Suzanne St. John Smith
: Master of Counselling Psychology: Master of Communications: Bachelor of Arts SFU
Free
Vancouver Based Psychotherapist Expert
Suzanne St. John Smith Quick Facts
I work with high performing men and women who struggle with being stuck in patterns that cause them to feel powerless and sometimes even hopeless, and who would like to break free of these old negative patterns so they can experience a more rewarding life.
What separates my service from others is my ability to instinctively understand people and the core issues that may be playing a key role in the many complex situations that clients bring to me. Once we’ve reached the goals we set when first working together, clients invariably experience far less fear and attain greater confidence in their ability to make healthier decisions that will lead them to the kind of satisfying personal and professional life they were seeking all along.
Articles by this expert
SelfGrowth articles and saved writing connected to this expert.
Article
“The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”… Really??
We’re about to head into what is likely your busiest time of the year, and yet songs joyfully remind us that it’s THE most ‘wonderful’ time of the year. Most people wouldn’t agree.
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Gratitude: A Recipe for Maintaining Positivity
Just as I was leaving my office last night, I discovered THE most beautiful bouquet of flowers sitting beside my door awaiting me. I was so taken back by the thoughtfulness of whomever had arranged this lovely gift, and when I opened the card and read that it was from my clients who participated in our 13-month Group Therapy for Women, I felt a profound sense of gratitude for them, and for the work that I have the privilege to do as a psychotherapist on a daily basis.
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When Selfless Giving Involves Self-Forgetting – Giving When It Stings
Just the other day, I was involved in a situation that reminded me of the amount of courage it takes to give selflessly. I was acutely aware that few of us know the kind of love that’s willing to offer this sort of giving, particularly if it means experiencing personal suffering in the process of that giving. We might attribute this extraordinary ability to those who we believe are more emotionally or spiritually evolved than the rest of us. But, from my own experience, both personally and as a psychotherapist, that isn’t necessarily true.
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Moving Beyond the Playground: A Healthy Approach to Female Conflicts
For many women, their female friendships have been a source of comfort, support, laughter, and joy. For others, they have been mired in betrayal, mean-spiritedness, and competition. But for most of us, they’ve been a combination of these two extremes, and typically, even before we reach the age of twelve! But, by the time we reach 30 years of age, most of us carry a number of scars from battling – and often losing to – the tactics (or ‘rules of engagement’) that we learned while still making mud cakes in the sandbox.
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Why ‘Perfectionist’ Should Not Be A Dirty Word In Business
Ways Your Website Should Be Perfect to Avoid Losing Sales “I can see I’m dealing with a perfectionist here.” This is what a client said to me the other day when I pointed out a glaring error on her website that we had just launched for her, appearing after her assistant made an update. “Well of course!” I wanted to exclaim back, “aren’t you with your business?”
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Finding Meaning in Everyday Life
Clients come to my office for a number of reasons. For example, when they’re feeling depressed, when they’re feeling anxious, and when they are experiencing conflict in their relationships, but also when they’ve become bored with their lives. For these people, meaning and engagement in life seemed to have disappeared without conscious awareness, and not all of a sudden. Instead, it seemed to filter out slowly and they just woke up one day and experienced an emptiness that wasn’t previously there.
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In Celebration of Committed Parents – Right Down to Their Socks
June is convocation month, and all around the world students are celebrated as they make their way out of their post-secondary, and often, personal, nests as they fly toward the next phase of their lives. Most of us watch them cross the stage with joy at the possibilities that we imagine for them, as well as envy at, again, those same possibilities that we may or may not have taken advantage of at the time of our ‘flight’ from the nest.
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Friendships: Time for Some Spring Cleaning?
At one time or another, we’ve likely all been advised that we should go through our closets on a regular basis to weed out what no longer works for us, and to remind ourselves what does. After months of procrastination, I tend to carry out this arduous task every couple of years, and not surprisingly, at the end of it, I’ve usually gathered together at least one large garbage bag of ho-hum clothes, that were previously relegated to the back of my drawers or closets. To the Salvation Army drop off they go, and afterwards, I’m left feeling uplifted, lighter, and free.
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Transitions: The 3rd Inevitability (in addition to death and taxes!)
Over the years, I’ve discovered there are few among us who embrace transitions. I’m not one of them. Just ask my husband. For perhaps the first ten years of our lives together, when we vacationed overseas (before the aid of the Internet to illustrate the sort of place we were headed to), I’d arrive exhausted, hungry, not yet adjusted to the time change (another transition), and would typically find myself utterly disappointed with our choice of accommodation and/or locale.
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When the Opinions of Others Matter Too Much
From the moment we’re born until the day we die we are continually absorbing messages that tell us who we are, what we’re worth as human beings, what we should be doing at any given time, how we should look (and especially how we shouldn’t look), what we should eat, what we should buy, what activities or careers we should or should not engage in, and so on. Opinions come from near, they come from afar, but for sure, they come, and they never stop.
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Adults Teaching Children: The Legitimization of Bullying
When I was in Grade 4, I struggled with an ability to read, especially when asked to read in front of the class. I wasn’t dyslexic but I was quite shy, and not at all confident about my intellectual abilities relative to my peers. Unfortunately, I had a teacher who, I discovered many years later, had a reputation for being a bully that extended far beyond the city of Winnipeg where I lived for that one terrible year.
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Adults Teaching Children: The Legitimization of Bullying
Never making the decision you know you need to make has been called ‘analysis paralysis’; ‘sitting on the fence’; ‘considering your options’; ‘waiting for the right time’ (when there is no right time); ‘not wanting to rush into anything’; and, in new age lingo ‘being kind to myself by NOT making a decision’. OMG, really? However, deep inside ourselves, if we’re willing to be honest, we know it by another name, and it’s not ‘procrastination’. It’s called “F.E.A.R.”. I know fear well, and my guess is that you do, too.
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Contacting Suzanne St. John Smith
Telephone: 604-922-0808
Email: suzanne@stjohnsmith.ca
Office Address:
1497 Marine Drive, Suite 200
West Vancouver, B.C. V7T 1B8
How to get started
I am an Adlerian-trained psychotherapist in West Vancouver in a private practice, and I work with individuals, couples, and families. I’m committed to providing the highest level of service to all my clients, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, politics, ethnicity, or nationality.