self-esteem | Julia Kristina Counselling

3 Unintentional Habits that Are Killing Your Confidence.

By Julia Kristina|2017-05-21T16:05:42-07:00January 19th, 2017|General|

Bad habits. Sometimes they are things we don’t even know we’re doing, but are having a negative effect on our self-confidence nonetheless. Now we could go on to hypothesize as where and why and where we picked up these bad habits in the first place, but we’ll save that for another day. For today, let’s just draw our attention to them, and make a concerted effort to get rid of them. Saying sorry all the time. Of course I’m not talking about apologizing if we’ve hurt, offended, inconvenienced, or upset someone (whether intentionally or not), but those [...]

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A Funny thing that Will Reduce Your Stress & Increase Your Confidence.

By Julia Kristina|2017-05-21T16:05:43-07:00August 7th, 2016|General|

Who needs more fun in their lives? I, for one, definitely do. With businesses and babies and responsibilities, and with all of the other stuff that comes from being a grown up, sometimes I get so busy that I forget to take a moment or two for a little fun. I was hit smack between the eyes with this one a short while ago while working with someone who is going through some really difficult stuff. She and her husband have been trying to get pregnant for the past 3 years and after investing thousands of dollars in trying [...]

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A Hard Truth You Need to Hear.

By Julia Kristina|2017-05-21T16:05:44-07:00January 21st, 2016|General|

And it’s going to be hard for different people for different reasons. This might be a little harsh, and if it makes you uncomfortable, it’s probably a good thing – it means you need to hear it. We’re just going to jump right in, so here it goes: No one is better than you and you are not better than anyone else. For some of you, that may be relieving, for others uncomfortable. So let me explain: We all have our strengths, gifts, talents and abilities that we bring to the table in any of [...]

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Modern Family Just Put My Knickers in a Twist.

By Julia Kristina|2017-05-21T16:05:45-07:00December 10th, 2015|General|

Modern Family is one of my favourite sit-coms on TV right now. It’s one of the few shows that makes me laugh out loud many times each episode. I find it to be the perfect blend of humour and heart warm, and every time I try to choose a favourite character, I really can’t. I love them all! But just recently I was watching one of the latest episodes where at the end, the character Jay who is the hard-on-the-outside-soft-on-the-inside patriarch of the whole family, did something I fundamentally disagree with. In his attempt to motivate [...]

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Why Dancing Around Like An Idiot Will Make You A Better Person.

By Julia Kristina|2017-05-21T16:05:51-07:00May 14th, 2015|General|

Whenever I get the chance (which is pretty rare with 2 small children) I head over to my neighbourhood Yoga Studio for my favourite Kundalini yoga class. It’s the one exercise class I never have to talk myself in to going to and this is why: It’s basically a full-on dance party in the dark. Picture it: 100 + men and women in stretchy pants dancing completely sober on their yoga mats. And the best part of it all is because it’s a late evening class and all the lights are turned out you can [...]

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Who Says? and Who Cares?

By Julia Kristina|2017-05-21T16:05:54-07:00July 17th, 2014|General|

I find it curious when people talk about how they feel bad because they think they should be more interesting by being more interested in something that’s “cool” (I’m not really sure who’s the official word on what’s cool and what’s not, but anyway…) Let’s look at this. Feeling crummy about yourself because you think you should be more interested in x, y, or z in order to make yourself more interesting. But what happens if you’re NOT actually really all that interested in x, y, or z? Some of the ones I've heard are: [...]

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The Meaning Behind the Message.

By Julia Kristina|2017-05-21T16:05:56-07:00November 20th, 2012|General|

Here's the Bad Good News: For better or worse and no matter who's listening, what we say about ourselves is how we think about ourselves - or at least it will inevitably become so. ... stay tuned for next week's post where I'll to share a recent and potent example of this from my clinical practice.

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Bound To Get Messy.

By Julia Kristina|2017-05-21T16:05:57-07:00November 4th, 2012|General|

Because we are bombarded with so many contradictory messages from society all the time many of us sometimes (or often) have an hard time feeling good about ourselves. We are told time and time again that in order to be a good person we must be equal and superior to others; generous and frugal; spontaneous and organized; assertive and easygoing… and the list goes on. It doesn't take long for it to become clear that no matter what we chose to do, we can't do it all and we can't be perfect, thus we’ll inevitably [...]

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Earning Our Keep.

By Julia Kristina|2017-05-21T16:05:58-07:00August 20th, 2012|General|

Many of us believe that our worth depends on our behaviour… ‘The more I do, accomplish, achieve, the more worthwhile, valuable, significant I am.’ That sometimes bugger of an internal voice is relentless in telling us that in order for me to be of any value I must do something worthwhile and important. I know you might not buy it for a second, but if you’ll humour me, the truth is that our value is found in the clear fact that we are conscious, and we can see, and we can experience. We are sophisticated, [...]

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All Puffed Up.

By Julia Kristina|2017-05-21T16:06:03-07:00October 25th, 2011|General|

This weekend I’m going to be giving a short speech, and I was asked by the event coordinator to provide her with a short bio about me to be read in my introduction. Now I felt a little funny writing about myself and the things I’ve done to get to where I’m at in my life and career until this point. I don’t know, maybe it’s because of the Scandinavian value of humility that’s been drilled into me since childhood, but whatever the reason, it felt weird so I reached out and asked a good [...]

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