Free PDF booklets
Biblically based and psychologically sound advice for mental health and relationships
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A Focus Series
We know that life can be overwhelming, and it can sometimes be difficult to know how to navigate the trials we face – whether it’s anxiety, grief, stress and burnout, depression, or addiction. Whatever you may be dealing with right now, we want you to know you’re not alone.
These free PDF booklets speak into challenging areas of mental health and relationships, providing you with biblically based and psychologically sound advice when it comes to your own journey, your marriage, your parenting and your faith.
If you need personalized help with any of these topics, we are here for you. Contact our team of registered counsellors for a free, one-time phone consultation and/or get a referral to a counsellor in your area who can help you find a way forward. Call 1.800.661.9800 Mondays to Fridays, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. to book your consultation, get a resource recommendation or receive prayer from our caring and compassionate staff team.
Latest
Helping Young Adults Thrive
One of the most common calls to our counselling team is from parents of young adult children. No longer do you have full control over your child’s choices – what they wear, what they eat, where they’re going, or who they’re with. As young adults, they have full independence.
To help you with this unique stage of parenting, we’ve put together a free 16-page PDF booklet on this very topic. Helping Young Adults Thrive offers expert advice to help you navigate issues like knowing the right (and wrong) things to say, setting boundaries with housing and finances, dealing with faith deconstruction, and navigating family estrangement.
Mental health
Understanding and Navigating Anxiety
We all feel anxious at times, and anxiety itself is a natural, normal reaction to threat and danger. The challenge is when the volume is essentially turned up on this experience. The good news is relief is possible. And we want to help.
In this 12-page booklet, you’ll find professional advice, biblical insights and follow-up resource suggestions to help you better understand and navigate anxiety in your own life, in your marriage, as a parent and specifically with your teens.
Dealing with Depression
Depression can leave a person feeling lonely, isolated, exhausted and even ashamed. On top of that, it can sometimes be difficult to know if what we’re experiencing is depression. We need tools and support to distinguish typical and normal sadness from the very debilitating and oppressive burden that depression can be for some people.
In this 16-page booklet, you will learn the factors that can lead to both clinical and reactive depression, symptoms to watch for in yourself and those around you, how to help a loved one, spouse and/or child who may be struggling, and how we can look to God even in our darkest valleys.
Stress and Burnout
Stress isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but unchecked stress over long periods of time can cause a host of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual problems. Burnout, while similar, comes with its own unique set of issues and requires special treatment.
In this 16-page booklet, you’ll learn to understand the difference between stress and burnout, what boundaries you need to set at work, how you can take responsibility for your well-being as an individual, how you and your spouse can manage stress together, and ways you as a parent can ease stress in your own life and the lives of your children.
Recognizing and Navigating Trauma
When we experience trauma, it can rewrite how we see the world, how we see others and how we see ourselves. Multiple studies have shown that trauma can fundamentally alter someone’s brain, causing them to struggle for years without realizing the underlying issue.
To help you understand this large, complex area of mental health, we have put together a free PDF booklet titled Recognizing and Navigating Trauma. In this free 16-page booklet, you will understand what trauma is, how it can affect our brain and perceptions, what to do if your spouse struggles with past trauma, and how we can walk our children through traumatic incidents – big or small – in a healthy way. You’ll also discover what God has to say on the topic of trauma and how his great plan of redemption can be applied to each of our stories – no matter how difficult they may be.
Understanding and Navigating Addiction
While there are no simple answers to an issue as complex as addiction, we at Focus on the Family Canada want to provide you with tools, resources and referrals to help you get started on a road toward healing and freedom – whether you’re the one dealing with addiction or you’re the loved one.
In this 16-page PDF booklet, you will learn common causes and factors, understand the role of codependency, find specific information about pornography in marriage, teen gaming, and drug or alcohol addiction in young adult children, and learn why healing relationships is essential to recovery.
Difficult relationship dynamics
Understanding Your Family of Origin
The family we grew up in – our family of origin – has an undeniable impact on our lives. It can affect how we see ourselves, how we see the world, how we interact with others, and our expectations of marriage and parenting.
In this free 12-page PDF booklet, you’ll find advice to help you begin to unpack how your family of origin has affected you, how you can make positive changes in your marriage and parenting, and how you can find freedom from unhealthy patterns like codependency and addiction.
Understanding Healthy Boundaries
God designed us to be in community, but many of us struggle with what should be our most fulfilling relationships – husband and wife, parent and teen, in-laws, adult children, and so on. Someone oversteps or says the wrong thing, feelings are hurt, resentment builds, and we’re left wondering what happened.
So much of relational dysfunction and stress comes down to unhealthy – or non-existent – boundaries. Setting healthy boundaries is essential for relationships to thrive. In this 16-page PDF booklet, you will find biblically based and psychologically sound advice for couples in their own marriage and in their in-law relationships, for parents of children, teens and young adults, and for anyone struggling to navigate difficult extended family dynamics.
Understanding Abuse
Whether you feel you’re in an abusive relationship yourself, or you’re concerned about a friend, family member, neighbour, peer or colleague, we want to help you.
In this free, 16-page booklet, you will learn the power dynamics that exist in abusive relationships, what truths to hold on to in a destructive marriage, how to help a loved one in an abusive relationship, how you can safeguard kids from sexual abuse and protect teens from toxic dating relationships, and what Rachael Denhollander shows us about shining God’s light into dark places.
Painful life challenges
Walking Through Grief
There is no set timeline and no one way to grieve, and this open-ended process can feel daunting for many. But there are many God-given tools we can use to process loss well.
In this 16-page booklet, you’ll find articles and resource suggestions filled with biblically based and psychologically sound advice for walking through grief in a healthy way. Whether you’re experiencing loss first-hand, or you’re unsure of how to be there for a loved one, we want to help.
Chronic Health Challenges
Perhaps you are someone who deals with a chronic health challenge. Or you know of a parent, child, spouse, friend or neighbour who deals with this. Or maybe someone very close to you struggles with this every day and you have no idea. Chronic illness is a terrible burden and it’s made worse when we think we have no one to talk to and no one to help.
If chronic health challenges are part of your story or the story of your family, you are not alone. In this free 12-page PDF booklet, you’ll find stories of people who have learned to live with chronic illness – as an individual, as a spouse and as a parent – while putting their trust in God.
Building thriving families
Helping Couples Thrive
At Focus on the Family Canada, we firmly believe God created marriage to be a thriving, lifelong relationship, enduring through trials, sickness, financial crises and emotional stresses. That’s why we want to equip husbands and wives with the tools they need to create this kind of marriage for themselves.
To help you and your spouse, we’ve put together a new free PDF booklet called Helping Couples Thrive. With articles from experts like Dr. Gary Chapman, Dr. Greg Smalley, Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott, and Focus on the Family Canada marriage therapist and psychotherapist Tara Lalonde, this booklet covers everything from communication and conflict to love languages and intimacy.
Helping Children Thrive
For over 40 years, Focus on the Family Canada has been equipping moms and dads with tools to help them parent wisely, to follow God’s example, and to break free from parenting patterns of previous generations that may hinder them from being the parent they want to be. We may not get everything right – and we’re not expected to – but there are a lot of biblically based and psychologically sound principles we can learn to help our children thrive.
In this free, 16-page PDF booklet, you will find articles covering six topics that are foundational for today’s parents: emotional development, discipline, faith formation, mental health, pornography and bullying.