Services
Person-Centered Therapy (PCT): A "You-Guided" Approach
We work from a person-centered lens because we are passionate about listening to and trying to understand you in a way that says you are the “expert” of your own life. Our job is to hear and try to see things through your eyes, letting you decide if we’re seeing and hearing accurately.
Built on Existential Philosophy, PCT is about:
Mutual connection and understanding
- Respecting your life-experience
- Working to separate people from their behaviours
- Acknowledging choice
- More effective communication
- Above all, empowerment.
The bottom line is that, like the name suggests, it’s all about what YOU decide is helpful to YOU.
How Does It "Work"
Transitioning to a life as you envision it can be hard; our goal is to support you. Our group facilitators and individual therapists are Registered Clinical Counsellors (RCC) with the British Columbia Association of Clinical Counsellors (BCACC). Working from a Person-Centered framework, Hard Road Counselling is focused on any number things you would like to change in your life. substance-use and addiction, feeling scared all the time, feeling down and hopeless, and/or seeing the world as a harsh and scary place.
Many physicians recommend treatments like Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), Motivational Interviewing (MI), and/or Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT). We, at Hard Road Counselling, understand these perspectives, but as places to borrow useful things from.
For example, we can help you make a plan for your day-to-day life that involves creating awareness (using a Thought Record, traditionally more CBT), strategies for finding motivation to carry out your plan (learning Rolling with Resistance strategies, traditionally more MI), and learning other things to do when you get upset (practicing Distress Tolerance skills, traditionally more DBT).
However, we are more concerned with helping you to “go deeper” and heal traumas, and we believe techniques based on hearing and acknowledging your experience are more equipped to do that. We understand trauma to be anything that happened (or didn’t happen) that hurt and scared you.
Maybe someone was supposed to be there to be protect you, but you ended up feeling like they let you down and abandoned you when you really needed them. Maybe someone really hurt you when you trusted them to take of you. Maybe something really frightening happened and left the world looking like a scary place to live in.
We want to hear what happened to you and what is blocking you from being able to be who you want to be. We want to hear what you live with. We want to hear how brave you’ve been to face what scares and threatens you by yourself. And, if you’ll let us, we want to go to those dark, painful places with you, and find out what’s hurting there and what it needs to heal.
Services We Offer
Individual Counselling
Individual counselling is appropriate for anyone – perhaps a group-format doesn’t interest you, or something came to light in group and might be more appropriate to discuss in private.
Individual Counselling
Individual counselling is appropriate for anyone – perhaps a group-format doesn’t interest you, or something came to light in group and might be more appropriate to discuss in private. Individual counselling is a one-on-one, private discussion revolving around anything that you might like to bring to talk about; such as inner conflicts and decisions that need to be made, how to set and begin to achieve goals, and how to get back to knowing and being who you are.
A free Consultation can be booked, after which a full Individual counselling session can be booked at $155/hr (including applicable tax).
Some barriers and issues are too personal to be brought up in a group-setting. Sometimes it’s these issues that create the barriers and shame that stop us from being to adapt to change and successfully transition to where we want to be.
Our therapists are trained, experienced, and specialise in treating substance use disorders, but often other issues such as anxiety, depression, and/or traumatic experiences underlie issues of not being able to completely deal with or transition from substance use to a full and meaningful life. The individual setting can provide a space safe enough for these kinds of more personal and private issues to be explored.
Counselling is booked on a first-come, first-served basis and intakes are “rolling” meaning that we try to be fair and consistent with everyone and keep wait times as low as possible.
Services We Offer
Group Counselling
We want to create an atmosphere of safety and trust, so we ask for a commitment so people can get to know you and you can get to know them. Therefore, we offer the weekly therapeutic group based on a monthly fee.
Group Counselling
We want to create an atmosphere of safety and trust, so we ask for a commitment so people can get to know you and you can get to know them. Therefore, we offer the weekly therapeutic group based on a monthly fee.
How does this work? Hard Road asks each prospective group member for a minimum commitment to the group of 1 calendar month. Each week, there is a group session.
So, using 4 weeks as an example month, that becomes 4 group sessions ($75/2-hour session x 4 weeks) for $300.
The cost is kept as low as possible for our services to be as accessible to as many individuals as possible. Group-size is capped at 10 members.
The process-experiential groups offered at Hard Road Counselling can focus on a range of varying issues. While substance-use is, of course, a focus, underlying issues might include grief and loss, anxiety about transitions, depression and learned-helplessness, shame as a barrier, discussing new coping skills, essentially any- and everything that might be holding someone back from being able to move forward to where they want their life to be. The groups offer therapy in themselves, but are also made to be fun, safe places to explore whatever issues/barriers someone might bring and receive support from both therapists facilitating groups and other group members.
Hard Road Counselling
and East Vancouver Counselling
As times and COVID restrictions are changing day-to-day, we are planning to return to offering in-person counselling in both group and individual formats.
Recently, Bill has had the wonderful opportunity to join the group of independent professionals at East Vancouver Counselling and can offer limited in-person sessions at 1651 Commercial Dr.
