Beyond Psychology
Sharon Storton
About Beyond Psychology
Balanced Support
About Beyond Psychology
Balanced Support
Holistic Psychology
The adage, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" is as true for you as it is for a rose. For this reason, I consider wellbeing from a variety of viewpoints:
- Physical Health can include your diagnosed and undiagnosed health status; life considerations that lead to balanced nutrition - as the saying goes, mental health begins in the gut; exercise; sleep; sexual health; body image; pain; and all sorts of addictions. Understanding begins with asking the right questions and referring when needed to collaborative healing resources.
- Mental / Emotional Balance can be assessed by a variety of research-based inventories, the professional expertise to diagnose mental/emotional strengths as well as challenges, applying decades of clinical experience along with deep listening, and then tracking the impact of applied skills, boundaries, and expanded understandings.
- Social Connections can include the health of life partnership(s); improvements in communication, empathy, compassion and boundaries; and options for broadening your support system.
- Temporal Awareness contemplates the intergenerational effects of trauma, culture, and health. Clearly, our genes impact our mind and body, and so do the stories passed down about identity and personal power. Further, your own past, present and the future you expect are all telling you about your opportunity to thrive. Together, we will examine these planes of experience, and re-evaluate in order to effect a powerful and lasting reset.
- Spirituality and spiritual insights do not necessarily mean religious teachings - thought this is also a possibility. In looking through a spiritual lens, I am referring to meaning-making, identity, personal power, and insights around the bigger picture.
All of these pieces, when integrated together, contain the ingredients for a balanced, joyful, and potential-driven life.
Clinical Hypnotherapy
Hypnosis, according to the Canadian Federation of Clinical Hypnosis, "a natural state of heightened and focused attention, is one of the most fascinating phenomena of the human psyche. Our ability to enter this unique state of consciousness opens the door to endless possibilities for healing, self-exploration, and change. Hypnosis, called by different names in different cultures and times, has been recognized for thousands of years and used for many purposes." (https://www.clinicalhypnosis.ca/about-hypnosis/)
In my practice, I use hypnosis for calming the running thoughts that are present in most people. When the mind is quiet, insights become available that were previously drowned out by the mental chatter. I believe that you already hold the wisdom you need to move forward in your life. Fear, family patterns, inappropriate self-criticism, and the general stress of making it through day to day often distract us from being able to take the time to listen to the wisdom within. Clinical hypnosis (CH) (differentiating it from stage hypnosis, or hypnosis for entertaining a crowd, which is entirely different) makes way for higher guidance, connections, and potential to take shape in a form that can be heard over the daily mental noise. CH can be used to enhance self-regulation, reduce the use of unhealthy habits, enhance self-esteem, and manage challenges to your personal identity (such as body image, fear of public speaking, social anxiety, etc.). CH can also be used for spiritual awakenings, such as life-before-life regressions (Newton, 2003), float-back and progression forward techniques, and to virtually experience your wiser self.
Clinical Psychotherapy
We are whole and integrated beings, comprised of various facets – like a cut diamond. We have our physical selves, with bodies that express our states of health and wellbeing. We have mental and emotional selves, influenced by our bodies and yet functioning on different planes of expression. We have our relational selves that engage in the dance of connection with other important people in our lives. And we all have an individual inner relationship – often called identity. Psychotherapy offers a way to consider all these aspects of being: first separately and then as an integrated whole.
The art of psychotherapy, supported by the science of biofeedback, and neurofeedback, helps you to discover what already works in your life, and what is keeping you from living your potential for joy, peace, and connection. When you have a greater understanding of the influences of the past and present, it is possible to use this awareness to determine the changes you would like to make, or need to make, toward your preferred future. Psychotherapy, biofeedback and neurofeedback, offer systems of care to support you in maintaining new ways of thinking, relating, and behaving in the world. My models for psychotherapy are Narrative, Solution-Focussed, and CBT/DBT and ACT.