Anne D'cruz Counselling & Family Therapy
13819 100 Ave V3T 5L1 Surrey, BC, Canada

What we don't work out in the basements of our psyche, we will require others, particularly our relationship partners, to adjust to in some way. We are on the f...inal day of our Take 2 Relationship workshop here in Vancouver, and what a ride it has been! The stuck places we can get into in our primary relationships can be so painful. Ironically, the things we do to deal with this pain most often amplify it. When we have fears in our basement about being not good enough, flawed, unlovable; when we have stories about our lives we feel ashamed of, or that are painful, we are likely to resort to hiding, pretending and defending. We will have rules in our relationships about what we can and can't talk about, and about how others have to behave so that they don't trigger those historical fears. Those rules prevent the evolutionary process that the relationship is meant to trigger. Triggers are actually meant to be positive! Our relationships are perfectly designed to help us re-write the ending to what may seem to be a bad old story, not by avoiding or making up for the past, but by helping us move through, with love, to a new level of meaning and experience. This weekend has been an inspiring example of what is possible when we surrender our pain to love.

...you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder, you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help... And then finally, the way through grief is grieving. Jane Hamilton

https://youtu.be/1Evwgu369Jw

Acceptance - We admitted we were powerless over ------ & that our lives had become unmanageable. - Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. - Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.... The 1st three steps in the 12-step program is about surrender. The language of surrender is universal no matter what our struggle is. When we have given our lives back to God, we gradually learn to accept what happens to us as part of the plan. Most of us made a mess of trying to run our own lives. We are amazed at how much better things go when we acknowledge that the Power greater than ourselves is in control. Every experience, the bad one as well as the good one, becomes an opportunity to learn and to serve. We may not like what it is that we are given to do or to feel on a particular day, but we learn to accept it as necessary for our growth. We can look back and see that we have learned even more from our failures than from our successes. When we accept our lives and ourselves as part of God's creation, we are open to the work of God's spirit and love. Then positive change and growth become possible.

People Pleasers Have you ever been around people pleasers? They tend to be displeasing. Being around someone who is turned inside out to please another is often irritating and anxiety producing. People pleasing is a behaviour we may have adapted to survive in our family. We may not have been able to get the love and attention we deserved. We may not have been given permission to please ourselves, to trust ourselves, and to choose a course of action that demonstrated self trus...t. People pleasing can be overt or covert. We may run around fussing over others, chattering a mile a minute when what we are really saying is, "I hope I'm pleasing you." Or, we may be more covert, quietly going through life making important decisions based on pleasing others. Taking other people's wants and needs into consideration is an important part of our relationships. We have responsibilities to friends and family and employers. We have a strong inner responsibility to be loving and caring. But, people pleasing backfires. Not only do others get annoyed with us, we often get annoyed when our efforts to please do not work as we planned. The most comfortable people to be around are those who are considerate of others but ultimately please themselves.

Thought for today: Happiness is not the absence of problems, it’s the ability to deal with them. Steve Maraboli

The scope of my counselling includes: Improve relationships Improve self-esteem Clarify life direction Get "unstuck"... Change unhealthy patterns Become more creative and productive Gain self-awareness Help process feelings Explore new options Heal from past losses Gain new perspective Provide useful stategies to overcome obstacles See more

Through our Counselling sessions I help clients deal with specific issues such as struggles in every day life, work or home related problems, feelings of well-being and stress, addiction, assertiveness and relationship difficulties, loss or bereavement. I help you to identify what it is that bothers you and empower you to take steps towards improving the quality of your life.