Counselling can be key component

Dear readers: Does everyone with a relationship or personal problem need counselling help? Of course not.

If a reasonable couple faces a roadblock issue, they’ll naturally look for solutions they can both accept.

But if one partner is emotionally invested in a particular solution and the other not so willing to agree, what then?

Answer: It can create a relationship pattern, that one person always gets (their) own way. This may fester into resentment, like a sore that won’t heal.

Why is that scenario significant?

We’re living in unusual circumstances – a pandemic during which some people are isolated together for weeks/ months, with no certainty when it’ll end.

It’s why so many of the letters I receive are about persistent troubles between couples, in-laws, siblings, parents and children – troubles with no easy resolution.

People write of their depression, anxiety, fear, desperation.

A mental-health crisis exists as a by-product of life during COVID-19 and its more dangerous variants.

Children are unable to play freely, socialize and release energy at schools.

Workers feeling poorly are afraid to stay home and lose income.

Singles can’t easily form new relationships.

Couples can’t get a break from domestic tensions.

Seniors are kept secluded with fear of getting ill, unable to see their adult children and grandkids.

Yet, some people write me asking why I often recommend professional counselling.

Because troubled people need trained, experienced guidance through a mental health crisis.

That’s why a major corporation like Bell Canada returned to its annual Letís Talk awareness campaign – fighting the stigma of mental illness, providing care and access for mental health needs, supporting research and workplace mental health.

I’m not a Bell employee. But I’m made aware every day of mental-health needs expressed in my column’s inbox.

This is no time for denial or suffering in silence.

Find what’s available in your city and your province.

To the reader who wrote of being “tired of therapy or counselling pitches”, know this: If relationship advice is only meant to entertain – though it’s fair as one element for some readers – it fails its larger community if it doesn’t also guide to where ongoing, uplifting and perhaps lifesaving help can be obtained, especially now when online counselling is accessible and the need is so pervasive.