SO guess who decided it might be a good idea to go see a counselor NOW? After all of... (*waves hand over all emotional posts behind this one*)... this --- (points to glarby gloop of emotional posts in a group.)
Probably contrary to what it would appear all around and generally, I have quite concertedly and with effort gotten over/suffered through and made it to the other side of most of the majority of my most pressing, wretched hurdles of the emotional kind (yes, I'm aware of the wordiness of that last comment. No, I won't change it. I stand by it.) enough to know I have definitively more control over my own life, my emotions (*ding-ding-ding!), and my behaviour than I ever knew could be possible.
And, to my surprise, more than the average bloke. To the degree that I can breathe fresh air every single day and not be surrounded with the high octane level of stress that not only existed in my days of yore but that most of society seems to be plagued with at any given moment. This has been particularly fascinating to discover because, as the trend has been in my life, I've gotten to a point where I think everyone else is at (a degree of looking around me to glean ideas on how to live better), only to discover that there's hardly a soul who has it figured out any more or less than I did or am doing.
Anyone suffering through, dealing with, or otherwise grappling over things in their lives that have really affected who they are (anywhere along the way) knows, the journey never really quite ends. Self-discovery is a lifelong process. It is a stripping down, building up, stripping back down, rebuilding back up test our whole lives to see what we do with the afflictions we are faced with. I used to get stuck in the middle lots. I think a lot of other people do, too. But I found a little trick. One of many, actually. This one, though, is having quite literally a litany of saints before me who carved out that whole road of oppression and perseverance. People who were as real and as literal as any human, starting off hitting road blocks, struggling with affliction, addiction, trauma, oppression, even possession in some cases that documented their journey and how it could, an absolutely should, involve and include Our Lord in the struggle. Baby steps, continued chin up, continued looking to God, relying on Him, and more of the like...
So as a 'me' looking at 'me' I have an inkling to to laugh at myself and wonder why in the world I'd go see a counselor now, super and duper way after the fact, after those stories are long, long gone. I questioned myself all the way up to sitting in the counselor's office a year after I had gone to see him with T. I really felt like going to see someone for issues I had put away in healthy stock/lots of prayer/lots of learning seemed super indulgent. But this guy, who looks a little like Hank Azaria and speaks in metaphors with stacks of diplomas and certifications on the wall beside him, was exactly the fit for us as a couple. Me, the metaphor lover, and T, the practical, logical, empirical data, prove-it-to-me IT guy. He provided the exact tools and feedback we needed to frame our situation exactly the way we needed to hear it. He would definitely do that for me.
And I certainly was in no position to think I was just 'all good' now.
Which, after only 2 single sessions, I was right. At the first sit down, knowing that he had seen us a couple and being unsure about that affecting what he could do for me, I explained what I was doing. That I was getting counseling in a retroactive way. That I had learned to put away telling the story because of that lost, awkward look I used to get from people in the early days (and even the reaction I get from people today when I decide to share delicately positioned paragraphs) that acted as a red flag of my oversharing. I started to summarize the first few years of my adult life. I went down that road again. The one of telling my story. This time not to just the first person who would listen (or to basically anyone I could hook into listening) (yeah). But to the kind of qualified, educated, and psychologically aware person I should have tried finding a long time ago. I hadn't even gotten to the part of the last half of my marriage before the hour was up.
It not only took that long to get through some of that most unnerving sections for the years that included becoming a single mom at 18 and cramming a marriage into the most volatile time of my life, but to also make sure I could shut up long enough to receive feedback from the counselor, which I needed so much more desperately than to go through hellish recollections.
Without even getting halfway through the story, he had insight to proffer, as well as very seriously placed, examined conclusions. Analyses (and only a couple! very gingerly set down before me) and words that were long overdue, that rang through my very core like the bang of a bell tower. Yes! I wanted to scream at him with the relief and joy. Or cry -- yes, that was me, that was how I felt, yes I wish I would have seen it with that kind of vision back then.
I didn't need to finish or get all the way through. I didn't want to really be whining about this yet again. And with the professionalism and tremendous heart given in that office, he certainly wasn't interrupting me. It was the luckiest shot in the whole world. Finding this person. Finding a scientifically, masterfully educated professional without stoicism and indifference, or cheeky antecdotes. And finding someone with such heart and relateable emotion without being self-indulgent, self-seeking, or flippant.
And finding that perfect helper even after my initial journey was severely skeptical of anyone who put themselves in a mental help category of any kind back in the day. (A severely poisoned attitude, exacerbated by like-minded disdain for the same in my household growing up.)
I should have done this a long time ago.
My apologies to the people I knew up north who EVER had to sit through my story even once.
