In 2022, for our inaugural month, we celebrated the work of counsellors, counselling therapists and psychotherapists across Canada.
The Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association and lead partner Owl Practice are proud to introduce the second annual Counselling & Psychotherapy Month in April 2023.
In 2023, we plan to celebrate – you!
The theme for 2023 is Self-Care is Mental Health Care.
April will look to raise the profile of the profession through public awareness initiatives using our #accessmentalhealthcare hashtag, a new series of virtual thank you cards, and our second Yellow Day (April 12)
We will be offering support to practitioners via free professional development and networking opportunities that will revitalize their practice and reconnect them with their professional community
Webinars offered will be focused on wellness and ways to improve work-life balance
As in 2022, we will be offering discounts on products and services from various partners as well as participation prize draws
#accessmentalhealthcare
All events are webinars (virtual) in Eastern Daylight Time
All are free to attend
Some will be eligible for CECs
Most will be interpreted into French
Can’t attend a webinar live? Register to receive the recording (if recorded).
Gratitude is about expressing thanks or appreciation for someone or something. It involves recognizing the positive things in your life and the impact they have on you. Taking the time to slow down and reflect in this way has proven benefits for mental health, physical health and improved sleep (among other benefits).
Ways you can practice gratitude:
Being mindful and taking note of the here and now
Journaling for self-reflection
Giving thanks directly to others or through prayer
Doing something kind for another
Telling another you’re grateful for them and how they helped you
For the month of April (and beyond), we encourage you to reach out to colleagues and other trusted supports to share how they have supported you by expressing gratitude.
This month, show your gratitude to your colleagues and work friends by sending them a Counselling and Psychotherapy Month Gratitude card. Various templates available in English and French.
Key Messages
When we fill up our cup, we have enough to share.
Self-care comes in so many different shapes, and has so many clear benefits, making it necessary to the flourishing of every human.
There is often a perception that self-care is only a priority in times that we are stressed or suffering. Self-care for many is a form of a reactive solution.
Therapist self-care is different from that of the public.
Taking care of one’s well-being is central to the ability of Psychotherapists helping clients thrive, prevent burnout and ensure longevity in their careers. This looks like proactive actions that Counselling Therapists create space for in their daily lives, with the intention that their cup does not run dry before it is refilled.
Counselling Therapists are the tool of their trade. Our members use their emotions, mind, spirit and body to help lift others and set them on a path of self-discovery and healing. For this reason, our members, along with the public, hold themselves to a higher standard when it comes to their well-being. The safe and effective use of self is a professional ethical responsibility.
Self-care for psychotherapists goes beyond relaxation techniques and walks in nature. This practice within the context of our work can look like energy and time management skills, connecting with colleagues, self-reflection, cultural immersion, professional development and business practice skills.
So this year we bring you Counselling and Psychotherapy Month – Self-Care: Therapist Style
Headspace is a top-rated, subscription-based app that provides a mental wellbeing program for individuals and teams along with support for mindfulness meditations.
Anxiety Solution: Calmer You, provides an anxiety toolkit, covering practices to help you focus on self-care, overcome anxiety and worry, practice mindfulness, and improve your sleep.
Grateful offers tools to help you manage anxiety, stress, and work through worries. Use the tools included to calm your mind and balance your body.
Use the Gratitude app to capture the things in your life for which you are grateful and focus attention on the positive things in life.
Daylio is a mood tracker app offers the ability track daily moods, write out your thoughts, track activities and look for trends between moods and activities.
Sunnyside is an mindful consumption and alcohol moderation app can help you to cut back on drinking with no pressure to quit.
Mindful.org is an online platform, app and physical magazine that highlights research and practices around mindfulness. They offer courses, resources for clinicians and the public, research and coaching.
Working as a mental health professional can be both incredibly rewarding and draining at the same time. This is why it’s vital for your wellness to ensure you’re taking a balanced approach to your self-care plan.
The Wellness Wheel, created by psychologists Jane Myers, Thomas Sweeney, and Melvin Witmer to help achieve a life defined by optimal health and wellbeing, “in which body, mind, and spirit are integrated by the individual to live more fully within the human and natural community” (Myers et al., 2000).
This tool can be used to consider how you’re managing the different aspects of your life and can highlight where you are succeeding, and where you may want to give additional attention.
These categories can include:
Emotional health – managing stress, sufficient sleep, staying on top of work, seeking therapy
Intellectual health – staying curious, learning new things, reading, joining clubs, enhancing intellectual interests
Physical health – sufficient exercise, balanced nutrition, preventative medical care
Social health – robust social network offering guidance and reducing stress
Environmental health – caring for surroundings, avoiding clutter, recycling and volunteering for environmental initiatives
Financial health – living within financial means, creating a budget
Spiritual health – understanding the beliefs and values that shape who you are and guide your life
Click here to learn more about the Self-Care Wheel from Positive Psychology and use this along with CCPA’s Member Self-Care Plan worksheet below to reflect on how you’re caring for your needs.
One grand prize of a 1-year subscription for Owl Practice (valued over $1,200)
Eight webinar participant prizes each consisting of a 6-month subscription for Owl Practice (valued over $600 each)
For the Owl Practice Session on April 25 – the prize will be the 6-months subscription AND a Muse headband (Biofeedback Meditations) Total value of prizes on this day is over $900.
8 sessions are April 5, 6, 12, 19, 20, 21, 25 & 26 April 2023.
No cash substitute
Offer
First 2-months free subscription (Value up to $200) for all new subscribers that subscribe by April 30th 2023.
April 12 is Yellow Day! Enter our contest!
Eligibility: The contest is open to all CCPA members who reside in Canada and are at least 18 years old.
The following people are not eligible to enter the contest:
Employees and contractors of the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA) and its lead partner, Owl Practice (with their parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, related and associated companies, successors, assigns, licensees, etc.);
Related advertising and promotional agencies and contest prize providers;
The household members of any of the parties listed in Sections (1) and (2) above.
How to Enter: To enter, find something yellow in your life, take a photo of it, and share it on social media with the hashtag #accessmentalhealth and tag CCPA.
Prizes: Two (2) winners will receive a spa gift card. The prizes are not redeemable for cash, and no substitute for any portion of the prizes is offered.
Winners Selection: The winners will be selected randomly from all eligible entries received during the contest period. The draw will be done at the CCPA’s national office on May 3, 2023. Any person who has been confirmed as the winner of another prize during C&P Month cannot win another prize during the same period. If that is the case, another participant’s name will be drawn.
Contest Period: The contest begins on Yellow Day (April 12, 2023) and ends at 11:59 p.m. EDT on April 28, 2023.
Announcement of Winners: The winners will be announced on the CCPA’s social media channels within 5 days of the end of the contest period.
Rights Granted: By entering the contest, participants agree to allow CCPA to use their name, image, and social media handle for marketing and promotional purposes.
General Conditions: The CCPA reserves the right to cancel, suspend, or modify the contest if any fraud or other factors beyond its control impair the integrity of the contest.
Disclaimer: The CCPA is not responsible for any lost, late, misdirected, or incomplete entries, or for any technical or human errors that may occur in the administration of the contest. This contest is in no way sponsored, endorsed, or administered by any social media platforms on which the contest may have been promoted and/or publicized, including but not limited to Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Any personal information provided in connection with the contest is being provided to the CCPA and not to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and/or Twitter. Any questions or comments regarding the contest must be directed to the CCPA (via email at [email protected]) and not to any of the social media platforms on which the contest may have been advertised or administered.
Privacy Policy: Information collected from participants will be used solely for the purpose of administering the contest and will not be shared with third parties.
This Month’s Recordings
Indigenous Welcome and Cultural Exhibition
The CCPA welcomes members and the general public to join us for the Indigenous Opening Remarks for the Counselling and Psychotherapy Month. This event will begin with Dr. Leroy Little Bear (Kainai/ Blackfoot) providing an opening prayer and welcoming remarks followed by songs and drumming by the sensational recording artist Olivia Tailfeathers (Kainai/ Blackfoot) and Stephanie Braverock (Kainai/ Blackfoot).
Care For Caregivers – A Wellness Workshop for Mental Health Professionals
“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” – Jack Kornfield. This workshop is designed to equip mental health professionals with information to support effective use of self and a strong therapeutic alliance while protecting against compassion fatigue and burn out. Going beyond basic self-care strategies, participants can expect to:
1) Learn about personal vulnerabilities and environmental risk factors for compassion fatigue and burn out
2) Identify differences between employee wellness strategies and practices that promote workplace wellbeing
3) Understand the stress response cycle and ways to complete it
4) Learn a strengths-based model for caring without carrying the responsibility for others
5) Learn questions from Compassionate Inquiry for boundary setting and authentic presence.
A mental health crisis and shortage of mental heal providers, has put a large burden on our Canadian Mental Health professionals to serve more clients. However, in doing so is causing an uprise in burn out, along with growing empathy fatigue, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalizations with clients.
Understanding your limits and learning how to manage your daily energy levels can have a large impact on how you show up for yourself and your clients.
This workshop will explore how your energy fluctuates and how you can plan your day accordingly. By identifying your distractions and create strategies to minimize them and discussing ways to leverage your daily energy levels to work more effectively and reduce stressors, this workshop will help you create greater work/life harmony.
When we are feeling uncertain, often our basic routines are impacted. Once this happens and our emotions threaten to overwhelm us and it is easy to slip into ‘less effective’ habits. Join us for this fun session as we share life-changing brain hacks for happiness that you can do in just five minutes – backed by science!
In this interactive session, we will explore five-minute activities you can do to set yourself up for success in the year ahead. To look after your wellbeing and approach life with a positive mindset. This session is jam-packed with practical ideas designed to help boost wellbeing – including a simple explanation of the research and science behind how it works. Be prepared to have some fun in this session as we use some of these brain hacks on ourselves.
This session will:
• Provide an understanding of the basic drivers that support our mental health and wellbeing
• Provide the neuroscience for why our routines and habits are important
• How habits work and strategies to create new ones and disrupt others
• The power of the small strategies to boost our wellbeing
• Understanding your own strategies of what is working and why
• Putting boundaries in place to support your wellbeing through the year
• Challenging your strategies and creating new habits to boost outcomes
• Learning how to flip uncertainty and remain curious about what is possible
Many therapists avoid really thinking about the financial side of our work and our lives, and for good reason. Money can be stressful to manage and understand, awkward to talk about with our clients, and overall is just way less interesting than the clinical work that we love to do. But our finances, and our relationship to money, are integral to our well-being. By ignoring and disconnecting from these parts of our lives we end up with financial stress and confusion, both in our practices and our daily lives.
In this workshop we will be exploring why money is so hard for therapists, how money is integral to our overall well-being, and what you can do to start building a better relationship with money today.
Private Practice Business Trends with Lead Partner Owl Practice
Description:
Join Owl Practice’s Director of Sales and Client Service, Hilary Roberts, for an engaging session about the key metrics you should keep track of to drive more small practice business success. During her presentation, she will lead you through some of the top trends in the industry when it comes to session duration, attendance, billing and more! Learn how you can interpret and apply this data to your own practice to benefit your client satisfaction and overall business efficacy.
In order to maintain sustainable, compassionate counselling careers we need to be creating a village of support and connection for ourselves. Many of us are not so good at this, often working in isolation, not protecting our own energy boundaries and experiencing burnout. In addition, the last couple of years have added to a sense of weariness for many practitioners. Whether you are a seasoned therapist or just starting out this one-hour webinar will support you to explore meaningful and encouraging networks and connections that support your own life, work and practices.
Join the Anti-Racism Advisory Group for an exploration of cultural self-care for BIPOC practitioners and clients, by BIPOC practitioners. Topics include: Walking in Two Worlds, Dual Roles and Connecting to Community that include lived experiences and current practitioner considerations. This discussion will be facilitated by CCPA BIPOC board members and BIPOC national office staff members who comprise this committee. Questions and learning are welcome in this warm and inviting space. Everyone is welcome!
Yorkville University is excited to send one CCPA member to the 2023 conference in Toronto! All CCPA members who attend a C&P month webinar will have their name entered into a draw for free conference access. The draw will take place the first week in May and the winner will be notified at that time.
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