LOVE RIGHT NOW!

Published by Diane Anderson, MA
Registered Clinical Counsellor

LOVE RIGHT NOW! is an electronic newsletter with the purpose of helping people create healthy, happy, loving relationships by transforming hurtful patterns of relating!

Feature Article: When Love Comes Crashing Down!

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In This Issue:

1. Note from Diane on LOVE RIGHT NOW!
2. Feature Article: "When Love Comes Crashing Down!"
3. Love Byte
4. Action Step to Improve Your Relationships NOW!
5. More Action Steps
6. Counselling & Consulting
7. About Diane Anderson & Associates
8. About this Ezine

1. Note from Diane:

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the first issue of Love Right Now!

I am very pleased and excited to be writing to you about what is at the heart of our work at Diane Anderson & Associates-creating love and happiness in the world by transforming hurtful patterns of relating.

Life is difficult. Pain and suffering are everywhere.

At times it can feel as though the world is too much to bear.

And yet, everyday there are opportunities-no matter how small-for moments of connection and care. The humblest gestures of time, dignity, love, and comfort go a long way to healing our lives.

In my opinion, healthy relationships are the key to healing the world. They are the building blocks of compassion. They are the fuel of advocacy and change. People who care about us are our sources of hope and inspiration.

Each month this newsletter will report on issues related to relationships: what works, what doesn't, and what are the latest research findings on human behavior. All of this is presented in the context of learning how these issues relate to YOUR patterns of loving or hurting.

My goal is simple-to give you hope and insight into how things can change. If you become more aware of what YOU do in relationships then you can more readily make the changes necessary to having the relationship of your dreams!

I have found that relationships (and it only takes one) can heal our hearts. Happy, healthy, loving people DO change the world-one relationship at a time!

Each LOVE RIGHT NOW! issue will give you a FEATURE ARTICLE that addresses some of the relationship challenges and successes I see in my daily work with clients. Or it may look at insights developed from my on-going professional development or my personal experiences.

Each issue will also give you a "LOVE BYTE" a delicious quote or inspirational thought about who you are or who you can become in your relationships.

Finally, LOVE RIGHT NOW! will give you a RELATIONSHIP ACTION STEP that you can take now to make your relationships better! Researchers say it takes 21 days to change a behaviour and make it a habit-I'll give you a whole month to make relationship changes that stick!

I hope you enjoy this month's newsletter, "When Love Comes Crashing Down"-it will give you more information on why I think love IS such a wonderful thing!

On a very personal note, this newsletter is being launched today, November 23rd, to mark the anniversary of meeting my husband Tom. I dedicate this first issue to him!

Tom is a kind, brilliant, and compassionate man with a beautiful heart and gorgeous smile! He melted my frozen, and cynical heart. When I thought "true love" happened to others but was never going to happen to me, he changed my mind and my life.

Tom, thank you for loving me so well and for making me laugh out loud every day!

Finally, it is my sincere hope is that we may ALL find (and recognize) that special person who makes our hearts sing! And may we all create the love and happiness we deserve and desire!

Until next time... happy loving!

Diane

2. When Love Comes Crashing Down!

In the summer of 2003, I had been completing a three-year program in trauma treatment when Tom, my boyfriend at the time, had a near-fatal paragliding accident!

It was seven months into our relationship and Tom's twelfth paragliding flight. In front of my eyes, the corner of Tom's parachute folded and then completely collapsed. In a second he dropped 60 feet to the ground like a 180-pound stone. He landed less than 20 feet away from me!

As I ran to where he lay, I realized he was unconscious and not breathing. "Breathe, Tom," I told him, "Breathe. You're okay. You're going to be okay. Come on now, Baby, just breathe!" I begged desperately.

But there was no response. A trickle of blood began to run from his nose.

I felt panic rising up from my stomach to my throat! I could not stand the sound of my voice as I heard it-I sounded so scared. Worse, the thought flooding my brain was making me nauseous: please don't let him be dead.

I remember turning my face to the sky and saying with such sincerity-not pleading, just a simple fact-"If he dies, I will not be able to handle this! I do not want to live my life without him!"

This was an understanding from deep inside of me. It is the only thing I can recall with complete clarity from that day. It is the only thing I have ever known with complete certainty in my whole life: if I lost him I would never be myself again.

After a few of minutes (which seemed like hours), Tom let out a long, low raspy moan-like a very sick or wounded animal. His eyes opened to pinhole-sized pupils. He was pale and was having difficulty breathing. His right arm was broken and the bone was sticking out. He was in a lot of pain and kept moving around.

People rushed to our side. A cell phone connected someone to 911 and his rescue was underway. Within 90 minutes of his crash we were in the ambulance en route to the hospital 45 minutes away.

The emergency doctor reported that Tom's ribs had punctured and collapsed his right lung. Two vertebrae were smashed. His right arm, which he had used to break his fall, was in pieces. More importantly, his pelvis had cracked open like a book on its spine. For this reason, he was to be airlifted to Seattle's Harborview Medical Centre for specialized surgery.

Because he was still having difficulty breathing, they decided to intubate him. Before they put him under, I kissed him goodbye and said I'd see him in Seattle. Little did I know that things were to change so dramatically.

The nightmare was only beginning.

Four hours after his fall, I arrived in Seattle where the news was not good. Tom was in critical condition. The force of the fall and the broken bones in his pelvis had ruptured his bladder and lacerated his liver. He had severe uncontrolled internal bleeding. Shock had slowed down the bleeding and kept him alive to this point, but now his body was warming up and his circulatory system was dilating.

The doctors had been replacing blood as quickly as he was losing it. They pumped over 40 pounds of fluids into his body in order to save his life, but now the excess fluids further compromised his bruised and injured lungs and Tom was at risk of acute respiratory failure.

And he was in a coma.

The emergency room doctor asked if I was Tom's next of kin. When I said I wasn't, he suggested that I contact his family whom I had not yet met. What an introduction!

Family and friends came from across Canada and the U.S. to be with him and with me. They did everything they could to help us get through these anxious and painful weeks.

Tom was in a coma for 22 days. He came close to dying at least two times. He had a 6-hour emergency surgery to stop the internal bleeding followed by a 10-hour surgery on his pelvis. He had three chest tubes that constantly drained the excess fluids from his body. He was in a body cast for his spine and in traction for his pelvis. He had 12 surgeries on his arm.

Despite all these horrors, we were the lucky ones!

Tom survived. He came out of his coma with his mind and spine intact. Within 9 weeks, he could walk again. Within 16 weeks, he was back at work part-time.

Every doctor who has picked up his heavy file along the way has called him "the Miracle Man". His life, three years later, continues with relatively little pain despite the massive trauma he endured. We are both so very fortunate!

Freud believed that a traumatic event was like throwing a door wide open to healing our deepest hurts. In a trauma, our usual defenses are so overwhelmed that we are forced to face our deepest fears and emotions.

And so it was with Tom's accident. I had kept walls up for years, never letting anyone get close. My biggest fear-of loving someone completely only to lose them-was tested repeatedly during his accident and recovery.

In our intimate relationships, we unknowingly bury our biggest hurts under petty frustrations with each other. We hide our vulnerabilities by criticizing our partners. We withdraw, separate, and distance from our partners rather reveal how scared, angry, sad, or lonely we really are.

I see these destructive patterns happen every day in my clinical work with couples. And despite being a counselor, I watched it happen in several of my previous relationships. Undergoing a crisis with the magnitude of Tom's crash, however, stopped this pattern of relating between us.

We no longer take things for granted the way we did previously. While it sounds cliché, we appreciate the simple things in our life. that he can breathe, that he can walk, that he can hug me with both arms. We take time everyday to express our love and joy with each other and with our lives.

While I am not recommending that you or your partner have a near fatal accident in order to change your relationship, I am urging you to pay attention to the things that matter with your partner, as well as on your own. How can you have the wake-up call without the crash?

First, give an honest assessment of your relationship: What is working? What are your real difficulties? What are you hiding from each other? What are you burying deep inside of you? What is it that you love (or loved) about your partner? If your partner was really gone from your life forever, what would you miss about him or her?

Next, sit down and take a look at your own life: What is of value to you? What has meaning? What do you appreciate about your life and about your self? What are your personal challenges and what can you do to address them?

Paying attention right now to what is important and meaningful is essential to breaking the bad habits of sloppiness, laziness, distraction, and apathy in our lives and our relationships. We say we're dissatisfied but don't do anything constructive about this awareness. We grumble and complain and then just wait for something to change!

Since Tom's accident, I have talked with many others who lost someone and who would give anything for one more laugh, one more hug, one more glimpse of that person.

While it is tragic to lose the one you love, it is also tragic when the person we love is still present but we no longer pay attention to the things we love about them. It is simply a waste when we no longer appreciate who they are or what they feel because we've lost connection to each other.

Don't wait for love to come crashing down before you pay attention. Practice awareness. Practice attentiveness. Practice appreciation. And practice NOW!

Take a moment today, this week, this month, and consider who it is you love and what you love about them. The "Love Byte" and the "Relationship Action Exercise" that follow can help you to increase your awareness and appreciation.

3. Love Byte

"Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light."

  - Albert Schweitzer, missionary physician

Consider: when your "light" was out, who blew it into flame again? Whether you have or haven't already, express your appreciation to that person again.

You can write it down. You can say it out loud. You can say it to yourself. Whether you tell the person or not, at the very least ACKNOWLEDGE the way in which another human being breathed life into you again, inspired you, accepted you, encouraged you, loved you.

4. Relationship Action Step #1—to Improve Your Relationships Now!

Each day for the next 30 days:

1. Notice what is working in your life right now!

Find 5 things you appreciate or are grateful for in your life. Keep it in a notebook, write it in your diary, jot on the calendar, or put on the fridge. Write it down each night before you go to bed and read your list again each morning before you start your day.

Watch what happens to you as you begin looking for what is going well in your life!

5. More Relationship Actions Exercises

Want more tips on Relationships?

For more tips, download my 21-page FREE report: 21 WAYS TO WIN AT LOVE?

Or check out the Articles page on my website.

6. Counselling & Consulting

Are you struggling in your patterns of relationships?

Do you want to take your relationship to the next level?

Whatever your relationship concerns and questions are, I can help.

I will show you how to identify your relationship problems accurately, transform your frustrations into the moments that bring you closer together, and repair hurts that have happened along the way.

I can also help you enhance and deepen an already solid and satisfying relationship by realizing your life-long desires and goals for loving.

Contact me for a free 10 minute phone consultation. Together we can explore how I might help you solve your relationship problems.

For general inquiries, you can email me at: info@DianeAndersonCounselling.com

or visit my website:

www.DianeAndersonCounselling.com

7. About Diane Anderson

Diane Anderson, MA, is a Registered Clinical Counsellor who assists individual and couples in healing hurtful pattern of relationships and creating the happy, healthy loving relationships they long for.

Diane has been on all sides of relationships: married, divorced, and now happily remarried again. She knows what it takes to make or break a relationship as a couple and how awfully painful and costly it is to go through a separation and/or a divorce.

She has also been a client of several relationship therapists, so she has a keen sense of what helps couples sort out their relationship troubles.

Diane says, "I am a happy, living example of how hurtful patterns of loving and relating can be changed!"

Diane lives and practices in beautiful White Rock, British Columbia, Canada with her husband, Tom, a former paraglider who now has both feet firmly on the ground!

8. This Ezine

Feedback:

Your feedback and input on this newsletter is always welcome and appreciated. Please write to me at info@DianeAndersonCounselling.com with any feedback or suggestions for upcoming articles.

Privacy Policy:

Your privacy will always be respected. Your name and email address will never be sold or given to anyone.

Pass it on:

Please feel free to pass on this newsletter to anyone you think may benefit from it. Please ensure that you keep the entire issue intact and unaltered.

Permission to Reprint:

You are welcome to use any articles that appear in this ezine in other publications or at your website as long as you contact me first. I will give you a formatted document that contains only the feature article and a by-line.

Back Issues:

If you would like to read previous issues of this ezine, you will find them at: www.dianeandersoncounselling.com/articles.htm.

Subscribe:

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Copyright Diane Anderson, 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Diane Anderson, MA
Registered Clinical Counsellor
T: 778-292-0260
E: info@DianeAndersonCounselling.com
www.DianeAndersonCounselling.com

Suite 188
800-15355 24^th Avenue
Surrey, BC
V4A 2H9
CANADA

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Diane Anderson & Associates — Counsellor
Serving: Greater Vancouver, Surrey, South Surrey,
White Rock, Langley, Cloverdale, Fraser Valley, and Tsawwassen, British Columbia as well as Blaine,
Bellingham, and Seattle, Washington.