In-Person & Virtual Counselling Services for Women
Empowering Mind-Body-Spirit Wellness:
Healthy Lifestyle Counselling for Women
Empowering Mind-Body-Spirit Wellness: Healthy Lifestyle Counselling for Women
Welcome to Feminine Fortress Counselling. I’m Kirstin, a Registered Clinical Counsellor and a Registered Nurse in Qualicum Beach.
I am dedicated to supporting women who want to feel healthier but struggle to make lasting lifestyle changes.
Do you feel like you are stuck in a state of stress? Like you are constantly in survival mode?
Do you find yourself saying, “I know what I should be doing, I’m just not doing it”? Do you feel like you lack motivation, willpower, or support?
Does guilt get in the way of prioritizing your self-care?
Do you find that if you eat one, you’ll eat the whole bag? Or do you find yourself getting stuck in a cycle of guilt and shame around food and exercise?
You are not alone! Many women feel this way.
My passion is empowering women’s overall health and personal growth by integrating mind-body-spirit connection. Together, we can identify and work through the underlying mental, emotional, and relationship issues that make it difficult to stick to a healthy lifestyle.
Ready to address unhealthy patterns and create a more balanced lifestyle? Book a free 15-minute inquiry call today.
“I know what I should be doing- I’m just not doing it.”
It is so easy to get stuck in “automatic pilot mode”, where we repeat the same patterns; we eat the same types of foods when we’re stressed or upset, we think the same negative thoughts, we say the same critical things to ourselves, or we push emotions down in the same repetitive ways. Often we know that we should be eating healthier meals, or that we should be dealing with an issue, or that we shouldn’t be our own worst enemy. But despite knowing better, change can be hard. This is because it’s not just a matter of having more motivation or willpower. There are a number of factors that underlie why we do what we do and why we feel the way we feel.
As a Registered Clinical Counsellor and Registered Nurse (along with my prior career as a Nurse Practitioner), I offer a unique combination of knowledge and skills to help women create a sense of empowerment and wellbeing. I offer an integrative approach to wellness that supports mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing.
I like to think of it as Empowering Mind-Body-Spirit Connection. In re-connecting these elements of yourself, I will help you to develop:
- Habits of the Heart
- Habits of the Mind
- Habits of the Lifestyle
What is a Healthy Lifestyle?
Most women think of a healthy lifestyle as eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, and getting enough sleep. Although those are essential elements to feeling healthier, we can go deeper than that! To me, creating a healthy lifestyle is about creating a healthy and happy lifestyle. Meaning, together, we can explore and integrate the other elements of health and wellbeing into your life.
These include:
- Emotional wellbeing- tending to difficult emotions and re-awakening positive emotional states
- Relationship wellbeing- cultivating healthier relationships
- Spiritual wellbeing- living your values, and having a sense of purpose of meaning in life
- Physical wellbeing- eating healthy, exercising, getting enough good quality sleep, reducing stress, and quality connection with others
Integrative Counselling Approach
I help women create change in their lives through the integration of Emotionally Focused Therapy, Polyvagal Therapy, Mindfulness, and Expressive Art & Journal Therapy techniques. One of the benefits of integrating these modalities is that they take therapy beyond just talking! Each of these therapies make room for practices such as guided imagery, visualization, metaphor, and journaling which can make therapy feel more real and impactful.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) provides a trauma-informed, research-based framework that can help you to:
- Break free from your emotional patterns and unhealthy habits
- Create emotional balance and resilience
- Improve your relationships
- Strengthen the sense of who you are and what you are capable of
One of the first steps of EFT is helping people connect with their inner strengths and resources that support and encourage as you take your wellness journey. This empowering process can help you to reclaim joy, compassion, confidence, acceptance, and peace. EFT deepens your access to your inner wisdom to cultivate personal growth, resilience and inner transformation.
Polyvagal Theory is a trauma-informed, research-based model that:
- Provides a roadmap of the nervous system and regulates troubling symptoms, difficult emotions, and unhealthy patterns
- Provides clear framework that can empower you to understand how your nervous systems shapes your thoughts, emotions, and patterns, and offers powerful methods to create new patterns of calm, connection, and compassion
- Helps people to let go of negative self-talk and re-connect with more a more empowering narrative
- Enhance one’s ability to self-regulate difficult emotions
- Helps build resilience and reduce trauma symptoms
- Helps to create a greater sense of stability to engage more fully with life
Expressive Arts & Journal Therapy techniques can:
- Provide creative ways for reducing inner criticism
- Connect you with the part of yourself that is compassionate, connected, non-judgmental, calm, and confident
- Connect with the person you want to be
- Provide a way to express what cannot always be said with words
- Move you from your left, analytical/judging, brain and into our right, creative/compassionate, brain to find to find clarity and direction
- Provide a pathway to the restorative power of your imagination and inner wisdom
- Support you in feeling regulated, calm, and enlivened
Take the First Step
If you are ready to get started on creating a healthier life, book a free 15-minute inquiry call.
Counselling Services:
Counselling Services for Women in Qualicum Beach
Hi! I’m Kirstin McKinnon. I am a Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC) and a Registered Nurse (RN) in Qualicum Beach. In being both a counsellor and a nurse, I have a unique expertise in health and wellness. I understand how unhealthy habits are formed, how they get “programmed” into our nervous system, and how we can change them. It takes more than just a plan, motivation, and willpower to change lifestyle habits. This is where I can help best; helping women to change their relationship with food, to work through the underlying issues that maintain unhealthy patterns, to build self-confidence, and to create more calm in their lives. In essence, I help women create healthy habits of the heart, habits of the mind, and habits of the lifestyle.
I have a master’s degree in nursing, and hold both registrations as a Registered Nurse and Registered Clinical Counsellor. I also previously trained as a Family Nurse Practitioner, personal trainer and health coach. I have over 18 years of experience in working one on one with clients. I have seen the complexities of life and relationships, and I strive to help clients form a place of empathy and understanding. My combined education and practice experience gives me a unique understanding of, and approach to, the interconnection of mind, body, and emotions. My knowledge and training in counselling and advanced practice nursing enables me to provide evidence-based, holistic care to support clients in creating greater well-being in their lives. I wholeheartedly believe in peoples’ capacity to heal, grow, and change. This ability within you, combined with evidence-based therapies, can produce meaningful change in your wellbeing.
Tending to the heart, mind, body and soul.
Dissolve unhelpful behavioural and emotional patterns, develop a stronger sense of self, and engage in life in a more meaningful way.
