox that is faith. It can be steep and arduous. But like any journey worth taking it’s wholly sanctifying.

This is a challenging time for us all right now. Perhaps this global crisis we’re facing is adding to pre-existing anxiety or fear in your life. Or maybe the events of our world today are bringing up new and foreign feelings of anxiety and trepidation as you grapple with what the future holds. Whatever the case, it is my hope to be able to provide continued care and support for those seeking counselling services, despite these trying and isolating times.
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Online therapy can seem unconventional at first, but with the resources available to us today, it is a great alternative when meeting in person is not an option. Online therapy allows for some sense of consistency and normalcy in a time when much feels out of our control. It is one of many ways to remain connected and to continue to participate in the rhythms of everyday life.
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In an effort to make counselling services available to you, I along with many counselling professionals, am offering online sessions through a secure and easy-to-use platform called Zoom. If you have any questions or wish to set up an appointment, please contact me through the link in my bio.
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Let’s take care of ourselves and of one another.

Questions are perhaps the most underrated tool for connection in our toolbelt as humans. They are the key to deeper knowing. The more I interact with people – whether in a counselling context or otherwise – the more I understand that genuine curiosity can be transformational. I often think question-asking is like walking on the beach with another person. You’re wandering along their beach with them, and every now and then you pick up a rock to see what’s underneath. Sometimes there’s nothing, sometimes we’re not ready to pick up certain rocks, and sometimes we pick one up and surprise… there’s something there that stops us in our tracks. Sometimes we don’t know what rocks are on our beach until someone else is walking with us, points to one and says, “what’s this?”
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Have you ever noticed that sometimes the most powerful part of a question is not the answer it generates but the asking of it? Have you ever been asked a question that didn’t necessarily warrant an answer because the question itself revealed – exposed – shifted something in you? These, in my opinion, are the best questions. Questions allow us to entertain possibility. They can be a channel to our deepest pain but also to our healing. In the simple asking of them, they can nudge us toward permissions we’ve been unknowingly denying ourselves.
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Where do you think you first learned that negative belief you hold about yourself?
What purpose has it been serving you to believe that’s true of you?
What might you say now to that part of you that believes ______?
What would change for you if that belief wasn’t true?
How would you live differently if you knew this wasn’t true?
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What are some of the best questions you have been asked or asked of another person? I’d love to know!

When I first told my dad that I wanted to be a clinical counsellor, his response was something along the lines of, “Well what the heck does that mean?” ... “You know, like a therapist,” I replied. He struggled to comprehend how that could possibly become a career!
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Attitudes toward counselling have come a long way over the past decade or so. There has been a noticeable shift in our society’s willingness to acknowledge the need for therapy. According to a study done in 2015 by CAMH, 81% of Canadians are more aware of mental health issues now compared to 5 years ago, and 70% believe attitudes toward therapy have changed for the better in that time. This is great news! The more we normalize the need for counselling services, the more we embrace the reality that we’re not meant to be able to figure it all out on our own.
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It’s my hope as a therapist to step into the darkness with people and guide them into the light of their own understanding. Whether you’re struggling with symptoms of anxiety or depression and looking for ways to cope, or if you find yourself wanting to better understand your lived experiences and how they impact you today, counselling can be a brave and helpful next step.
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If you have questions about how to find a therapist that is right for you, or if you want to chat about what that next step could look like, feel free to send me an email at [email protected] and I’d love to point you in the right direction.

This is more than just a couch to me. This couch represents courage, resilience, longing, awareness, healing... The people who sit on this couch possess within themselves each of these things, whether they know it or not (the hope is that the more time they spend on this couch, the more they will come to know this to be true).

Time and time again I am moved by the people who sit across from me. I watch them dare to give space for raw emotion. I hear them speak words they perhaps have never said out loud. I witness them move step by arduous step into the light of their own understanding. This encourages me in ways that are hard to articulate in an Instagram caption. This privilege doesn’t just make me grateful for the work I get to do, it makes me grateful to be human—to see my own humanness reflected in my clients.

Sometimes, when I have a moment between sessions, I sit on this couch (I’m actually sitting on it right now as I write this💁🏽‍♀️) just to remind myself what it feels like: the vulnerability of it.

Choosing to come to counselling can be an act of bravery, a declaration of self-worth, and a symbol of hope for the future. It is anything but a sign of weakness.

If you have been considering counselling, but have spent time justifying why you don’t “need” it, or are afraid of what it’ll mean for you if you go, I encourage you to be gentle with yourself, and consider what might be waiting for you on the other side of fear or reluctance. I won’t be surprised if you come to find that the couch is not a bad place to be.