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Articles by Suzanne St. John Smith

Browse published articles attributed to Suzanne St. John Smith, with full-archive search.

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By Suzanne St. John SmithRecently published1 topic

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.

Primary topic: Psychology

1,433 views5/5 (1)

By Suzanne St. John SmithRecently published1 topic

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.

Primary topic: Psychology

1,326 views5/5 (1)

By Suzanne St. John SmithRecently published1 topic

Body Acceptance: How to Strike Up a Loving Relationship With Your Most Loyal Companion

As a psychotherapist, I’m in the business of hearing how people, especially women, talk about their bodies using hateful and disparaging terms. They aren’t alone. I’ve done the same myself, and so I know how hard it can be to make peace with our imperfect bodies (are they ever anything else?) let alone feel loving toward it.

Primary topic: Psychology

2,227 views

By Suzanne St. John SmithRecently published1 topic

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.

Primary topic: Psychology

2,083 views

By Suzanne St. John SmithRecently published1 topic

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.

Primary topic: Psychology

1,545 views

By Suzanne St. John SmithRecently published1 topic

Focusing on Positivity Can (Sometimes) Drive Us “Crazy”

Sometimes I feel like complaining. About whatever. And it feels good – that is, when I’m not in the company of the kind of person we all know who see it as their job to drag us over to the “positive perspective” corner of the room. “Leave me alone. I want to feel miserable for now,” I want to scream. But it’s hard to communicate that message without sounding like a whiny, malcontented child.

Primary topic: Psychology

1,440 views

By Suzanne St. John SmithRecently published1 topic

The Importance of Maintaining a Healthy Distance in Relationships that Matter the Most

As a psychotherapist, I often meet individuals, couples and families who at first describe the relationships that matter the most in their lives as ‘very close’, ‘tight’, and supportive. But later, after understanding the issues that brought them to my office, I view them more as insular systems that nurture – or even demand – ‘group think’ and inhibit individualism altogether. In fact, in many of these situations, any deviation from the collective is often considered betrayal to the larger system, whether it be the couple, the nuclear, or extended family.

Primary topic: Psychology

1,439 views

By Suzanne St. John SmithRecently published1 topic

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.

Primary topic: Psychology

1,428 views

By Suzanne St. John SmithRecently published1 topic

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.

Primary topic: Psychology

1,375 views

By Suzanne St. John SmithRecently published1 topic

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.

Primary topic: Psychology

1,373 views

By Suzanne St. John SmithRecently published1 topic

“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.

Primary topic: Psychology

1,327 views

By Suzanne St. John SmithRecently published1 topic

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.

Primary topic: Psychology

1,325 views

By Suzanne St. John SmithRecently published1 topic

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.

Primary topic: Psychology

1,316 views

By Suzanne St. John SmithRecently published1 topic

#MeToo: Add My Voice to the Cultural Ground Swell against Sexual Abuse

We are living in powerful times. A crucial time in the lives of those who’ve been sexually abused. For girls, boys, men, and women, it’s a long-awaited time when people are becoming empowered to speak up against the sexual abuse they’ve experienced during their lifetimes with the hope of making those who’ve perpetrated the abuse finally accountable.

Primary topic: Psychology

1,295 views

By Suzanne St. John SmithRecently published1 topic

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.

Primary topic: Psychology

1,227 views

By Suzanne St. John SmithRecently published1 topic

When it’s Time to Shift Priorities

I’m a perfectionist. Always have been. And sometimes it drives me crazy. Like most ‘Type-A’ people, there isn’t enough time in the day to be a perfectionist about everything, so we often prioritize areas of our lives where our standards need to reach their highest, and those where we can allow the ‘good enough’ standard to rule.

Primary topic: Psychology

1,220 views

By Suzanne St. John SmithRecently published1 topic

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?”

Primary topic: Psychology

1,050 views

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