Tom Henihan
Express Staff
Inner Pathways Counselling offers clients individual and relationship/couples sessions in a safe environment with a qualified, empathic professional.
Annette Erickson who runs Inner Pathways Counselling, has a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and received accreditation as a registered counsellor at the Kelowna College of Professional Counsellors.
Erickson studied “The Art of Empowerment” at Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, New York and trained in that discipline in Seattle. She also studied “Life Management Skills Leader Training,” at Grant MacEwan College in Edmonton.
For those wrestling with personal struggles counselling can be beneficial in finding a path through that emotional quandary.
While personal inner struggles are esoteric and deeply private, they often manifest themselves in universal feelings such as anger, isolation, feeling misunderstood and unfairly judged.
Some of the areas of counselling provided by Inner Pathways are individual counselling, relationship/couples, life transitions, trauma, depression, stress management and counselling adults who have suffered childhood sexual abuse.
Annette Erickson acknowledges that attending one’s first counselling session can be daunting, that clients, already living under duress, are entering unfamiliar territory and may be apprehensive about confiding their personal conflicts.
“We live in a world where most of us are hungering for a sense of meaning and connection; for a little bit of vulnerability, honesty and reality in our life. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to live this every day with people who choose to walk through my office door,” says Erickson.
“I have nothing but admiration for the people who sit with me and share their story and their struggles. I know firsthand the courage it takes to decide to go to counselling. I also know the many benefits that can come from it. Choosing to go to counselling is honouring yourself and saying, I matter and I’m worth it. It’s also the possibility for growth, for change, for truth and for healing to take place.”
Inner Pathways also holds Skype counselling sessions and offers retreats and workshops.
The retreats focus on self-awareness and achieving wholeness and there are workshops on therapeutic writing such as journal writing as a means of contending with cancer, stress management and other traumatic issues.
Erickson published a well received memoir “In Search of Oneness,” in 2015.
The book recounts Erickson’s journey to gaining equilibrium between her social and private self and integrating the disparate and often difficult facets of her own personal experience to achieve “oneness.”