Skills Based Approaches
Our Skills-Based Approaches programs are designed to help you build practical tools for navigating emotions, managing urges, and supporting recovery.
Many people with eating disorders use disordered behaviours to cope with overwhelming or confusing feelings.
Whether you tend to shut down, feel out of control, or struggle to identify your emotions, these programs offer a structured, supportive space to build emotional awareness and regulation.
Drawing from evidence-based practices like Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), you’ll learn coping skills that promote stability, reduce distress, and strengthen your recovery.
Through guided exercises and real-life applications, we focus on shifting from reactive patterns to intentional responses. These skills not only support day-to-day resilience, but also lay the groundwork for long-term emotional and behavioural change.
SKILLS BASED APPROACHES
*** Winter Program Registration Opens December 15th ***
WINTER PROGRAMS
ALL PROGRAMS ARE FREE - NO DIAGNOSIS REQUIRED
DBT For Eating Disorders
Emotion Regulation
Facilitator: Keisha Kennedy MA, CCC
DBT Workshop #1
Date: Monday, February 2
Time: 6:30pm - 8:30pm
Location: Online
Learn practical tools to help you understand and manage emotions without turning to harmful coping strategies. You'll learn how emotions work, how to recognize them early, and how to build resilience and increase positive experiences.
DBT Workshop #2
Distress Tolerance
Facilitator: Keisha Kennedy MA, CCC
Date: Monday, February 16
Time: 6.30pm - 8.30pm
Location: Online
Introduction of DBT-based strategies for getting through painful emotional moments. You'll learn grounding techniques, distraction tools, and self-soothing practices to help you stay steady when emotions feel overwhelming.
DBT Workshop #3
Interpersonal Effectiveness
Facilitator: Keisha Kennedy MA, CCC
Date: Monday, March 2
Time: 6.30pm - 8.30pm
Location: Online
A focus on building healthy communication and relationship skills to support your recovery. You'll learn how to ask for support, set boundaries, and maintain self-respect in challenging interactions.
DBT Workshop #4
Mindfulness
Facilitator: Keisha Kennedy MA, CCC
Date: Monday, March 16
Time: 6.30pm - 8.30pm
Location: Online
Introduces mindfulness practices to help you reconnect with the present moment and your own experience. You'll learn to observe thoughts and emotions without judgment and respond to discomfort with greater awareness and compassion.
Midlife Rebalance - Workshop Series
This series supports women in midlife who are managing the unique challenge of eating disorder recovery during a period of major physical and life transitions. We’ll explore how midlife shifts influence eating-disorder patterns and how to move through this stage with clarity and compassion.
Participants will reconnect with the belief that recovery is possible, assess their quality of life, and identify realistic steps for improvement. We’ll discuss expected physical changes, practice coping skills in practical ways, and strengthen communication and relationships to support lasting change. This series offers a validating, hopeful space for women ready to move toward renewed well-being.
Midlife Rebalance #1
Building Self-Sourced Strength
Facilitator: Keisha Kennedy MA, CCC
Date: Thursday, January 29
Time: 1:00pm-3:00pm
Location: The Hub
This session focuses on cultivating yourself as your own best caretaker, rather than relying on old patterns or external validation. We’ll explore practical ways to recognize your capacity, build resilience, develop effective coping skills, and trust your internal resources, working toward a steady, reliable sense of inner strength you can draw on throughout recovery and daily life.
Midlife Rebalance #2
Body Change & Compassion
Facilitator: Jennie Mendoza RNBN
Date: Thursday, February 12
Time: 1:00pm-3:00pm
Location: The Hub
This workshop explores the physical changes that naturally arise in midlife, offering education, normalization, and space to approach these shifts with neutrality and compassion toward your body. We’ll explore the guilt that can surface around the body’s long-term experiences with an eating disorder, and practice ways to cope and reduce self-blame.
Midlife Rebalance #3
Quality of Life
Facilitator: Keisha Kennedy MA, CCC
Date: Thursday, February 26
Time: 1:00pm-3:00pm
Location: The Hub
This session provides a safe place to do a gentle evaluation of your current quality of life and the areas where you may feel stuck or limited by your eating disorder. Together, we’ll explore realistic, hopeful ways to create meaningful improvement, focusing on small shifts, expanded possibilities, and reclaiming a life that feels like your own.
Midlife Rebalance #4
Interpersonal Relationships & Communication Skills
Facilitator: Keisha Kennedy MA, CCC
Date: Thursday, March 12
Time: 1:00pm-3:00pm
Location: The Hub
This session explores how eating disorders affect interpersonal relationships. EDs are often coping mechanisms that unintentionally create barriers to connection. We’ll focus on the fundamentals of self-advocacy, expressing needs clearly, setting supportive boundaries, and building emotional safety with others, all toward developing healthier patterns of relating that strengthen recovery and overall well-being.
OUR FACILITATORS
Keisha Kennedy
Registered Clinical Counsellor
Jennie Mendoza
Registered Nurse
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EATING DISORDER RECOVERY SUPPORT
We know that navigating eating disorder (ED) recovery options can be overwhelming. Our Recovery Navigator has in-depth knowledge of the wide array of public and private recovery options in the province.