A Dozen Date Night Ideas To Build Connection In Your Relationship

A Dozen Date Night Ideas To Build Connection In Your Relationship

I get it; life is busy and it’s tough to find time for date nights with your partner, but what I know to be true after more than a decade of working with couples is that if you don’t work to build connection with your spouse, it will fade. 

It doesn’t always have to be a big deal and it doesn’t have to happen every week, but it’s important to make time for your partner – to find ways to build connection and keep things fresh and exciting. 

Whether you’ve been together for one year or 50 it’s always valuable to do something unique with your spouse so you have time together to bond and talk without a screen distracting you. 

It’s so easy to get stuck in a rut and forget how fun simple dates can be.  So why not turn it up a notch and do something new once in awhile? 

Here are a dozen ideas to keep things fresh and build connection in your relationship. 

 

  1. Have a picnic – Remember how fun it can be to throw some snacks, a blanket and maybe some wine into a bag and search for a nice spot to just sit, hang out and talk? Whether you find a beach, a park or maybe even a hiking spot is up to you, but some place where you can have some alone time is recommended. Bonus points if you bring along a game such as crib or scrabble.

  2. Photography expedition – A personal favourite of ours – it’s just the best feeling to jump in the car and drive to a small town or two nearby and snap some photos. You can each take your own unique shots and compare after. Find a small town to explore and take photos of the people and things you find. Nova Scotia is full of picturesque spots. Terence Bay, Three Fathom Harbour, Wolfville, Advocate Harbour and Baddeck – just to name a few! This activity is a great way to connect and all you need is a tank of gas and your cameras.

     

  3. Take a class together – This is a great opportunity to pick an activity you both enjoy or want to learn together and get out once a week. Whether it’s a cooking class, a self-defence class, or an art class, there’s something for every couple and so much fun to be had. This is something that will take your mind off your responsibilities, and, if you are feeling disconnected in a relationship, learning something new together gives you a level playing field to spark that connection once again.

     

  4. Visit a city landmark/tourist attraction  It could be Citadel Hill, The Nova Scotia Art Gallery, Peggy’s Cove or a tour on the Harbour Hopper, but visiting some of your city’s cool landmarks and tourist attractions are a fun way to not only get to know your partner more but your hometown more too. Learning, laughing and exploring together are a great way to stay connected in a relationship.

     

  5. Boardgames – If you struggle to stay away from talking only about your children or work during date nights, playing games is a great way to help you focus on the moment and connect with your spouse. Here is a link to why boardgames are a great date activity!

     

  6. Date Nights At Home – You don’t have to go out on the town to have a special time with your partner. Sometimes its most relaxing to set aside time to curl up on the couch together with snacks and a movie or even order in a late night dinner. Simple, yet effective. (It would be best, however, to leave those smart phones somewhere else in the house for those couple of hours! Your goal is to connect with each other during this time – not to keep connected with the rest of the world.)

     

  7. Watch a live sporting event – It’s one thing to watch sports on the television, but it’s a lot more fun to catch a baseball, basketball, football or hockey event live. You can get into the team spirit by dressing in your team’s colour and bond over your love for the game.

     

  8. Volunteer together – This is a great way to bond and also give back to the community. You could volunteer at the local animal rescue, the homeless shelter serving food or a nursing home. You will find yourself learning more about each other. It also feels good to give back.

     

  9. Try something new together – Is there something you’ve always wanted to try but just haven’t? It could be camping in the woods, whitewater rafting, horseback riding or kayaking – experiencing a new activity together is one of the best things you can do. It’s fun and you can bond over the experience.

     

  10. Rent bikes/explore your city – Some cities offer bike rentals and you can cycle around and explore together. If there are no bikes, just walk around and visit new stores you haven’t yet visited. It gives you a chance to talk, laugh and see new things.

     

  11. Stargaze – If you can drive a little bit out of the city with a blanket and some warm clothes, you can catch the sky and the stars together after the sun goes down. Nothing is more romantic than laying in each other’s arms and looking up into the star-filled sky. (Fun Fact: Do you know part of Southwest Nova Scotia has been designated as the first Starlight Tourism Destination in North America by the UNESCO-affiliated International Starlight Federation?)

     

  12. Go for a walk – Although all these ideas may sound great, maybe some weeks you just don’t have a couple hours to set aside for a date night. That’s okay. If you have a half hour, leave the home behind and go for a walk (or if you are ambitious… a run!) together. I find it’s a nice way to connect with my hubby, let go of the stress of the day and tune in to each other. All while enjoying mental, physical, and emotional health benefits!

If after checking out this blog post you realize you’d like to talk to someone about how to improve your relationship and build connection in your marriage/partnership, let’s connect.  You can book a session online or call Stephanie at (902) 702-7722 to book an appointment. You can also read more about the therapy for couples or for women who want to work on their relationships through individual counselling.

Find out more about how we can work together

Free 15 minute

Consultation Call

Counselling for

Marriage & Couples

1600 Bedford Highway Suite 220, Bedford, NS B4A IE8, Canada I (902) 702-7722 I info@restorecounselling.ca
Office Hours: Mon/Tu/Wed/ & Fri 2pm-9pm Thursday 9am-5pm Saturday 9am-5pm
Reception Hours: Mon-Fri 9am - 5pm

As a private clinic, we’re unable to handle emergency situations. If you are in crisis, please call the Mental Health Mobile Crisis Team at 902-429-8167 / 1-888-429-8167 (Toll Free), 911 or attend your nearest emergency department.
Copyright 2021 © Restore. Renew. Revive | All Rights Reserved | Privacy & Terms | Website by Windrose Web Design

What Can You Learn From Painful Emotions?

What Can You Learn From Painful Emotions?

Do you ever feel like your emotions “run the show”?

You’re out at coffee with a friend and everyone around you is laughing.  They all look so happy.

Your friend is telling you about some award her kid won and the amazing trip she is going on with her husband.

The smile stays pasted on your face, but you’ve stopped listening.  You’re lost in thought, wondering why your own life is so hard.  You’re trying to figure out how everyone else has it all together.

You start mentally making a list of the ways you are failing and how you are not measuring up.

You feel so inadequate. Your self-esteem is at an all-time low. 

 

When you get home, what do you do?  

a) Get frustrated with your kids because they are watching TV and the house has exploded into a chaotic mess of blankets, cushion forts and crumbs scattered across the floor during your absence.

b) Hide in your room so you can continue to “talk to yourself” about what a failure you are.

c) Spend 3 hours on Pinterest, pinning everything from a new wardrobe to new paint colours and throw pillows for the living room.

d) Scarf down a bag of chips.

e) Decide you need to ditch that friend and never speak to her again; how could she be so insensitive?  Why would she tell you those things when she knows how hard it’s been for you lately.

So, what’s your ‘go to’ when you’re feel out of balance emotionally and your self-esteem has taken a hit?


Whether you are aware of it or not, most of us have a default ‘fix’ that we run to when our feelings begin to spin out of control. 

Perfectionism.

Anger.

Distraction.

Numbing out.

 

It can feel sometimes as as though we are helpless in face our our feelings… as though our feelings can somehow cause our behaviour. But here’s the truth….

We develop bad habits and unhelpful ways of dealing with our feelings, but thankfully, our feelings never have the final say.

 

Artwork by Rachel Habermehl Art

Your feelings… my feelings… they can be so intense.   It seems as though we have to respond to them… like we have to do something with them or about them.


But we don’t.


Here’s the good news, we can learn how to be informed by our feelings, not run by them. We can get out of the vicious circle of responding to our emotions with behaviour that isn’t helpful.  We CAN find freedom from those things we get sucked into doing that move us further and further away from the life we’d like to be living. Instead we can learn to allow our feelings to inform us rather than direct us.

It can feel hard to admit to ourselves that we need to make some changes in our life.  We become so used to controlling how we feel, that it’s hard to imagine it any other way.  The ways we habitually respond to our emotions can feel comforting in the moment, even though they may be harmful in the long run. We become dependant on the ‘fix’ and so even when we recognize how unhelpful our coping strategies are,  it’s still scary to try to leave them behind.


Fortunately, your feelings don’t get to determine the outcome. You CAN change what you do when you experience powerful and painful emotions. 


Are you ready to get started? Here’s how.  Check out this worksheet and honestly evaluate what you do with your feelings.

You can’t (and shouldn’t) stop yourself from having feelings, but what you do with them matters.

If after checking out this worksheet, you realize you’d like to talk to someone about how to work through big emotions when they come up, let’s connect.  You can book a session at or call Stephanie at (902) 702-7722 to book an appointment. You can also read more about the therapy I provide for women who are struggling with their self-esteem.

ps. Know someone who feels like they are being run by their emotions?  Use the link below to forward this on to them.

 

How to Find the Right Therapist

How to Find the Right Therapist

You’ve decided you cannot continue trying to deal with your struggles by yourself.  Did you know that research shows that your therapeutic alliance-the strength and connection of the relationship you build with your therapist-is a better predictor of the effectiveness of your therapy than the kind of therapy that is used.

 

That’s why it is important to put the research ahead of your first appointment and find the right fit so you. 

 

There are a lot of therapists out there and many of them are very good.  But, you want to find someone you connect with, that is skilled and experienced in helping with the kind of challenges you have.  

3 steps to help you to find the right counsellor in Halifax. 

1)Put in the Groundwork

Use a therapist directory like Psychology Today, Therapy Owl, Theravive, or Open Path Collective to search for a listing of therapist in Halifax  These directories all have search tools where you can narrow down the results to people who are in your area who specialize in working with the kind of concerns you have.  Most people will have a short description of their services on these directory pages.  But don’t stop there.  Make a short list of people who sound great in their directory listing and then go check out their private practice website to find out more about them.  Do they seem like the kind of person that you can connect with?  Do they seem to specialize in the things that matter to you? 

2) Ask the Right Questions 

It’s not uncommon for counsellors to offer free consultation calls.  Not all helping professionals offer these, but many do.  Set up an appointment for a free phone consultation and briefly discuss your concerns with the therapists to see how you feel talking with them. Do you feel a connection?  Does it feel easy to open up to them? Even in a brief call you can often get a sense of whether you feel that it will be a good fit. 

While you have them on the line, there are some important issues to consider when finding the right counsellor for you. 

-Make sure they have training, education and experience working with someone who has the kind of concerns that you do.  It’s OK to ask really specific questions to you potential therapist about how long they have been working with this kind of problem and how many people they see in the course of a week or a month who have the same kind of problem as you. After all, you wouldn’t want to go and see someone for marriage & couples therapy who had only ever read about it in a book or who had seen a handful of couples over the course of their career.  You want to meet with someone who is familiar and comfortable working with the kinds of concerns you have. 

-It’s also a great idea to explore how they work with the issue.  There are so many acronyms for the kinds of therapy techniques out there (EMDR, CBT, DBT, EFT, ACT, EFFT, SFT) that you want to cut through the jargon and find out how this plays out in therapy.  Trust me.  This is really important.  All of these, and many others,  have been shown to be clinically effective ways of working with people to resolve their problems.  But they all look at the problem a bit differently and the steps to helping can look quite different.  Going to a session of EMDR therapy is not going to be the same experience as a therapist who uses ACT or SFT. 

No doubt therapy is about growing and learning new things, but if the way the therapist explains how she will work with your concern just doesn’t seem like the right fit for you, building that alliance we have been talking about is going to be tough, even if she is a great therapist. 

Find out what their designation is (RSW, RPsych, RCT) and make sure that you health insurance covers services provided by someone with that designation.  Not all insurance companies cover services from all of these designations, so make sure to check it out before you book your session.  You should also ask about direct billing if this is going to be a deal breaker for you.  Not all therapists can direct bill for all insurance programs.  If this is a concern for you, look into it before you book that first session.

Confirm the method of payment for fees, cancellation policy, hours of operation and make sure all these things will work for you.

-Explore any other questions you might have such as how long are sessions, how often do your typically see clients, can you do video calls and anything else that you’d like to know about going to therapy. 

3) Follow Your Instincts

Remember, your choice is not final.  It will take a few sessions to see if you feel like therapy is helping and to get the -therapeutic alliance- built.  But it’s important to know that if you don’t feel comfortable after a few sessions, you can always find another therapist to work with. You’re the boss and you don’t need to feel badly.  I would encourage you to share your concerns with your therapist and at least make her aware of your concerns.  Perhaps she can adapt what she is doing to better suit you.  If you feel sure that you don’t want to continue with your therapist, she can likely provide you with some suggestions of other therapists to explore to see if you can find a better fit.  

ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A COUNSELLOR?

If you are looking for a therapist, I encourage you to put the suggestions to the test. You can start by checking out my directory profiles (Psychology Today and Open Path) and my website https://restorecounselling.ca.  If you feel like we’d be a good match, book in for a free 15-minute consultation call to help you decide.   I look forward to hearing from you!

Warmly, 

Marcy

Find out more about how we can work together

1600 Bedford Highway Suite 220, Bedford, NS B4A IE8, Canada I (902) 702-7722 I info@restorecounselling.ca
Office Hours: Mon/Tu/Wed/ & Fri 2pm-9pm Thursday 9am-5pm Saturday 9am-5pm
Reception Hours: Mon-Fri 9am - 5pm

As a private clinic, we’re unable to handle emergency situations. If you are in crisis, please call the Mental Health Mobile Crisis Team at 902-429-8167 / 1-888-429-8167 (Toll Free), 911 or attend your nearest emergency department.
Copyright 2021 © Restore. Renew. Revive | All Rights Reserved | Privacy & Terms | Website by Windrose Web Design

4 Ways to Find Affordable Mental Health Care

4 Ways to Find Affordable Mental Health Care

 

When confiding in your friends, family and even your doctor, they may recommend for you to go to counselling for help with your struggles.  And it’s true… therapy can be really helpful.  After all, where else can you go to get expert help from someone who specializes in understanding human behaviour, relationships and helping people learn to cope more effectively with their emotions and experiences.

But if I’m being really honest, reaching out for help can be hard to do. For you, the obstacles could be worrying about the stigma of mental health problems, sharing your personal issues with a stranger or finding a free babysitter who won’t ask questions about where you will be.

But… you have finally reached out for help, overcoming the obstacles you saw in your path, only to discover that it wouldn’t be an option because of the fees. Whether it’s because you don’t have a job with health benefits, you are barely getting by on the income you have and can’t imagine being able to afford the co-pay, or you have maxed out your coverage for the year, the financial aspect of going to therapy can leave you wondering how on earth you will pay for the help you need.   

It can be very hard to know where to look for help, especially if you have continually tried to push down the need for help. You may be feeling a bit desperate at this point and just want the the path laid out for you.

Accessibility to mental health care and, particularly, quick access to appropriate services is vital.  As a clinical social worker, our code of ethics along with my personal values bring me to a role of advocacy to ensure fair and equitable access to services and benefits. With all this in mind, I hope this post brings clarification to your search for affordable mental health care and counselling in Nova Scotia. 

 

HOW TO FIND AFFORDABLE COUNSELLING

 

1. Nova Scotia Health Authority

Your Nova Scotia Health Care Card (MSI) entitles you to access free mental health services through our hospital system.  You can self refer to many mental health and addiction services, although some programs require a doctor’s referral.  You can find numbers listed for Halifax (HRM) and the rest of the province at this website.  

http://www.nshealth.ca/mental-health-and-addictions-intake-phone-numbers

There are also free crisis services you can access through the Mental Health Crisis Line at 1-888-429-8167 or the Kids Help Phone 1-900-668-6868, both of which are available 24 hours, seven days a week. 

 

Did you know if you are experiencing a mental health crisis, you can also be seen in your local emergency department? 

2. Work Place Employee Assistance Programs

Check in your employee handbook, look around your office or ask a colleague if your workplace participates in an employee assistance program.  If your workplace subscribes to this,  you will be able to call a 1-800 number and make a request for services. This counselling is intended to be short term, often 3-5 sessions, so it isn’t appropriate for some kinds of concerns, but sessions are covered at 100% by this workplace program.  

3. Look for No-Fee Community Based Services

These groups won’t be the right fit for everyone, but there are many places in the community where you can access counselling for specific concerns at no cost.  I’ll list a few places here that might be worth checking out, but you’ll need to call them to find out if you are a right fit for their programs and services. 

 

The Open Door  https://www.opendoorcentre.com

TREY (Trauma Recovery for Exploited Youth) http://treynovascotia.org

Avalon (Sexual Assault Centre) http://avaloncentre.ca

Healthy Minds https://www.healthyminds.ca

SOS Family Services https://www.familysos.ca/

Family Service Association Halifax – http://fshalifax.com

Family Service of Eastern Nova Scotia – http://ensfamilyservice.ca/programs/counseling/

Community Mental Health Clinics – https://www.mentalhealthns.ca/resources

4. Find a Therapist Who Offers a Sliding Scale or Low Fee Services 

Some therapists offer sliding scale fees or a lower rate under certain circumstances.  This is often listed under the FAQ section of their website.  As you explore finding a great therapist in Halifax (HRM) look for ones that offer reduced rates.  

I’ve recently joined Open Path Psychotherapy Collective as part of my commitment to offering high quality services at a reduced rate for individuals and couples.  The premise of Open Path is to connect people in need with a database of providers, similar to Psychology Today, so that finances would not be the limiting factor in choosing their mental health care provider.  

If you are a mental health care provider reading this, you can find out more about joining Open Path here: https://openpathcollective.org/open-path-therapists/

If you are looking to find a provider, you can check it out here: 

https://openpathcollective.org**The database is growing quickly in the USA, but in Halifax there are not many providers as of yet.  You’ll find my directory listing and if you decide we are a good fit to work together you can reach out to Open Path to work with me through their program. 

Looking for a counsellor in Bedford, Nova Scotia? I’d be pleased to chat with you more about this.  You can schedule a free 15- minute consultation call at restorecounselling.janapp.com or reach me directly at (902) 702-7722.

Warmly,

 

Marcy

 

 

 

Find out more about how we can work together

Free 15 minute

Consultation Call

Counselling for

Marriage & Couples

1600 Bedford Highway Suite 220, Bedford, NS B4A IE8, Canada I (902) 702-7722 I info@restorecounselling.ca
Office Hours: Mon/Tu/Wed/ & Fri 2pm-9pm Thursday 9am-5pm Saturday 9am-5pm
Reception Hours: Mon-Fri 9am - 5pm

As a private clinic, we’re unable to handle emergency situations. If you are in crisis, please call the Mental Health Mobile Crisis Team at 902-429-8167 / 1-888-429-8167 (Toll Free), 911 or attend your nearest emergency department.
Copyright 2021 © Restore. Renew. Revive | All Rights Reserved | Privacy & Terms | Website by Windrose Web Design

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