Kitchener-Waterloo

New workshops aim to help people manage life transitions

Carizon Family and Community Services in Kitchener will be offering seven workshops this fall that aim to help people prepare and handle significant life transitions.

People learn what to expect during their transition and how to manage it in a healthy way

The workshops will include helping people cope breakups, graduations or losing a loved one make those major life transitions. (CBC)

Breakups, graduations or losing a loved one come with major transitions which can be difficult to handle.

Those transitions inspired Carizon Family and Community Services to create a new series of  workshops, which they'll roll out this fall.

Carizon's Life Transition Workshops aims to help people prepare and handle significant life transitions by providing them the right skills and resources.

Every week starting October 24 there will be a new workshop. The topics will focus on a life transitions such as:

  • Relationship changes.
  • After graduation and guiding your graduate.
  • Actively aging.
  • Money matters.
  • Coping with grief and loss.
  • Update your brain to upgrade your life.

"We looked at the people that were coming to see us around stress and anxiety and thought, 'There's a real consistency here around those people having gone through a significant life transition and though how could we get a head of this?'" Shannon Nicholson told CBC K-W's The Morning Edition host Craig Norris.

Every week starting October 24, Carizon Family and Community Services will be introducing Life Transition Workshops that will focus on giving people the right skills and resources to manage life transitions. (Google Street View)

'Counselling is not a scary place'

Nicholson said each workshop will be run by a counsellor with expertise on the transition topic.

Workshops will have open dialogue and an educational element where individuals will learn what to expect during their transition and how to manage it in a healthy way.

She also hopes the workshops wuill help break the stigma that comes with counselling.

"I really hope that it also exposes people that may not have been familiar with counselling ... to understand that counselling is not a scary place," she said. 

"You don't have to be going through something that is huge. These are every day life transitions that we all go through and it's OK to need a little bit of help."

Nicholson added they will be asking for feedback from individuals who attend the workshops and from the community to be able to create other life transition workshops in the future.