Going into counselling when you have no idea what’s wrong with you doesn’t help you understand your life, let alone make for a productive counselling session.
Why counselling didn't work
Counselling was never going to work for me, because the very thing I needed to know that tied my life together had been kept secret for 46 years. Truth be known, every conversation, every session I attended left me more confused.
Acceptance comes from understanding
We can bring acceptance on most things. When the very thing we need to know about isn’t part of that scenario, everything else becomes futile. Finding out that I had cerebral palsy at 46 was the first step to knowing what I was dealing with, I then needed to unravel my symptoms to be able to understand 'me.'
We should address 'us'
Counselling helps, but even if we know what’s wrong, unless we’re able to express our concerns, uncertainties and fears, we won't get the best out of our counselling sessions. Our ability to talk relies on it. We don’t always equate or make the conscious connection between our experiences, our mood or our behaviour.
As a child I was angry. It wasn't my fault and I wasn’t capable of making the connections between my anger and my mental and emotional problems, but mental health will always rely on us making those connections.
I have been in counseling for the past 20+ years, but in a lot of ways, it hasn't done a great deal of good; since there were certain things I didn't want to talk about.
There were always a lot of connections that I could have made, but almost subconsciously chose not to, seeing as that would reveal parts of myself that I didn't want anyone to see.
I grew up in a world where you were made to feel like a circus freak if you had certain feelings or emotions that weren't considered normal, so I spent most of my life torturing myself for being human.
It would have helped a lot in my counseling, if I had felt able to open up about everything, which I have to work on to be able to move on.
Thanks Randy. I think you're right. There were parts of you that you would have had to reveal. That's not always easy.
I know someone close to me who tried counselling. When she was asked by her counselor to look at herself in the mirror, her counselor asked her what she saw. She wanted her to work through the process of getting to grips with everything to do with her past.
She'd struggled with physical and mental abuse as a child. Long story short, she tried doing it for about six sessions, but it didn't work out and she gave up. Yes, opening up to a counselor means we have to be prepared to bear our soul.
Our souls are an imprint of our experiences. We have to be comfortable talking about our experiences.
My problems have been that all my experiences stemmed from something I didn't know I had and that made linking anything back virtually impossible and which is why counselling didn't work for me.
Your third paragraph sums up your situation precisely. Finding out that you had cerebral palsy was the first step, not only to knowing what you were dealing with, but also to knowing who you really are.
It really is unbelievable that you had to start piecing the jigsaw together age 46.
Exactly! Thank you. When you think about it, it's sickening beyond belief that this was my life. You couldn't make it up.
Yes, I am still piecing the jigsaw together nine years later. I'm not done yet. But I also get to see what I have managed to achieve in that time. I couldn't do what I'm doing without my experiences.
I reconcile that way. Easier when things are going well. When others don't cope and their issues interrupt my inner peace, I become less reconciled.