Meet our featured beauty with brains Chitra Cynthia Nathan, a relationship counsellor based in Sydney, Australia. She is the owner of 3R Counselling (http://www.3rcounselling.com.au) and works from her heart.
Here is an interview with her.
- Tell us a bit about yourself, your hobbies, dreams, passions etc.
My name is Cynthia Nathan, I’m an Indian, Malaysian. I’ve been married for the last 22 years to my husband Ravi and we have 2 teenagers, Rani 18 and Rajan 16.
We migrated to Australia 12 years ago but we remain very close and connected to our family and friends back in KL. We have a lovely community of friends and neighbors here in Sydney too and we feel very blessed and thankful for it all.
- You run a counselling service. Can you share some basic tips on maintaining a healthy relationship?
I am a qualified Relationship Counselor and a Marriage and Relationship Educator. I opened my private practice 3R Counselling which stands for Relationship ,Responsibility & Reality (of marriage) in 2017 after facing a job redundancy, which at that time left me a little lost and hopeless but as they say ‘every cloud has a silver lining’, the rest is history!
In my past jobs I had worked with couples and their children facing separation and divorce. It was very painful, sad and difficult to witness families shatter, their struggles with custody battles and then single parenting etc.
I often worked with helping the children voice their pain and helping the parents come to a new understanding of co-parenting despite their divorce & new living arrangements. It was sad and difficult to comprehend most times. The recent stats in Australia show that 1 in 3 couples end up in divorce.
It then became a true passion of mine to help couples prepare for and to build a strong foundation for their journey into marriage and to hopefully try to prevent these things from happening in the long run. After all, when we know better we can all do better. I feel that Pre Marriage Education is a great prevention method especially since the course itself has been researched for over 40 years on thousands of couples around the world.
Also with DV being on the rise in our country, I believe that the Pre Marriage Education Course, Bringing Baby Home Program and Relationship Couple Check Up’s that I offer will help prevent violence from happening in families. These courses are all cleverly targeted at helping couples thrive at different stages of their relationship by providing them with the skills and tools to overcome such struggles and challenges that are inevitable to all families.
Some great tips on maintaining a healthy relationship with your spouse is to never forget to be each other’s best friend, to make time intentionally to connect with and talk to each other daily with a date night or 2 per month and to always uphold our vows and commitment to marriage with each other.
- Where do you see yourself ten years from now?
In 10 years from now, I see myself training other counsellours and professionals to run these wonderful programs that I offer in strengthening both couple and family lives. I see my small private practice growing and thriving in helping couples from all walks of life to achieve the best they can for their marriage and beyond.
- How do you define happiness and what makes you truly happy?
Happiness for me is defined by the lives I can help touch and bring some intended change into. When someone feels touched by my work, words or sincere gestures, I feel true happiness in my heart and I thank God for the opportunity to have crossed paths with them. Happiness to me is ultimately to lead a life in service to others.
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