Below are short descriptions of my areas of expertise:

Psychotherapy for Individuals
Marriage and Couples’ Counselling
Health Counselling

JOY

 

We all experience the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying every now and then in our lives. This is what is defined as joy. The best part is that joy is not restricted or limited by time, age or money. Simple pleasures in life can bring a smile.  Sometimes it is sheer innocence while other times an anticipated result can bring happiness. Sometimes our joy is the source of our smile, but sometimes our smile can be the source of our joy!

 

Children are supposed to be happy, unadulterated joy.
Because a child is pure, a child is joyous. Of course there will be the inevitable tear when the child doesn’t get the candy or toy, but that is not true sadness; that is momentary dissatisfaction. Give it a minute or two and the child will go back to its natural state – Joy.

The same goes for adult happiness. Just like child sadness is momentary, so is adult happiness momentary: merely a fleeting satisfaction. Adult happiness, be it bought with dollars or gained with favors, is a temporary happiness, as substantial as the dollar or favor that birthed it.

There are those times when the unadulterated purity shines through all the layers, when the child peeks through the curtains with his irresistible smile. We all have such moments in life, when we are not happy because we have this or don’t have that, but we are joyous just because, just because we are.

True Joy is not something unnatural and acquired. Real Joy just is. A child isn’t happy because something has made him happy; a child is happy because he is. The adult also has this happiness within him, but, because of all the distortions, it isn’t as spontaneous or evident. Still, there are nevertheless those triggers that ignite something that has always been there, just waiting, impatiently, for these moments of truth.

Joy is going back to where we once were. Joy is recognizing that we are here not because we have possessions or because someone tells us we are important; Joy is knowing we are here because we are who we are, indispensable in the greater scheme of things, irreplaceable by something or someone else.
Joy isn’t found somewhere. Joy is realizing that something was never lost.

We are all different but we have a lot in common, maybe more than you think. We all laugh. We all get hurt. We all make mistakes. We all dream. But in this high-tech world of meeting deadlines and working against time, we have just forgotten to enjoy, cherish and capture happy moments of our lives. The key to experiencing happiness is to put joy on your life agenda along with completing tasks and goals. Joy is a direct result of intention. Our intention determines how we experience each moment of our day, each aspect of our world. As we go through our daily activities, we ask our self, “What is my intention?” A clear, strong intention for happiness helps us stay focused on fun and happiness.

 

Life is a journey, most of us would agree with that. A journey for joy.  Turning our life’s journey into a journey of joy is a process. It requires us to have keen sense of desire, direction and motivation. ‘Desire’ is in-built, it is in us. While ‘direction’ and ‘motivation’ can come from someone we can trust and believe in, joy fills our heart with a poignant desire that harnesses our motivation, and fills us with hope, and activates our drive to power, chug, yearn, effort, try, collaborate, cooperate, and we will coordinate the very best that resides within us to accomplish this. We will achieve the golden ring, the fulfillment and the accompanying joy – it is the ultimate celebration within!

 

Insight-oriented psychotherapy, usually with reduction of self criticism, and acceptance of our inner nature, can provide the keys that will enable a person to travel the whole range of their feelings, including the frequent experience of intimate joy. In Toronto, Ontario, Ingrid Dresher has assisted many people to stop questioning their essence, within which our joy lives, waiting to be born, like the most beautiful of flowers, of stars, sometimes of fireworks. Like sadness, or introspection, having the psychological means, confidence and inner strength to traverse the whole spectrum of one's feeling is the key to experiencing life to the fullest!