Meet Debra, MSW, RSW

My name is Debra Carr. I was granted the awesome experience of volunteering to teach children and adults with mental and physicals challenges to swim when I was 10 years old, which I continued to do for the next 11 years. This time in the water, at such a young age, created the opportunity for my Intuition to grow and evolve and was labelled by my mother as my Sixth Sense. When I went to University to study Child & Family Development, I was curious about what this label meant. By this time I had started my first paid job at 15 working with children, had done several youth care worker positions, other volunteer work with children, assisted individuals with physical challenges to remain in their homes and school practicums in daycare, school and hospital settings. I was now receiving formal training and loved the education, yet I was conscious I was not being taught what I instinctively knew about what people needed or wanted. Over time I have come to cherish the everyday education I learned as a child. I learned to deeply listen, without ego, to the person before me. This innate foundational training has continued to this day in all of my client’s sessions.

When I graduated from University, I went into working with Street Youth in downtown Toronto at the height of AIDS & crack use. I became conscious of taking on the anger of those around me and became aware of the harmful effects of doing so. So, I observed and witnessed how I was doing so and taught myself how not to. I have gone on to teach 1000s of women of all ages the tools to distinguish their feelings from others and how to let go of what is not theirs. Being an Empath and Sensitive to your environment is gift, yet so few of us have been taught how to nurture those gifts.

Times have evolved since the 1980’s and awareness of being an Empath is more common. Yet, if you are an individual who feels first and thinks second, the skills you need to navigate your world are not taught to you and consequently mistakes are made. In our culture of perfectionism, the value of mistakes is not honoured, so sadly the defence mechanism of control and the feelings of shame and guilt often occur. The neural pathways which are created when we habitually follow a patterned response require re-patterning and a new mindset to release the habit and feelings. As my own personal self awareness grew through the meditation I was learning, I became conscious of how the body held memories. Changing the neural pathways is important, yet so too is releasing the emotional charge the body holds of the memory.

As my work with street youth continued I became curious of what allowed one youth to get off the street but another not to. I had the privilege of witnessing Indigenous Youth on the street before, during and after the protest of Oka, Quebec. During the year of the protest, many Indigenous youth were no longer on the street. The following year they returned to the shelter I worked at to visit and share their journey of recovery and connection with their culture. The importance of culture, identity, community and family and the trauma and addictions which occur in the absence of these core necessities were key learnings I took away from my years of working with street youth. We will create our family, even if it is unhealthy, in our deep seated need to belong. I left my work with street youth to return to school and become a Clinical Social Worker in individual, family and group counselling.

For my final paper, I studied how the body communicates and how the subconscious memories from body centred practices can be used in therapy. When I graduated from school I moved from Ontario to British Columbia, where I reside to this day. Since the mid 1990’s I have worked in Youth Mental Health. I have worked for agencies in their early stage of development and supported the programs to be integral programs in the communities they continue to serve. I have been a Crisis Intervention Worker doing crisis suicide and mental health assessments and follow up counselling for youth in 4 hospital emergency rooms, 3 school boards and their high schools and community youth agencies. I have been a Mental Health Therapist and Clinical Coordinator for an alternative high school for youth with severe mental health issues. As part of an integrative team with other professionals, we supported youth and their families to gain the skills needed to cope with their mental health issues so they could either return to school or work on a path which would support their future. The years of working with both programs, school settings, hospital wards and emergency rooms, families, youths, community resources and great co-workers taught me resilience, cooperation, collaboration, the effects of mental health on not just the individual but the whole family, and the value of a community raising a youth.

During my years of employment in both mental health programs, I returned to school and studied Integrative Energy Healing as my passion and interest in how the mind-body connection works continued to grow with the work I was doing with the youth and my own spiritual practice. I went on to graduate from the first graduating class, sat on the Alumni to support the evolution of the practice as a profession and became an instructor of the program for the third year energy awareness class. The Health Authority I worked for did not allow Social Workers to practice the work on clients so I became aware of energy during my counselling with youth, especially those with a trauma history, and with their permission was able to support them to become aware of their somatic reactions and safely support a healthier relationship with their body and creating healthy boundaries. The school also incorporated a cognitive behavioural program and taught the youth a variety of meditation practices which were practiced daily and taught to their returning schools as a method of ongoing support.

Approximately 11 years ago my own health took a turn for the worse and I have become acutely familiar with the medical system. The journey to recovery has been long and adaptions have needed to be made. Learning to listen to your innate wisdom and having the courage to advocate for yourself takes practice and determination. The body talks in metaphors. The pieces that come up in the meditations I personally do and support clients with, are the metaphors and your intuition. That is how your body and soul speak. What I help people to do, is what I have taught myself in my own healing journey. I have learned to listen to the language of the subconscious mind. I listen in a way that is multidimensional. Then the pieces that have come to the surface are woven together with the threads which are already on the surface so the unknown begins to become known.

In order for deep change to occur, you need to do something new and those answers are within if you deeply listen.

Being able to have the knowledge and resources to put a variety of alternative practices into place has been an asset I am grateful to have. Healing never happens alone. I have a team of health care professionals who I continue to work with, trust, feel safe with and value their expertise. This interconnectedness has had a profound effect on my life. Just as importantly, stepping away from work and learning to live has enriched my life immensely. My personal resilience, community, relationships, spiritual practices, lifestyle choices, connection with nature and belief in the body’s wisdom to heal are grounding principals in my life and professional practice.

As I return to work, I now bring not only my decades of professional practice but my years of personal health recovery which enriches what I do in the client relationship. If my journey resonates with you, I look forward to connecting with you and supporting your journey to unlock your inner wisdom.

Blessings, Debra