What services does Northwest Change Agents offer?

Northwest Change Agents provides counselling, training, and mediation services on a fee for service contract basis. We take a solutions focused approach across a variety of modalities and the counsellor or mediator acts in collaboration with the client to target areas in need of change or consensus. Clients will experience a respectful and client-centred process with us.

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What is counselling?

Counselling is more than talking about problems and gaining insight. Counsellors don’t tell people what to do. Rather, counselling that is helpful is a collaboration between the client and counsellor in search of options that work for issues that are difficult to resolve on one’s own. The most important task of counselling is increasing self-awareness while exploring/identifying options in order to develop strategies or new ways to accomplish goals.

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), in which both Jim and Patrice are trained, is the most validated treatment approach for addressing depression, anxiety, compulsive disorders, and phobias. Whether working with individuals or couples, we take a solution focused approach to work with client concerns. Couples counselling can be augmented by individual therapy to address specific concerns which impact the relationship. Our approach is informed by CBT, Satir Family Systems Therapy, and Interpersonal Psychotherapeutic orientations. Family counselling or group sessions, if appropriate, can be facilitated by Jim or Patrice.

Our goal is to support individuals, couples, and families to feel good about themselves, establish healthy boundaries, and create fulfilling relationships. We work with children, youth, and adults to address a variety of counselling issues:

1. Stress reduction and relaxation training
2. Anger management
3. Depression, anxiety
4. Loss or bereavement (grief)
5. Traumatic stress recovery
6. Parenting concerns
7. Separation and divorce
8. Step parenting and blended families
9. Midlife concerns
10. Critical incident debriefing
11. Sexual, physical, or emotional abuse recovery
12. Communication skills and conflict resolution

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What is mediation?

Mediation is a method of dispute resolution in which the parties try, with the assistance of a neutral third party, to reach a settlement of their issues. Mediation is not counselling but mediators may use similar processes in aid of moving the parties in the direction of resolution. Sometimes, a meeting between a mediator and one member of a party at a time is a useful tool for identifying issues and opportunities for resolution. This also helps to screen for violence and an imbalance of power in relationships that may not be easy to address in a joint setting.

Mediation is a private, flexible process where the parties and the mediator work together to find a workable solution to the issues between the disputants. The parties, not the mediator make the decisions concerning terms of any emerging agreement. The mediator helps the parties to talk about the important considerations that need to be attended to in the process for resolving the dispute. The parties identify the issues that are important to them, where agreement lies, and the mediator helps them to work on ways to find the best solution. Where an agreement has legal or financial ramifications, lawyer and financial services consultations are strongly encouraged.

Family mediation can help to resolve a wide variety of issues that flow from separation and divorce, parent-child and sibling conflicts, elder care and estate issues, or family business disputes.

Jim Weibelzahl has nearly three decades of experience helping families to resolve the issues that flow from separation and divorce. When parents separate or divorce, they must work out how they will continue to undertake their parenting roles and responsibilities. He is an expert in assisting parents to negotiate the mine field of a failed intimate relationship and in helping them to build a workable parenting partnership. Jim offers a style of mediation that helps to de-intensify the often times very difficult emotions that carry over from the parents’ dissolved relationship and which sometimes become a barrier to resolution.

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How many sessionS will I need?

The complexity of each person’s situation and how much change they are hoping to accomplish will influence this.

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What is short-term therapy?

Short-term therapy is defined in the literature as anything from one to twenty sessions. We take a solution focused approach to assist clients in achieving meaningful concrete goals in the shortest time possible.

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What does solution-focused mean?

Jim or Patrice will help you to develop strategies to address your concerns from the perspective of expanding what is working and limiting what is not. This means that we cultivate a collaborative environment as ‘solution detectives’ with you to engage the change process.

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What is Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)?

CBT helps you learn to identify and adjust thoughts and behaviours, which contribute to problems in living such as anxiety, depression, anger, and stress. Understanding your stress response (fight, flight, freeze, faint) and how the brain, body, and emotions are connected is a key component to the overall change process.

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