When people ask me what I want to be when I grow up I tell them I'm still in-between majors: Psychology and Creative Writing. Then I brace for the laughter, the witty catcalls and comebacks about how I will doubtless end up unemployed and living in the streets for the rest of my life. I have taken to simply saying I'm considering going into social work or counseling because those sound like more solid career choices...but the truth is that these are just jobs I admire and have actively been a part of in some form or another. Whether or not I end up in one of them is yet to be determined. Unfortunately those busy doubts inside my mind have convinced me that I am incapable of truly helping anyone the way counselors and social workers I know have helped dozens, and until I can fight through those doubts, I will probably stay on the sidelines.
But that's not to say I don't believe in counseling. There was a time, let's say about 80% of my life, when I just assumed like many people do that to go to a counselor or to seek some form of emotional or mental help was a major form of weakness. It meant that you were broken. Flawed. Crazy. Whack-job. I felt that way until I actually met with a counselor for the first time, and I had to analyze myself and see if I was any of those labels. Fortunately, I'm just depressed. And we depressed ones aren't too complicated a bunch.
The first time I walked into the counseling office at my dad's work I was scared. I was nervous that I would end up sitting on a couch with a box of tissues sobbing to a stranger, and that he would nod and smile for an hour before sending me away. What ended up happening changed my perspective on the profession forever, and I began to write. Really write. From the heart and soul. There is a post on this blog entitled "Rewriting Myself" from April of last year that describes that experience better. Rather than retelling it, I'll just let you go look if you're interested. All I will say here is that to me, counseling is not a Charlie Brown cartoon.
You know what I'm talking about. You can picture Lucy in her little cardboard stall giving terrible advice to poor Chuck, who is always told that he's too sad, too boring, and just too darn wishy-washy to really amount to anything. Lucy had all the bedside manner of a porcupine while Charlie tried to figure out why the things in his life never seemed to go right. Stepping out of those cartoon panels, there may be some counselors who don't have a love for their job, or have difficulty in connecting with their clients. I've never met one. From my experience, to be a counselor at all you have to begin with selflessness and empathy. You're not there to tell someone how to live or what to think. You're there just to listen.
My social welfare professor at the college explained counseling in a way that, as a lover of words, I couldn't help but connect with. "Counseling," he said, "is about story-telling. You are there to hear stories, to get others to tell them and write them and share them so that they are no longer locked away inside, where they are causing harm." I am a story teller. There is nothing I love more than to bring someone's story to life, especially if they are funny, or touching, or deep or thoughtful. The only stories I have trouble telling are my own.
I think this is true of most people. Whenever we feel embarrassed or hurt or begin to despair because of a mistake we made or an event in our lives that shook us to the core...the first response is not to shout that story to the world. It's to hold it in like holding in a breath of air, waiting for a time when the water seems calmer to come to the surface and let it out. There are some stories that simply never get told, and peace that is never found. And it is for this reason that I defend counseling so strongly. What more could you ask for than to find someone who is willing to listen to all of the burdens you carry in your heart without judging you or trying to fix you--someone that you have never met before who you may never talk to again. Someone who just wants to take that burden from you and leave you feeling lighter.
Now I know that thinking practically, sometimes it's hard to find access to a counselor. Or, if there aren't any volunteer positions at a school or business and they cost money, finding the money to pay for it. If this is the case then I would suggest finding a friend or family member who knows how to listen with an open mind, who wasn't a part of your past and can see you as you are; or starting a journal and writing in it.
I say from personal experience, the most painful stories are the ones we never let escape. Go share a story with somebody today--and breathe easier.
*Image by Google*
