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Laurel Swenson Laurel Swenson

What Your Bi+ Clients Need You To Know

This article, What Your Bi+ Clients Need You To Know, about guiding and educating Registered Clinical Counsellors on important information about counselling clients who fall on the Bisexual spectrum. Insights magazine is the publication serving the members of the British Columbia Association of Clinical Counsellors (BCACC), which means that every RCC receives this magazine in the mail.

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Laurel Swenson Laurel Swenson

The Bisexual+ Spectrum: an under-studied, misunderstood, under-discussed & very large group of people

Bisexuality is highly misrepresented, misunderstood, understudied, and an often quite highly maligned sexual orientation. It has become increasingly clear to me that bisexuality needs to be talked about much more than it is!

In my role as a Registered Clinical Counsellor, I am in the extremely privileged position of being allowed — no — required, to ask some fairly (let’s face it) invasive questions, like: how do you define your sexual orientation? How do you describe your sexuality? As a result, I get to see something the research has told us, but live and in-person: that there are so many more people who identify as and live on the bisexual+ spectrum than most of us realize!

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Laurel Swenson Laurel Swenson

Grounding: a skill for being a human

Every therapist will probably eventually encourage you to try some grounding activities. Grounding is that helpful. It is that universally needed. It is that important.

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Laurel Swenson Laurel Swenson

Lost connections

I appreciate this book because Hari is telling his own story of realization as an insider whom has relied on medication and psychiatrists for much of his life. He brings a journalist's research skills and writing, which he then marries with the vulnerability of a person struggling with depression and trying to understand his struggles with mental illness, the medical system, and the pharmaceuticals he has depended upon.

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Laurel Swenson Laurel Swenson

How to meditate

I have tried numerous times over the years to get a meditation practice going, but it never really stuck. However, I became very motivated once again to incorporate meditation into my life while I was doing my psychology education. So much of the research I was reading stressed the benefit of meditation on our mental and physical health. There is wide agreement on this among researchers.

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Laurel Swenson Laurel Swenson

Find a therapist who is a good fit for YOU

While going to therapy is known to be highly effective, supported by research, and is lauded in many circles, it still gets a bad rap in popular culture. Therapists are often portrayed on TV and in movies as unethical buffoons who sleep with their clients! Yikes!

Fortunately, this is extremely rare in reality. Sadly, stigma about getting therapeutic help for our mental health still exists in many circles.

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