There’s a big reason why counselling doesn’t work for everybody.
You have to talk.
There’s no quick fix whereby you just walk in and within a session you feel more at ease and calmer within yourself, with a more clearer understanding of all of your problems.
You still have to talk!
There lies the biggest problem of all.
For me, do I think I need more counselling, probably.
However, I also know that I’m not ready to open up on old wounds to a brand new stranger and go over old ground once again.
Support groups are the same, you get out of them what you are prepared to put in.
You have to really open up and be honest, not necessarily to your counsellor, but to yourself.
Talking about yourself and your own difficulties are a lot harder said than done.
My own therapy is to write and construct my thoughts to release my emotions and that is often a challenge all in itself.
I would like nothing more to just get everything out, to let all of my emotions just pour out once and for all, however there has to be some sort of process to it all.
To understand your why’s.
Counselling for me worked 5 years ago, so I’m definitely not against it, but at the same time I fear it.
I made a conscious decision on my very first session to be completely open and honest, otherwise there was absolutely no reason why I was attending.
My counsellor was the first person I told about suicide, she was the first person I genuinely and vulnerably opened up to about lots of things.
I felt reassured as she was a professional figure, yet was there to listen, sometimes guide and support me.
Counselling isn’t what you expect, it wasn’t what I was expecting.
The fear, the heightened anxiety that builds and continues to build until you feel that you can no longer breath.
Wondering how much you should say or how much you should hold back on.
What if they don’t understand.
What if they don’t believe you.
What if they think you are a danger to yourself.
It wasn’t the case at all.
Just a professional person who sat in a room with you each week and listened.
Each session after, I would sleep for hours, the first session until the following day.
Each time trying to make sense of all my jumbled up thoughts; thoughts I was frustrated at myself that I couldn’t make sense of them.
With depression you feel as though you lose your mind and you do.
Everything that you once knew, temporarily gone.
Like a jigsaw puzzle, but no idea what the picture is supposed to look like.
Piece by piece you have to attempt to put yourself back together once again.
Patience is really the key and alongside it being patient and understanding with yourself.
It’s hard, unmeasurably hard.
From the outside nothing changes, maybe you appear more distant and a little lost, but nothing against the unnoticeable eye.
You withdraw and go in on yourself, as that is a coping mechanism to ward off noticeable action.
By doing what people perceive as nothing is sometimes better than doing what people perceive as something.
Support groups can help an individual but at the same time can aid your setbacks.
Listening to others either reminds you of where you’ve been, what may still face you or troubles you can sometimes get lost in.
You can’t be a support network for others whilst you yourself are struggling.
The only person who can get you out of your darkness is the same person who was dragged into it.
Yourself.
Everyone wants to help but not everyone can understand.
Not until it happens to you.
It takes more than listening.
Mental Health; no one wants to see you suffer, some people in your life are just too close to really open up and divulge your thoughts, emotions and deep down your raw and vulnerable state.
Some offer to listen but you know many won’t be able to handle your darkness.
It’s incredibly difficult to explain your thoughts when at many times you don’t understand them for yourself.
To feel the way you feel, constantly.
To see that look.
That look of it sounds awful but it can’t really be that bad.
That look or dropped silence in their voice of I can’t help you if you don’t help yourself.
Sometimes it’s just easier to say nothing at all.
Counselling may help me again in the future, but I have to want to be open, truly open and I’m not ready for that.
I don’t want to explore old ground for what it might bring up a second time around.
I’ve been looking at and researching cognitive behaviour therapy, looking at the thoughts and behaviours of my life and how depression and mental health play an active and at times a controlling part in that.
CBT is my likely next new direction, to not visit the rawness of my past but focus on how it effects my current day to days and work on my whys to further understand them and learn to accept how my life has become.
Counselling only works if the person who is suffering finds the courage within them to share their own truths.
I won’t stop sharing my own.