Wildfire Smoke Season Is Hard on Your Mental Health, Not Just Your Lungs

Posted on July 17, 2026July 19, 2026 by Scott McKirdy

Scott McKirdy is a Registered Psychologist and co-owner of Solasta Counselling in Calgary, AB. View Scott’s profile >>

In late June 2026, Calgary spent several days under an air quality warning as smoke from wildfires in northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba drifted across the city, pushing the Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) up to 8 — high risk. It won’t be the last warning of the summer. For most Calgarians, this is simply what July and August look like now: checking the AQHI before deciding whether to bike to work, keeping the kids inside on a day that should be a pool day, watching the mountains disappear behind a haze that wasn’t there yesterday.

We tend to talk about wildfire smoke as a physical health issue — sore throats, headaches, irritated eyes. It is that. But a growing body of research shows it’s a mental health issue too, and not in a vague, “everything is connected” way. Smoke exposure has a measurable relationship with anxiety, depression, and mood.

If the last few smoke-heavy days have left you feeling off — flat, on edge, more irritable than usual — you’re not imagining it, and you’re not alone.

What the Research Actually Shows

A Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health study published in 2025 analyzed emergency department visits across California during a heavy wildfire season and found that a 10 μg/m³ increase in wildfire-specific fine particulate matter (PM2.5) was linked to a measurable rise in mental health-related ED visits for depression, anxiety, and mood disorders — with effects lasting up to seven days after exposure. Researchers noted that women, children and young adults, and people already managing a mental health condition showed the highest risk.

The mechanism isn’t fully understood yet, but researchers believe fine particulate matter may contribute to neuroinflammation — physical changes in the brain that can worsen mood and anxiety symptoms, separate from the psychological stress of the smoke itself. This tracks with a broader pattern in air pollution research more generally: people who consistently breathe worse air tend to report higher rates of anxiety and depression, smoke season or not.

In other words, smoke season isn’t just an inconvenient backdrop to your mental health — for some people, it’s an active contributor to it.

Why Smoke Season Is Uniquely Hard, Beyond the Air Itself

The direct physiological effects are only part of the picture. Smoke season tends to stack several smaller stressors on top of each other, and it’s the stacking that gets people:

Your routine gets disrupted. Runs, bike commutes, patio time, kids’ outdoor play — the things a lot of people rely on to manage stress and mood become off-limits or risky on high AQHI days, right when you need them most.

There’s a low hum of uncertainty. Unlike a single bad-weather day, smoke season doesn’t have a clear end date. Not knowing whether tomorrow will be clear or a repeat of today makes it hard to plan, and that kind of ongoing uncertainty is its own quiet stressor.

It can tip into genuine eco-anxiety. For some people, smoke season isn’t just a seasonal nuisance — it’s a visceral, recurring reminder of climate change, and each bad air day reopens that worry.

It’s isolating in a specific way. Summer is normally when people see each other most — patios, parks, backyard barbecues. Smoke keeps people indoors and apart during exactly the months they’d usually be the most socially connected, which quietly compounds low mood.

Who Tends to Feel It Most

Based on the research so far, a few groups are worth paying closer attention to:

People already managing anxiety, depression, or another mental health condition — smoke exposure appears to act as a flare trigger, not just an added annoyance
Parents of young kids, who are managing both their own stress and a household of restless kids stuck inside
Older adults and people with chronic health conditions, who face compounded physical and mental health risk
Anyone whose usual coping tools (exercise, being outside, social time) depend on decent air quality

If you fall into one of these groups, it’s worth being a little more deliberate about your coping plan during high-AQHI stretches, rather than waiting to see how you feel.

What Actually Helps

None of this means you’re at the mercy of the AQHI reading. A few things genuinely help:

Check the AQHI, not just the weather, before you plan your day. Alberta’s wildfire smoke information page and the Environment Canada AQHI tool for Calgary are both quick daily checks. Treat a high reading the way you’d treat a forecast of freezing rain — a reason to adjust the plan, not push through it.
Create one reliably clean-air space at home. Keeping windows closed on bad days and running a HEPA filter or air purifier in one main room (even just a bedroom) gives you somewhere to reset, especially useful if you’re working from home.
Move your coping tools indoors instead of skipping them. If a run or a walk is normally how you manage stress, swap it for an indoor workout or a walk at the mall rather than just losing the activity entirely for the week.
Stay connected on purpose. Since smoke naturally pulls people apart during a season built for togetherness, it’s worth being a bit more intentional about texting a friend or planning an indoor hangout rather than waiting for the patio plans to happen organically.
Give yourself permission for a lower-output week. If you’re more tired, foggy, or short-tempered during a smoke stretch, that’s a plausible physiological response, not a personal failing. Lowering your expectations of yourself for a few days is a reasonable response, not giving up.
Limit how much time you spend refreshing smoke maps and air quality forecasts. Staying informed is useful; checking obsessively tends to feed anxiety rather than reduce it. One check in the morning is usually enough.

When It’s More Than Just a Rough Week

A bad mood during a bad-air week is common and usually passes once the smoke clears. It’s worth paying closer attention if you notice:

Anxiety or low mood that persists well after the air quality improves
Panic symptoms triggered specifically by smoky conditions or air quality alerts
Smoke season consistently coinciding with a noticeable dip in your ability to function at work, in relationships, or day to day
Existing anxiety or depression that clearly worsens every time the AQHI spikes

None of these mean something is wrong with you — they mean your nervous system is responding to a real, researched stressor, and it’s a reasonable time to get some support.

Support That Works Around Smoke Season

If checking the AQHI before deciding whether it’s safe to leave the house is starting to feel like a regular part of your summer, you’re not overreacting — you’re responding to something real. Our psychologists offer anxiety counsleling and stress and burnout counselling for people navigating exactly this kind of seasonal, cumulative stress, whether it shows up as anxiety, low mood, or just feeling like yourself less often than usual.

If a high-AQHI day makes getting to an in-person appointment less appealing, our online counselling across Alberta means smoke doesn’t have to mean skipping a session.

Every new client starts with a free 20-minute consultation to see if it’s the right fit — no obligation. Book a free consultation or use our Find Your Therapist quiz to get matched with the right person.

FAQs

Does wildfire smoke actually cause anxiety, or does it just feel that way because everything is disrupted?

Both are likely true at once. Research points to a direct physiological link between fine particulate matter exposure and increased anxiety and depression symptoms, separate from the psychological stress of disrupted routines, isolation, and uncertainty. The two effects likely compound each other.

How long do the mental health effects last after the smoke clears?

Research has tracked measurably elevated mental-health-related emergency visits for up to about a week after a smoke exposure spike. For most people, mood and anxiety symptoms tied to a specific smoke event improve within days once air quality returns to normal. If symptoms persist well beyond that, it’s worth talking to someone.

Is it normal to feel anxious every time I check the air quality app?

Some awareness is healthy — it helps you make good decisions about your day. If checking has become compulsive, or the app itself is triggering anxiety even on clear days, that’s a sign the coping strategy has tipped into something worth addressing with support.

Too Much of a Good Thing – Toxic Positivity Part 2

Posted on July 8, 2026July 19, 2026 by Scott McKirdy

Written by David Tamagi, R.Psych. — Registered Psychologist, College of Alberta Psychologists. David specializes in men’s mental health, life transitions, and relationship counselling, using ACT, CBT, and motivational interviewing approaches. View David’s profile >>

As I mentioned in the last post, positivity is (obviously) a good thing, but forcing oneself to be positive all the time can have some negative consequences.

Again, these problems arise from the reality that life is both good and bad, pleasure and pain. When we only acknowledge half of our lived experience, this type of positivity can actually be detrimental to our long term wellbeing.

To advocate for the experiencing of our more unpleasant emotions, I’ll turn to ideas from 2 foundational thinkers in psychology: Sigmund Freud and Victor Frankl

Freud recognized the dangers of repressing our emotions early on. He observed that when someone has a thought or feeling that is uncomfortable, one way of coping is simply to repress that thought or feeling.

If that repression meant that the feeling just went away, then we would be talking about an excellent coping strategy. Unfortunately, Freud identified the repression of our thoughts and feelings as the source of many of the psychological problems people experience.

Frankl was a Holocaust survivor who studied psychological outcomes for other survivors after the war. Briefly, he found that the main factor in those who coped better with their trauma was their ability to attribute meaning to their suffering.

He went on to argue that this was an essential skill in our journey as human beings. In a world where suffering is inevitable, learning to find meaning in our sadness, fear, and anger is a key learning as we move toward peace and contentment in a world filled with suffering.

In order to get better at coping with negative experiences and the emotions that come with them, we need to have lots of negative experiences and the emotions that come with them. In essence, practice makes progress.

A refusal to acknowledge and face the negative aspects of our experience robs us of the practice we need to develop the skill of finding meaning in our suffering.

So what do we do about this positivity balance? Especially considering that negative rumination is a real danger to our mental health. Here are a few thoughts on how we can change our relationship with negative thoughts and feelings without simply ignoring them:

Ask yourself: is it appropriate to be upset in this situation? If we’ve experienced a setback at work or someone said something hurtful, our negative emotions are certainly appropriate. In cases like this, there may be no need to modify our negative emotions.
What am I feeling? Using emotional literacy tools to explore how you are feeling can give you insight into your emotions. With this knowledge, you can more effectively give that emotion the space it needs.
What is keeping me stuck in this emotion? Often when we ruminate, it’s because there is something about the situation that is particularly disturbing to us. If we can find out what that thing is and acknowledge it, it can help us to move on
Can I find meaning in my past suffering? By looking to our past, we can get practice in finding the meaning or lesson in our suffering. Slowly, this can build a trust in our own resiliency, which can give us the strength to endure our suffering and find meaning in the present.

Learning to sit with difficult emotions instead of pushing them away takes practice, and support helps. Our Calgary psychologists offer in-person sessions at 1716 16 Ave NW, and virtual counselling across Alberta. Book a Free Consultation Call to get started.

Too Much of a Good Thing – Toxic Positivity Part 1

Posted on July 8, 2026July 19, 2026 by Scott McKirdy

Positivity is something that we are all seeking it seems, and with good reason. A more positive mindset has been associated with better resiliency, lower distress, healthier relationships, and generally better mental and physical health. In fact, creating a more positive mindset is often a goal of therapy.

However, like all things, we can go overboard with positivity. Unfortunately, whether it is with fitness, healthy eating, productivity, or any number of “good things”, modern Western culture is excellent at taking good things too far.

When it comes to a positive mindset, many have recognized that we might be overdoing it. This potentially harmful extreme has been dubbed “Toxic Positivity”.

Briefly, toxic positivity is the idea that a person should maintain a positive attitude no matter what happens to them. This mindset rejects all difficult emotions and demands a smiling and cheerful facade in the face of adversity. As a bumper sticker I recently saw suggests: “no bad days”.

If we could authentically transform every experience into a positive one, this mindset would make a lot of sense. Unfortunately, it is the mismatch between toxic positivity and our lived experience that causes problems.

The reality is that life is a mix of good and bad experiences. In Buddhism, the First Noble Truth acknowledges that suffering is a fundamental part of life. To gloss over the suffering in life is to deny reality.

Happiness that requires a twisting of reality is not authentic, and therefore, is fragile, shallow, and unsatisfying. It falls apart as soon as reality inevitably makes itself known. Lasting happiness is grounded in an acknowledgment and acceptance of the bad as well as the good.

Further, toxic positivity requires the denial of our natural emotional reactions. Evolutionary psychologists see emotions as useful evolved responses to survival problems, much like our hands or eyes. Trying to reject the existence of an emotion just because it is unpleasant is like trying to deny the existence of your eyes because they see something you don’t like. On top of that, we are losing the benefit these emotions evolved to give us.

All emotions, including unpleasant ones, are meant to be felt. When we resist these emotions and what they are trying to tell us, we actually maintain them. It’s like a child screaming to be heard. As we ignore them, they just get louder in a plea to be heard. However, once we give them the space that they need, they often say what they need to and are then free to dissipate.

Stay tuned for Part 2 where I’ll address some other risks around toxic positivity and outline a better, more authentic relationship with positivity.

If any of this feels familiar, you don’t have to sort it out alone. Our registered psychologists see clients in person at 1716 16 Ave NW in Calgary, and virtually across Alberta. Book a Free Consultation Call to talk it through.

What Happens in an Adult Autism Assessment?

Posted on July 7, 2026July 8, 2026 by Scott McKirdy

Scott McKirdy is a Registered Psychologist and co-owner of Solasta Counselling in Calgary, where he conducts adult autism and ADHD assessments. View Scott’s profile >>

If you’re considering an autism assessment as an adult, the not-knowing is often the hardest part — not just whether you’re autistic, but what you’re actually signing up for. How many appointments. What gets asked. How long you’ll be waiting for an answer. This is a plain walkthrough of the real process, start to finish, so you can go in knowing what to expect.

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Step 1: The Free Consultation Call

Before anything formal starts, most practices — including Solasta — offer a short, no-obligation consultation call. This is where you talk through why you’re seeking an assessment, ask questions about the process, and get a feel for whether the clinician is a good fit. Nothing is being evaluated here; it’s purely informational, and there’s no pressure to commit afterward.

Step 2: The Interview and Standardized Testing

The bulk of the assessment happens across two to three appointments of roughly two to three hours each, built around two core components: a detailed clinical interview covering your personal and developmental history, current challenges, and the specific experiences that led you to seek an assessment, and structured, standardized testing using gold-standard instruments — the ADOS-2 (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second Edition), the ADI-R (Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised), and the MIGDAS-2 (Monteiro Interview Guidelines for Diagnosing the Autism Spectrum, a sensory-based format that’s often a better fit for adults who mask well or present atypically).

These two pieces don’t necessarily happen in a fixed order, and they’re sometimes woven together within the same session rather than run as strictly separate appointments — the exact structure depends on your clinician and how you present. A good clinician also won’t run every available tool on every client by default; tool selection should be tailored to you specifically.

Step 3: A Note on Childhood Information

One of the most common worries people raise at this stage: do I need someone who knew me as a kid to confirm what I was like? Not necessarily. Collateral information from a parent or childhood observer can add useful context, but plenty of adults seeking a late diagnosis simply don’t have access to that — and a thorough clinician should be able to build an accurate picture from the clinical interview, standardized tools, self-report measures, and your own detailed account of your life, without it.

Step 4: Scoring and the Written Report

Once testing wraps up, the clinician scores the results and writes up findings — this typically takes three to four weeks. What you get at the end should be a substantial document, not a one-page summary: a genuinely thorough report runs 20 to 30 pages and covers diagnostic impressions with clinical rationale, a profile of your strengths and support needs, and practical recommendations for things like workplace accommodations and daily-life strategies. It should be written to actually be useful to you, your doctor, or your employer — not just a checkbox.

Step 5: The Feedback Session

Once the report is ready, you’ll sit down with your clinician to go through the findings in plain language — not jargon, not a data dump. If autism is identified, this is where you find out what that means for you specifically: your particular profile, not a generic description of the diagnosis. This is also the point where next steps get discussed, including what post-assessment support might look like.

Book a Free Consultation Call >>

How Much Does an Adult Autism Assessment Cost?

This varies by clinic, but as a real reference point: comprehensive adult autism assessments at Solasta in Calgary start from $3,250, reflecting the multi-session process, standardized tools, scoring, and detailed report involved. It’s a genuine investment, which is exactly why it’s worth knowing upfront what you’re paying for rather than being surprised partway through.

You also don’t typically need to pay the full amount upfront — payment is usually split across the process rather than due as one lump sum before you start, which makes the cost easier to plan around. And depending on which clinician you see and your specific insurance plan, direct billing may be available for part or all of the cost — it’s not universal across every assessor or every plan, so it’s worth confirming on your consultation call whether it applies to your situation.

For context on timing: the wait for an adult autism assessment through Alberta’s public system can run two to three years. Going private typically means four to six weeks from your first consultation call to a finished report — a meaningfully different timeline if you’ve already been waiting a long time for answers.

Depending on the outcome, some people are also eligible to apply for the Disability Tax Credit — worth raising with your clinician if it’s relevant to you.

How to Prepare for an Adult Autism Assessment

There’s no strict prep required, but a few things make the process smoother:

Write down specific examples, not just impressions. “I struggle socially” is harder to work with than “I need a full day alone to recover after a family gathering.” Specific, concrete moments give your clinician more to work with than general self-descriptions.

Gather anything you already have, but don’t stress if you don’t. Old report cards, past therapy notes, or a family member’s recollections can help — but as covered above, their absence doesn’t derail an accurate assessment.

Expect some of it to feel emotional. Talking through years of not quite understanding why certain things were harder for you than for other people can bring up real feelings, sometimes unexpectedly. That’s normal, not a sign anything’s going wrong.

Come with your actual questions. Cost, timeline, what happens if the result is inconclusive, whether the report will be useful for workplace accommodations — a good clinician would rather answer these upfront than have you find out partway through.

Why This Matters: Autism in Adults Is Often Missed

Many autistic adults weren’t identified in childhood — not because they weren’t autistic, but because they masked effectively, or because clinical understanding of how autism presents (particularly in women and non-binary people) has shifted significantly in recent years. A late diagnosis is just as valid as an early one, and for a lot of people it’s the first time a lifetime of specific experiences finally has an explanation.

Who’s Actually Behind an Assessment Matters

The process above is fairly standard across good clinics, but who’s running it isn’t. At Solasta, adult autism assessments are co-led by Scott McKirdy, MC, Registered Psychologist, and Dr. Gillian McKirdy, Psy.D., Registered Psychologist — both trained in the ADOS-2, ADI-R, and MIGDAS-2, with additional specific training in assessing autistic women, a group historically underdiagnosed by tools originally normed on a narrower population. The full assessment team also includes Sabrina Minor, Sarah Choudhry, and Misha Waheed, registered and registered provisional psychologists who each bring their own clinical background to the assessment process. For Indigenous clients specifically, Randi Sager offers assessments adapted for Indigenous populations, recognizing that standard diagnostic tools weren’t developed or normed with Indigenous communities in mind and don’t always translate accurately across cultural context.

Ready to get some answers? Book a free consultation call or learn more about adult autism assessments at Solasta.

The Gratitude Practice Guide for People Who’ve Tried and Given Up

Posted on June 25, 2026July 6, 2026 by Scott McKirdy

What Is a Gratitude Practice?

A gratitude practice is a deliberate, repeated habit of noticing and reflecting on the positive things in your life, with the goal of training your brain to recognize and experience gratitude more often over time.

Gratitude has been a hot topic in psychology for a while now, and for good reason. There is a stack of literature that links gratitude to a multitude of positive outcomes.

Some of these benefits are things that you might expect, like increasing positive outlook, improving symptoms of anxiety, or helping to relieve depression. Logically, if we look at the good things in our lives, we might feel better. However, other benefits that have been found are less predictable. Studies have found the benefits of gratitude include improved immunity, better sleep, and even benefits for chronic pain.

If there was a pill that could do all this, we’d all be taking it. So why are we not all practicing gratitude? One of the drawbacks of this practice comes from an odd combination. Practicing gratitude sounds extremely easy, and… it’s actually not that easy. This mismatch between expectation and reality leaves most who begin this practice discouraged and giving up.

Also, the benefits of gratitude are not felt right away. It takes a long time of work with no reward before we see any lasting benefits. Our neurological reward systems were not designed for this type of practice as they are much more stimulated by immediate feedback. Because of this, it is hard for us to sustain a practice like this when nothing changes in the short term.

Finally, when you’re sad or anxious, gratitude is really hard to feel. Our emotional state can lock us into a certain way of seeing things. When we are distressed, we can be presented with all the good things in our lives, and subjectively, they will not outweigh our worries. These emotional states tend to dampen our ability to feel gratitude in the first place, which can be discouraging. Approaches like CBT can help build the skills to work with these emotional states alongside a gratitude practice.

All that said, here is a guide to a gratitude practice and some helpful tips to get the most out of it:

Step 1: Start a Running Gratitude List

Keep an ongoing list of things you are grateful for. Add to it whenever something new comes up, rather than trying to write a fresh list each time.

Step 2: Review Your List Every Day

Choose a time of day to go over your list, every day. It helps to attach this to something you already do, like brushing your teeth. You might also make a physical list and hang it somewhere prominent as a reminder.

Step 3: Choose a Gratitude Buddy

Find a gratitude buddy with whom you will exchange one thing you’re grateful for every day. Sharing the practice with someone else builds accountability and makes it easier to stick with.

Things to Keep in Mind

This will not work every day. The point of this practice is not to feel gratitude every day — in fact, you almost surely won’t feel deep gratitude every time you go through your list. Our goal here is to give ourselves the chance to feel grateful every day. Some days you might go through your whole list and feel nothing. This is especially true for those working through chronic mental health struggles like anxiety and depression. However, one day, you might feel a hint of gratitude in response to something on your list. This is the opportunity we are open to when we commit to a gratitude practice. When we have more opportunities for gratitude, we may experience it more often. If we can experience it more often, we can begin to turn the tide in our emotional lives toward the positive.

When something on your list elicits gratitude, take the time to take it in. We so often rush past positive experiences as they naturally fade. By taking the time to sit with the gratitude, even for a few extra seconds, we maximize the impact it has on our brain. This can look different for everyone, but basically it involves elaborating on the feeling. For example, if you are grateful for a loved one, take the time to remember acts of caring or sit in the feeling of love for them. Try to extend that experience for as long as you can.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to feel the benefits of gratitude?
Gratitude practice works gradually rather than immediately. Most people don’t feel a noticeable shift right away, since our neurological reward systems respond more strongly to immediate feedback than to a slow practice like this one. Lasting benefits, such as improved mood, sleep, and stress levels, tend to build over weeks or months of consistent practice.

Why is gratitude hard to feel when I’m anxious or depressed?
Anxiety and depression can lock our attention onto worries and negative thoughts, making it harder for positive things to register emotionally, even when we can name them. This doesn’t mean the practice isn’t working — it means the practice is especially important, and especially difficult, during these periods.

Is it normal to feel nothing during a gratitude practice?
Yes. Many days you may go through your gratitude list and feel little or nothing, particularly if you’re managing ongoing mental health challenges. The goal isn’t to force a feeling every time, but to create consistent opportunities for gratitude so that when it does arise, you’re in a position to notice and benefit from it.

Do I need to do this alone, or can I practice gratitude with others?
You can do either, but sharing the practice with a gratitude buddy, someone you exchange daily gratitude messages with, often makes it easier to stay consistent and adds a social, accountability element that a solo list doesn’t provide.

Does My Child Need Therapy?

Posted on May 30, 2026July 7, 2026 by Scott McKirdy

Written by Scott McKirdy, MC — Registered Psychologist, Managing Partner (Operations) and Co-Founder, College of Alberta Psychologists. Scott’s work focuses on adult autism assessments, life transitions, and parenting — bringing both a clinical and a parent’s perspective to questions about when a child might benefit from support. View Scott’s profile >>

As a parent, you spend more time watching your child than anyone else. You notice the changes in mood, the reluctance to go to school, the reaction that feels bigger than the situation warrants. Sometimes those things pass and sometimes they don’t.

If you’ve found yourself wondering whether your child might benefit from talking to someone, you’re not alone. The fact that you’re asking the question at all is worth taking seriously. This post walks through the signs that therapy might help, what tends to get better with support, and what to do if you decide to reach out.

What Child Therapy Actually Is

Before looking at signs, it helps to understand what child therapy actually involves.

For younger children especially, therapy isn’t primarily about sitting and talking. Children don’t have the emotional vocabulary or the developmental capacity to discuss their inner world the way adults do. Instead, child therapists use play therapy, art, sandtray, games, and creative activity to help children express and process what’s going on for them. The therapist observes, follows the child’s lead, and gently guides the work.

For older children approaching adolescence, sessions become more conversational — but the pace is always set by the child, and building trust comes before anything else. For teenagers aged 13 and over, our teen therapy page covers what’s different about working with adolescents.

Signs Your Child Might Benefit From Therapy

No single sign means your child definitely needs therapy. What you’re looking for are things that persist, that are affecting daily life, or that feel out of proportion to what’s happening. Here are the most common signs parents notice:

Changes in behaviour that don’t have an obvious explanation: A child who was generally settled becoming defiant, aggressive, or withdrawn. A child who used to be sociable becoming clingy or avoidant. Behaviour is often how children communicate what they can’t put into words, and a sustained change in behaviour is worth paying attention to.

Persistent anxiety or worry: Some level of worry is normal in childhood. But when anxiety is affecting sleep, causing physical symptoms like stomach aches or headaches, leading to avoidance of school or social situations, or reacting in ways that feel disproportionate to the situation, it’s worth getting some support. Anxiety in children responds well to therapy, and the earlier it’s addressed, the less entrenched it tends to become.

Emotional outbursts that feel out of proportion: Big reactions to small things. Meltdowns that seem to come from nowhere. Difficulty calming down once upset. These can be signs that a child is feeling more than they’re able to manage, and that they need help building the emotional regulation skills to cope.

Withdrawal from friends, family, or activities: When a child stops wanting to do things they used to enjoy, pulls away from friendships, or becomes increasingly isolated, it can signal depression, anxiety, or something difficult they’re trying to process. Withdrawal is easy to miss because it doesn’t cause the same disruption as behavioural acting out.

Difficulty at school: A sudden drop in academic performance, difficulty concentrating, problems with peers or teachers, or refusal to go to school can all be connected to emotional or psychological distress. Children who are struggling emotionally often can’t access learning the way they otherwise would. If school difficulties are accompanied by concerns about attention or learning, a child psychoeducational assessment can help identify what’s going on.

Sleep disturbances: Difficulty falling asleep, frequent waking, nightmares, or resistance to going to bed can all be signs of anxiety or stress. Sleep is usually one of the first things affected when a child is struggling.

Regression: Returning to behaviours associated with an earlier developmental stage – bedwetting after being dry, baby talk, separation anxiety in a child who was previously independent. Regression is often a response to stress or a significant change, and can be a signal that a child needs more support than they’re currently getting.

Talking about or showing signs of self-harm: Any mention of hurting themselves, or visible signs of self-harm, should be taken seriously and followed up with a professional promptly. This applies even if it seems like attention-seeking — the behaviour itself is a signal that something needs addressing.

After a significant event or loss: Bereavement, parental separation, a move, a new sibling, a traumatic experience — big events affect children in ways that aren’t always immediately visible. If your child has been through something significant and you’ve noticed a change, child therapy can provide a space for them to process it at their own pace.

A general sense that something isn’t right: Sometimes there’s no specific sign — just a persistent feeling as a parent that your child isn’t quite themselves, and that what you’re doing isn’t quite reaching them. That instinct is worth following up.

What Doesn’t Mean Your Child Needs Therapy

It’s also worth being clear about what isn’t necessarily a reason for concern.

Normal developmental phases (tantrums in toddlers, moodiness in pre-teens, testing limits) are part of growing up and don’t automatically warrant therapy. Children also have bad weeks, difficult periods after changes, and days where they’re just hard to be around, and that’s normal

The question is always whether something is persisting, intensifying, or significantly affecting your child’s daily life and wellbeing. A single bad week is different from three months of withdrawal and declining school performance.

How to Talk to Your Child About Therapy

If you’ve decided you want to explore therapy for your child, how you introduce it matters. A few things that tend to help:

Be honest and straightforward: Children can usually tell when something is being dressed up or minimised. A simple explanation (“I’ve found someone for you to talk to, someone whose job is to help kids with big feelings”) is usually better than an elaborate cover story.

Don’t frame it as a consequence or punishment: Therapy shouldn’t be something that happens to a child because they’ve been difficult. Framing it as support (something you’re doing because you love them and want them to feel better) makes a real difference to how they engage.

Normalise it: Many children worry that going to therapy means something is seriously wrong with them. Letting them know that lots of children see therapists, and that it’s a place to talk about feelings can reduce that anxiety.

Answer their questions honestly: Children often want to know what will happen, whether they have to talk, and whether you’ll find out what they say. Honest answers to those questions, including a clear explanation of how confidentiality works, help them feel safer going in.

Don’t force it, but don’t make it optional either: Some resistance is normal and doesn’t mean therapy won’t work. It usually helps to be matter-of-fact about it — this is happening, it’s going to be okay, and you’ll be there.

What Happens in Child Therapy at Solasta

At Solasta, child therapy sessions are one-on-one with a trained therapist in NW Calgary, for children aged 3 to 12. Sessions take place in comfortable therapy offices or our dedicated playroom, depending on your child’s age and what works best for them.

Before your child’s first session, we meet with you as parents. We want to understand what you’ve been noticing, your child’s history, and what you’re hoping therapy can do. You’ll receive regular updates throughout on progress and themes, and practical strategies to support what’s happening in sessions at home and at school.

No referral is needed. A free consultation call is available to help you figure out whether therapy is the right next step and find the right therapist for your child.

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Eggshell Parenting

Posted on May 3, 2026July 1, 2026 by Scott McKirdy

Scott McKirdy is a Registered Psychologist and co-owner of Solasta Counselling. In 2020, he completed original research for his master’s degree in counselling psychology on the mental health experiences of adoptive fathers in Canada — research that coined the term “eggshell parenting,” explored further in this article. View Scott’s profile >>

Adoption changes families in ways that are profound, complicated, and often under-supported. Most of what’s written about adoption focuses on the needs of adopted children — and rightly so. Children who come to adoption with histories of trauma, neglect, or loss deserve careful, informed support.

But children grow up in families. And the adults raising them need support too.

In 2020 I completed a research study for my master’s degree in counselling psychology exploring the mental health experiences of adoptive fathers in Canada. I interviewed eleven fathers about what adoption had done to their own wellbeing. The findings shaped how I think about working with adoptive families, and they’re worth sharing.

What adoptive fathers actually experience

Most of the fathers I spoke to came to adoption after painful fertility journeys — years of IVF, miscarriage, and grief before choosing adoption. That grief doesn’t disappear when a child is placed. It often sits alongside the joy of becoming a parent, complicated and unresolved.

The adoption home study was experienced by almost every participant as deeply intrusive. Being assessed on your past, your relationship, your home, your suitability as a parent. Several fathers described it as feeling less like support and more like scrutiny — being looked at rather than helped.

For those who adopted privately, the 10-day revocation period was among the most psychologically difficult experiences they described. Fully attached to a child, living with the possibility of losing them at any moment, with no real support in place for what that was doing to them.

Eggshell parenting

The most significant theme that emerged from my research was something I came to call eggshell parenting — the experience of living on edge, of never quite knowing what will trigger a difficult moment, of carrying a persistent low-level anxiety about what comes next.

Children who have experienced early trauma can struggle to feel safe even in loving, stable homes. That struggle can show up as challenging behaviour, emotional volatility, or difficulty with attachment. Over time, parenting in that environment leaves many adults in a state of chronic hypervigilance. Walking on eggshells.

Many of the fathers I spoke to didn’t have language for this. When I described eggshell parenting to them, the recognition was immediate. Several said it was the first time anyone had accurately named what they were living with.

The mental health gap

Research suggests that up to 24% of adoptive fathers experience symptoms of depression following placement — comparable to rates of postnatal depression in new mothers, which has been a public health priority for decades. The mental health of adoptive fathers has received a fraction of the same attention.

The fathers in my study reported that what helped most wasn’t professional support — it was other adoptive parents. People who had been through it and didn’t need things explained. That kind of peer connection is something adoption services in Canada have been slow to build deliberately.

How we can help

At Solasta Counselling we work with adoptive families across Calgary and Alberta. We understand that the challenges adoptive parents face are distinct, and that fathers in particular often carry a great deal that goes unacknowledged.

If you’re an adoptive parent struggling with the weight of what you’re carrying — the hypervigilance, the relationship strain, the grief that never quite resolved — counselling with someone who understands the adoption context can make a real difference.

A free 20-minute consultation call is available to help you find the right fit.

Counselling in Calgary: A Complete Guide (2026)

Posted on May 3, 2026July 7, 2026 by Scott McKirdy

Written by Dr. Gillian McKirdy, R.Psych. — Registered Psychologist, Managing Partner (Clinical) and Co-Founder, College of Alberta Psychologists. Gillian’s clinical and research background spans adoption-informed care, developmental trauma, and attachment-focused therapy, and she has trained directly under Dr. Dan Hughes in Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy. View Gillian’s profile >>

Mental health support has never been more accessible in Calgary — and never more confusing to navigate. The city has hundreds of registered therapists, dozens of private practices, multiple non-profit providers, and an expanding range of online options. For someone who’s just decided they want to talk to someone, the sheer number of choices can feel paralyzing.

This guide cuts through that. It covers how the Alberta mental health system actually works, what different types of therapists can and can’t do, what good counselling looks like in practice, and how to find someone worth seeing. It’s written for people who are trying to make a genuinely informed decision — not just book the first name that comes up in a search.

How Mental Health Care Is Structured in Alberta

Understanding where private counselling fits requires a basic map of the broader system.

Alberta Health Services (AHS) provides publicly funded mental health support through Access Mental Health (403-943-1500), which offers telephone-based screening, needs assessment, and referrals to AHS programs and community services. Wait times for publicly funded services vary significantly depending on the level of need and the specific program.

Community organizations including Calgary Counselling Centre, the Distress Centre (403-266-4357), and Eastside Community Mental Health Services offer lower-cost or sliding-scale support, often with shorter wait times than AHS programs for non-crisis presentations.

Private practices — the focus of this guide — operate independently of AHS. You pay directly (or through extended health benefits), there are typically no wait lists, and you choose your therapist based on fit rather than availability. The trade-off is cost, which we’ll address in detail below.

Who Can Legally Provide Therapy in Alberta?

Alberta regulates several distinct types of mental health providers — Registered Psychologists and Registered Provisional Psychologists (College of Alberta Psychologists), Canadian Certified Counsellors (CCPA), and Registered Social Workers (Alberta College of Social Workers) — each with different scopes of practice, and different insurance coverage depending on your plan. One thing worth knowing regardless of who you see: “therapist” and “counsellor” are not protected titles in Alberta — technically anyone can use them. What actually matters is the regulatory body behind the person, so it’s always worth checking. For a fuller breakdown of what each designation means, see our Psychologists Calgary page.

What the Research Says About What Makes Counselling Work

Decades of psychotherapy research have produced a finding that surprises many people: the specific therapeutic modality accounts for a relatively small proportion of outcomes. What matters more is the quality of the therapeutic alliance — the sense of trust, understanding, and collaboration between you and your therapist.

This doesn’t mean modality is irrelevant. Certain approaches have stronger evidence bases for specific presentations:

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) has the most extensive research base of any psychological intervention and is strongly evidenced for anxiety, depression, OCD, and more. It tends to be structured, time-limited, and skills-focused.

EMDR is endorsed by the World Health Organization for PTSD and trauma. It works by helping the brain reprocess traumatic memories so they lose their emotional charge, and can be effective even when clients struggle to verbalize their experiences.

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) was originally developed for borderline personality disorder but is now widely used for emotional dysregulation, self-harm, and complex trauma, combining individual therapy with skills training.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps clients develop psychological flexibility and commit to action aligned with their values, with strong evidence for anxiety, depression, and chronic pain.

Somatic therapies work with the body’s physical responses to stress and trauma — particularly useful when clients feel stuck in traditional talk-based approaches, or when trauma is held more in the body than in conscious memory.

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) — particularly in its couples application — has one of the strongest evidence bases of any couples intervention.

A skilled therapist will typically draw on multiple approaches rather than rigidly applying a single model, adapting their method to what’s actually useful for you at different stages of the process

What Good Counselling Actually Looks Like

Good therapy is not passive. It is not simply having someone listen to you talk about your week, though that may be part of it at certain points. It is an active, structured process of understanding yourself more clearly, identifying what’s getting in your way, and building the skills and insight to change it.

A first session is typically an intake — your therapist will ask what’s brought you in, gather relevant history, and begin to form a picture of your situation. You don’t need to have everything articulated before you arrive. Part of what a good therapist does is help you find the words.

From there, therapy usually involves some combination of exploration (understanding what’s happening and why), skill-building (developing practical strategies for managing symptoms or changing patterns), and processing (working through difficult experiences or emotions that are contributing to your current difficulties).

Progress is not always linear. There are often periods where things feel harder before they feel better — particularly when working through trauma or long-standing patterns. A good therapist will prepare you for this and help you understand what’s happening when it occurs.

You should expect to feel heard, respected, and challenged in roughly equal measure. If you feel consistently misunderstood, judged, or as though sessions aren’t going anywhere after six to eight sessions, it’s worth raising that directly with your therapist — or considering whether a different therapist might be a better fit. Fit matters enormously in therapy. Changing therapists is not failure.

How Much Does Counselling Cost in Calgary in 2026?

Costs vary by designation, experience, and practice type, and extended health benefits typically cover a portion of sessions depending on your plan. For a full breakdown of typical rates, what affects pricing, and lower-cost options in Calgary, see our dedicated guide: How Much Does Therapy Cost in Calgary? (2026 Guide).

How to Choose a Counsellor in Calgary

Given the number of options, a structured approach helps.

Start with what you’re dealing with. Not every therapist works with every presentation. Someone specializing in trauma and EMDR may not be the right fit for someone primarily dealing with relationship conflict. Most practice websites list areas of focus — use them.

Check credentials. Verify that the therapist is registered with their stated regulatory body. CAP’s registry is publicly searchable at cap.ab.ca. CCPA’s registry is available at ccpa-accp.ca.

Use the free consultation. Most reputable Calgary practices offer a free 15 to 20-minute consultation before your first paid session. This is not a sales call — it’s a genuine opportunity to assess fit. Pay attention to whether the therapist asks good questions, whether you feel heard, and whether their approach makes sense for what you’re dealing with. Your instincts here are worth trusting.

Ask about approach. A therapist should be able to explain, in plain language, how they work and why that approach is likely to be useful for your situation. Vague answers about being “holistic” or “client-centred” without more specifics are worth probing.

Consider logistics. In-person sessions at a Calgary office or virtual sessions across Alberta — research consistently shows comparable outcomes for most presentations. Choose what you’ll actually sustain.

Getting Started

You don’t need a referral from your GP to access private counselling in Calgary. Contact a practice directly, book online, or use a therapist matching tool to find someone based on your specific concerns and preferences.

The evidence on when to start counselling is fairly consistent: earlier is better. The concerns that bring most people to therapy are also the ones that respond well to treatment — anxiety, depression, trauma, and relationship difficulties all have strong evidence bases for effective psychological intervention.

If you’re considering counselling in Calgary, Solasta Counselling offers sessions with registered psychologists and therapists at our NW Calgary office and virtually across Alberta. A free 20-minute consultation is available to help you find the right fit before committing to a full session.

The Signs of High-Functioning Burnout

Posted on April 26, 2026July 7, 2026 by Scott McKirdy

Written by Dr. Gillian McKirdy, Psy.D. — Registered Psychologist, College of Alberta Psychologists. Gillian specializes in psychological assessments including ADHD, autism, and psychoeducational testing. View Gillian’s profile >>

You’re meeting deadlines, answering emails, keeping up with the family schedule, and by most measures the wheels are still turning. From the outside, everything looks fine.

But inside, something has shifted in a way that’s hard to put into words. You’re going through the motions. The things that used to feel meaningful now feel like items on a list, things to get through rather than things that matter. You finish the day exhausted in a way that sleep doesn’t fix, and you start the next one already behind.

This is what burnout often looks like in people who are good at pushing through.

What Burnout Actually Is

Burnout isn’t the same as being tired, and it isn’t a sign that you can’t handle pressure. It’s a state of chronic depletion that develops when the demands on you consistently outpace your capacity to recover over a sustained period of time. It happens to people who have been handling stress well, often for years, without enough support, rest, or genuine meaning to offset what’s being spent.

The psychologist Christina Maslach, whose research shaped how we understand burnout today, identified three core dimensions: exhaustion, cynicism, and a reduced sense of personal effectiveness. You don’t need all three to be burning out, and they don’t need to be severe to be significant. But most people experiencing high-functioning burnout will recognise at least two of them, often in ways they’ve been quietly explaining away for longer than they realise.

What High-Functioning Burnout Looks Like

High-functioning burnout is particularly difficult to recognise because the external signs of breakdown simply aren’t there. You haven’t stopped. You haven’t called in sick or missed a deadline or broken down in a meeting. You’re still delivering, and that very fact makes it easy to convince yourself that things aren’t that bad.

What you might notice instead tends to be subtler and more internal.

You feel detached from work you used to care about, not because something went badly wrong, but because the sense of meaning that used to be there has quietly disappeared. You do the work because you do the work, and that feels like enough of a reason, even though it didn’t always.

You find yourself irritable in ways that catch you off guard, where small things land harder than they should, and you snap at people you care about and then carry the guilt of that for the rest of the day. Your patience, which was once something you took for granted, has become something you have to manage.

Rest doesn’t restore you the way it once did. A good night of sleep, a long weekend, even a week away doesn’t leave you feeling genuinely recharged, and you find yourself coming back from time off already thinking about how long until the next one.

You’ve become disconnected from your own wants and preferences in a way that’s hard to articulate. Decisions that used to feel straightforward now feel difficult, and when someone asks what you need or what you’d like, you genuinely aren’t sure anymore.

You’ve grown more cynical than you used to be, about your work, the organisation you work within, maybe people in general, and you’re aware that this isn’t really who you are. It feels like something that has happened to you rather than a perspective you’ve chosen.

You’re still performing, but the effort required has gone up considerably. Things that used to feel manageable now take more out of you than they should, and there’s a growing sense that you’re spending energy you haven’t got.

Why It’s Hard to Recognise

Part of what makes high-functioning burnout so persistent is that it is actively rewarded by the environments in which it tends to develop. When you’re still producing, nobody flags a concern. There’s no external pressure to slow down or take stock because the outputs are still there, and in most workplaces that’s what gets measured. The identity of being someone who handles things, who doesn’t complain, who gets it done, can make it genuinely difficult to acknowledge, even privately, that something isn’t right.

There’s also a common tendency to look for a single identifiable cause, one thing that could be fixed or removed that would make everything better. But burnout is almost always the result of accumulated pressure over an extended period, involving not just workload, but a lack of autonomy, insufficient recognition, conflicts between your values and the demands of your role, and often the invisible labour of managing everything outside of work at the same time. It’s the combination, and the duration, that creates the depletion.

By the time most people seek support, they’ve been running on low for considerably longer than they realised, and they’ve been attributing it to any number of other things along the way.

What Therapy Actually Does for Burnout

Therapy for burnout isn’t about being told to take more breaks, set better boundaries, or practice more self-care, though some of that may well be part of it. It’s a more substantive process of understanding how you arrived here, what has kept you here, and what genuinely needs to change in order for things to be different.

In sessions, you might explore the patterns and beliefs that have made it hard to slow down over the years, things like perfectionism, a difficulty delegating, or a deep discomfort with asking for help that might go back further than you’d expect. You might look at where your boundaries have eroded and what made it feel necessary or easier to let that happen. You might work through the grief of feeling disconnected from your work, or from a version of yourself that felt more engaged and more alive than this one does.

Approaches like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and somatic therapy are all well-suited to burnout recovery, and the right fit depends on what’s driving the depletion, how it’s showing up in your body and your relationships, and what you actually want your life to look like on the other side of this. Recovery from burnout isn’t a quick reset, and it would be dishonest to suggest otherwise. But it is possible, and most people find that with the right support, they don’t simply return to where they were before. They come back with a clearer sense of what matters to them and better tools for protecting it.

A Note on Timing

One of the most common things people say when they finally start therapy for burnout is that they wish they’d come sooner, not because it would have been easier, but because the longer burnout goes unaddressed, the more it compounds. It affects sleep, physical health, relationships, and eventually the capacity to function in the ways that currently still feel intact.

If something in this post felt familiar, that recognition is worth paying attention to.

Solasta Counselling offers individual therapy for burnout and stress in Calgary, in-person in NW Calgary and online across Alberta. Book a free consultation call to talk about what support might look like for you.

Author: Scott McKirdy