Episode 50: Surviving the Lockdowns with Victoria Sabo, Registered Psychotherapist

The Good Mood Podcast

As Ontario, Canada heads toward a third round of lockdowns, we're experiencing what Victoria Sabo and her colleagues call "Covid Fatigue". That low motivation, low-grade anxiety, indescribable feeling and set of emotions that characterize our response to over a year of this pandemic.

Victoria and I met to talk about the issues that people are experiencing: whether they be children, essential or frontline workers, immunologically impaired, or those who have lost businesses.

Victoria is a registered psychotherapist who works in Toronto at Psychotherapy in the City. Victoria Sabo is a Registered Psychotherapist with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO) and a Certified Canadian Counsellor with the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA). She holds a Master’s Degree in Counselling Psychology from Western University, with an Honors Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behaviour from McMaster University.
Victoria works with youth and adults experiencing a wide variety of concerns including stress, depression, anxiety, self-esteem, relationships, school, identity exploration, life transitions, rehabilitation, and trauma. As a therapist, she works to provide a safe, open, and non-judgemental space for clients to explore and process their experiences. Understanding that each client's story is unique, she applies an integrative and flexible approach specifically tailored for each unique journey. Generating solutions, creating meaning, and fostering growth, are all possible using resources within the self. Through self-exploration, making connections, enhancing knowledge, and building skills, Victoria empowers her clients to access and further develop their inner strengths as tools for wellness.
Victoria follows an anti-oppressive framework, operating within feminist, LGBTTIQQ2SA+, and culturally-informed perspectives that accept, celebrate, and are sensitive to, all sexualities, genders, family structures, ethnicities, and religions. Over the years, she has provided support to children and youth living with disabilities while working to increase service accessibility and has provided gender-informed programming for vulnerable young girls. As a previous researcher supported by Ontario's Poverty Reduction Strategy, Victoria advocated for services to assist in the healing and upward mobility of families economically and socially marginalized by society. Passionate for youth justice, she has published articles and spoken at conferences giving voice to the experiences and struggles of justice-involved youth in order to inform rehabilitative efforts.

Victoria and I talk about the difficulties her clients and my patients are experiencing during these Lockdowns and the pandemic in general. What some of the symptoms of Covid Fatigue are, some of the social justice issues surrounding the pandemic, some of the unique isolating situations some of our patients/clients find themselves in and what can be done about it.

A lot of the people I work with are suffering and it's time to speak about it: to validate it, bring attention to it and take some lift off the cognitive load of the struggles that we've been dealing with.

Go easy on yourselves, this is a challenging time.

Stay safe out there, my friends.

Find Victoria online at:

Her clinic's website: https://www.psychotherapyinthecity.com/

For Black Ontarians experiencing issues with the police contact Black Legal Action Centre (BLAC) at 1-877-736-9406 or visit www.blacklegalactioncentre.ca