Lauren Shay Counselling
505-1750 East 10th Ave V5N5K4 Vancouver, BC, Canada

Dear community, We want you to know that we at East Vancouver Counselling and Blooming Brains stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, Idle No More, and ot...her local and international racial justice movements. We acknowledge that in Canada we are not immune to the problems of systemic racism, white supremacy, historical oppression, and police brutality and we felt it was important that we make a statement about this because we cannot allow silence to imply ambivalence on this critically important issue. As an organization, we support individuals, couples and families in their mental health and personal growth journeys, and in this way our goals and values are inseparably tied to the rights of all persons to security, health and freedom. We recognize that systemic racism and discrimination is woven into every aspect of society and profoundly impacts our clients’ and community’s mental health, emotional wellbeing, and nervous system health. It is our individual and collective responsibility to ensure that we continue to educate ourselves about the best ways to support people through these challenges and work to eliminate systemic racism in our organization and community. We are aware this work is ongoing. We commit to listening and learning from BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) communities who are the experts in what their communities need. Feedback is key to our ability to recognize and repair our inevitable and often unaware collusion with systemic racism and we welcome and value opportunities to recognize when we have made mistakes. We understand that it is our job to be humble, listen, and do better. In solidarity and with love, The East Vancouver Counselling and Blooming Brains Teams

As little girls many of us were taught to distrust our observations and intuition. Growing up in our families, telling the truth may have led to punishment, hum...iliation, withdrawal, or physical violence. Telling the truth may trigger a visceral fear of stepping up and using our voice as a force for change. Our painful histories may have conditioned us to avoid conflict and try to create peace at all costs, as a way to keep that fear at bay. It is through addressing those childhood fears that we can dissolve the paralysis we may feel in the face of so many current challenges. I believe that the women who become skilled at initiating difficult conversations will be the most effective and transformative leaders of our time. Becoming skilled at disruptive truth-telling requires that we practice detachment in two main areas: 1. Detach from a need for peace at all costs The more conflict-avoidant we are, the less real we are and the less authentic we allow others to be. There’s a direct connection between our ability to navigate conflict and our ability to be true. One of the reasons for this is that many of us experienced turbulent, conflict-ridden homes as children and as a way to stay safe, made a vow to never create or contribute to conflict. That vow may have kept us safe as children but left unexamined, it becomes a barrier to our full power as women. Being willing to tolerate the ambiguity inherent in moving things to a higher order requires that we have a deeper source of stability within ourselves that we can find comfort in when the outside world is in flux. 2. Detach from the need to be liked, understood and approved of It’s natural to enjoy being liked and understood. But to need it in order to feel OK is a form of giving our power away. As little girls we needed to feel approved of by our mothers and fathers to survive emotionally intact. Everything was based on that bond. If that bond was compromised when we were children, as adults we may conflate being liked with being safe, placing our source of emotional safety outside ourselves as we did when we were children. Healing involves cultivating the primary source of our approval within ourselves. Connection with this inner source allows us to take more risks in being real, telling the truth and feeling the unsurpassed joy of feeling our actions in alignment with our truth. There is a delicious kind of freedom in having the capacity to validate your own reality when others around you cannot. Read the full article to dive deeper into these two areas, to read some real-life examples from my clients what this process can look like, and to learn some potent questions to ask yourself: https://www.bethanywebster.com/the-power-of-disruptive-tru/

Culturally, we’ve been conditioned to believe that relationships can (+ should) make us happy. The truth is that relationships trigger many of our past wounding.... Our earliest attachments in childhood set the foundation for how we experience relationships as adults. If we didn’t have secure attachment to a parent-figure (meaning they could regulate their own emotional state in order to respond to our needs) we will become anxious + avoidant in adult relationships. Because at some point it wasn’t safe to be seen, to be ourselves brought shame. This looks like a chronic fear of abandonment they will leave me, avoiding romantic partnerships or leaving them when we feel intimacy, or push-pull dynamics where we are constantly ‘testing’ a partner. All of these are manifestations of coping mechanisms from our past. All attempts to keep us safe yet they ironically keep us from true connection. Relationships are one of the most valuable experiences of being human. But, we must re-learn relationships because most of us have a child-like view of what relationships are + what they can give us. Our inner child still hopes for that one person to whisk us away to forever bliss. When we join into partnership, we are two people coming together with unresolved trauma, conditioning, coping mechanisms, + core beliefs. Forever bliss quickly can become conflict + suffering especially when we truly believe our partner should make us happy. To have healthy relationships, we can evolve to an understanding that what we need to provide to our partners is safety. Safety to fully express themselves without becoming overwhelmed with our own emotions. Allowing all emotional states. Communicating when our fears, anxiety, irritability, + inner child wounding comes up. Safety feels like freedom. Space holding. Acceptance. Connection to authentic self. Safety is the flexibility to give + take. Witness + accept without judgment. Safety is a relational PRACTICE because so few of us had this as children #selfhealers

We're seeing a lot of both during this pandemic.

Dear community, We want you to know that we at East Vancouver Counselling and Blooming Brains stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, Idle No More, and ot...her local and international racial justice movements. We acknowledge that in Canada we are not immune to the problems of systemic racism, white supremacy, historical oppression, and police brutality and we felt it was important that we make a statement about this because we cannot allow silence to imply ambivalence on this critically important issue. As an organization, we support individuals, couples and families in their mental health and personal growth journeys, and in this way our goals and values are inseparably tied to the rights of all persons to security, health and freedom. We recognize that systemic racism and discrimination is woven into every aspect of society and profoundly impacts our clients’ and community’s mental health, emotional wellbeing, and nervous system health. It is our individual and collective responsibility to ensure that we continue to educate ourselves about the best ways to support people through these challenges and work to eliminate systemic racism in our organization and community. We are aware this work is ongoing. We commit to listening and learning from BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) communities who are the experts in what their communities need. Feedback is key to our ability to recognize and repair our inevitable and often unaware collusion with systemic racism and we welcome and value opportunities to recognize when we have made mistakes. We understand that it is our job to be humble, listen, and do better. In solidarity and with love, The East Vancouver Counselling and Blooming Brains Teams

Wow wow wow. You guys. Look at how beautiful this is. Visually depicting the process of successful inner child recovery and shadow work in such an epic way.... Credit to the artist on insta @carrececile

A trauma-informed and nervous system-aware approach to understanding the current state of Black Lives Matter.

I’ve been seeing so many friends seriously beating themselves up because they aren’t maximizing their time in quarantine by organizing their closets, repainti...ng, developing a side hustle, becoming a piano virtuoso, exercising themselves into a lucrative career as a swimsuit model, etc. Everybody! Seriously. Stop. And breathe. If you’re feeling adrift, there’s a reason. I’m about to drop some first semester nursing school on y’all. It’s Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Humans have basic requirements (the bottom of the pyramid) like food, water, air, shelter, sleep, etc. The biological basics. If those are met, then the next rung of the ladder is Safety and Security. If we feel safe and secure, then we can climb up and start on our Love and Belonging needs and on up the ladder we go until finally at the very tippy-top is SELF-ACTUALIZATION which would entail all of the cool aforementioned activities. The catch is, you cannot level up until the needs at the current level are fulfilled. If the needs remain unfulfilled, we remain stuck on our current level until the situation changes. Friends, in the midst of a pandemic, we are dwelling in the basement of Maslow’s pyramid. How in the heck do you think you’re going to kick butt at the highest levels when we can’t even find toilet paper for Pete’s sake. You physiologically and psychologically aren’t built to live your best life right now. Your only job is to live a life right now. A luxury that is being denied many which increases the pressure to really make every day count. But listen. Every day you are here counts. Every breath you take counts. Are you eating, drinking water, and sleeping at all these days? If so, that is a triumph right now. Cut yourself ALL THE SLACK. Focus on the bottom level. Are you showering? Eating a vegetable once in a while? Getting some sunshine and fresh air? Keeping some semblance of a sleep schedule? Start there. And be extra gentle and abundantly gracious with yourself. We’ll get through this. And right now, getting through is absolutely enough. I love you all. Hang in there. XXOO, Rachel TL;DR: Be kind to yourself.

COVID-19 UPDATE: I am offering sessions by VIDEO COUNSELLING ONLY until the COVID-19 virus is under control. Scheduled appointments with me will be conducted through a secure telemedicine platform. You can enter my virtual waiting room here: https://doxy.me/eastvancouvercounsellingls

Wow wow wow. You guys. Look at how beautiful this is. Visually depicting the process of successful inner child recovery and shadow work in such an epic way.... Credit to the artist on insta @carrececile

Not sure who needs to hear this, but...

Free public presentation coming up on May 21! I will be discussing an embodied, nervous system-aware and sex-positive approach to healing from the sexual impacts of sexual violence and abuse https://members.bc-counsellors.org//event/loadevent.action

Important perspective...

ConvergeCon 2019 is tomorrow! Here is an interview I did with Cathy Vartuli of The Intimacy Dojo about the presentation I will be giving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAKgps2OvUg&feature=youtu.be

Absolutely love this depiction of therapy. Please remember how powerful talking is

Gentle reminder before pride month that the fight for justice goes beyond marriage equality.

Free public presentation coming up on May 21! I will be discussing an embodied, nervous system-aware and sex-positive approach to healing from the sexual impacts of sexual violence and abuse https://members.bc-counsellors.org//event/loadevent.action

ConvergeCon 2019 is tomorrow! Here is an interview I did with Cathy Vartuli of The Intimacy Dojo about the presentation I will be giving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAKgps2OvUg&feature=youtu.be

I am honoured to be presenting the workshop "Reclaiming Sexuality After Sexual Violence and Abuse: Tips From A Sex-Positive Counsellor" on March 30th at ConvergeCon 2019. This conference is open to everyone. Registration is here: http://www.convergecon.ca/

Very exciting new clinical trial. "A medical trial will use magic mushrooms to treat end-of-life anxiety at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital this year. The controversial study has finally been approved by ethics committees and state and federal authorities, and will see a number of terminally ill patients being given a single dose of synthetic psilocybinthe psychoactive ingredient in mushroomsunder the supervision and guidance of psychiatrists to help them come to terms with their own mortality. Treatment of the first 30 patients is due to begin in April, NewsCorp reports."

Everyone is invited to our open house! May be especially of interest to wellness practitioners who may be interested in meeting the team and referring to us or receiving referrals from us.

Conversion therapy refers to any formal therapeutic attempt to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of queer or trans* individuals to heterosexual and cisgender and operates with the premise that being queer or trans* is pathological and can be 'cured’. There is scientific evidence that conversion therapy is not only ineffective, but it also has serious long-term negative impacts on the recipient’s mental health, self-image, and relationships - and concerningly, it is often practiced on children and adolescents. Please help put a stop to conversion therapy in Canada by signing this petition which will be presented in the House of Commons: https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details

My new website has launched! Check it out at www.laurenshay.ca. Thanks to BCIT web design graduates, Leilani Beckett (http://leilanidesign.ca/, https://www.linkedin.com/in/leilani-beckett-22684b13b/), Tommy Nguyen (https://tommyn.ca/, https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommy-nguyen-8947ba131/), and Hannah Han (https://hannah-design.ca/, https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-han-2b283830/) for putting your hard work and creativity into facilitating the evolution of my internet presence. This bunch did a great job - I highly recommend them for anyone looking for web design services!

Update: starting in July, I will have office hours on Thursday afternoons and evenings.