Clare Pentelow, MSW, RSW

Two weeks ago I discussed common pandemic relationship issues.  In this blog post I will be discussing how to navigate these issues.  My first suggestion is commonly suggested by relationship experts, even in non pandemic times… Communicate, Communicate, Communicate! Communication resolves SO many issues.  When we bottle feelings up, the result is two-fold: we feel increasingly frustrated/upset, and our partner has no idea how we are feeling and therefore can’t take any steps to resolve the issue.  When we want to bring up an issue (eg.  unequal distribution of household… Read More »Relationships in the Pandemic- Part 2: Navigating the Challenges

The pandemic has certainly put us under a great deal of stress. It has affected our lives in so many ways, and it seems inevitable that it would have an impact on our relationships. The statistics seem to bear this out: there have been increases in divorce filings, or enquiries about divorce in China, US and the UK (Lemann 2020; Savage 2020).  The pandemic  can act like a pressure cooker on relationships, and while we don’t understand the exact mechanisms of how it’s impacting relationships there are clues as to… Read More »Relationships in the Pandemic- Part 1: Common Issues

In the last two blog posts we discussed why naming emotions is a challenge, and what the research says about the benefits of naming out emotions. Much of the research is focused on lessening the intensity of the emotions we experience as a benefit to naming our emotions; while this is a worthy goal, I think it is important to state that part of my objective in writing these posts is to honour our feelings and to better appreciate how they serve us.  Feelings have evolved and have been an important… Read More »Naming our Emotions – Part 3: Emotions as Information and How to Label Them

I wrote a guest post about how exercise can help with symptoms of depression, and outlined some simple, evidenced based first steps to help get you started. You can check the blog post out HERE. Noelle Walker runs New Fitness Personal Training located in Kitchener, and specializes in weight loss for busy professionals.

As discussed in my  previous post Why is Naming our Emotions a Challenge?, it is clear that many of us may have not been given the modelling, education or validation around emotions that would have been ideal. So is there much point in trying to connect with them now? It can be tempting to ignore negative emotions. Some people might think that giving time and energy to our feelings gives them room to grow, and that by ignoring them, they will be diminished and hopefully just disappear; however research shows… Read More »Naming our Emotions: Part 2 – The Benefits According to the Research

Sometimes when I’m in a session and a client is talking about a particularly challenging topic, I might pause and ask them to connect with whatever emotions they are currently experiencing.  While therapists are often expected to ask questions like that, there can still be a resistance, almost a cringing away from the uncomfortable emotion.  I certainly understand that reaction, sitting with a difficult emotion can be unpleasant at the very least, at times it can be overwhelming. So why do therapis ts insist that their clients sit with these… Read More »Naming Our Emotions

The pandemic has had a huge impact on worldwide mental health.  There is the stress and fear of the illness- particularly if you, or someone you love, has a health condition that makes you vulnerable to the effects of the  virus.  There can be a real fear of infection and fear of death (Khan et al, 2020). However the stress goes beyond the actual stress of getting sick.  There are the socioeconomic and emotional costs. We are seeing a rise in depression, insomnia, anxiety, anger, stress and confusion, (O’Connor et… Read More »Covid-19 and Mental Health