A Suitable Candidate

I wouldn’t say I’m a connoisseur of counsellors (although I DO love the alliteration) but I am beginning to see that they’re not all ‘the same’. 

Not that I tend to geneneralise… But  when someone mentions the word ‘counsellor’, I do see a lot of beige. The room has to be, of course.  The pictures on the wall have to give off a soft glow of reassurance at best.  At worst there are probably directions to the Fire Escape – so quite reassuring if you’re a claustrophobe I should imagine. And nowhere on the counsellor’s wall will you ever EVER see a print of Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’’ – however much you’d love there to be.

*I’d* love there to be.

The first counsellor I ever met was a hirsute, be-suited Indian man called Dr Rah (*name changed for protection purposes – although I’m now not sure he actually wasn’t called Dr Rah… anyway this was decades ago – he’s probably dead by now).  And we used to meet on Wednesday afternoon in his office at the Psychiatric Wing of our local hospital.

The fact that I was driven there by my mum and dad who sat shame-faced in the waiting room for my 45 minutes to be up didn’t help me relax any, I can tell you.

The company I was working for at the time was paying for his counselling (being part of the Private Healthcare American companies liked to give their employees in the 80’s) and all I can remember of our sessions was the way he spent Sssooooo long tapping the tobacco out of his stinky old pipe under the table we ‘shared’ and refilling it with fresh leaves from his pouch – an exercise he took far more interest in than he ever seemed to do with me, his patient. 

I didn’t really understand everything he said to me and the only thing I can remember being slightly worried about was when he pushed a half dozen tablets across the desk at me and asked me to arrange these as ‘people who are important in your life’ – with the biggest tablet being me.

Considering I was there mostly because I’d tried to overdose, I think the irony was lost somewhere. Either that or he hadn’t read my notes properly.

And so I lined up my tablets accordingly.  My boyfriend being the closest followed by my best friend, other best friends etc. 

He stared at them for an awkwardly long time, sucking on his stinky pipe and nodding (think Peter Sellers in ‘The Party’) and then made the statement “so in order to become closer to you, the one before has to be eliminated?”

I don’t think I’ve ever rearranged anything quite so hastily (and guiltily) and this sentence – clearly – has stuck with me.

The next Counsellor was a nice lady who smiled a lot and unbeknown to her, gave me the validation and assurance I needed that I wasn’t wasting her time and I was a suitable candidate for counselling and that if I wasn’t happy with my life then I was the only person who could change it.  I liked her and I only ‘needed’ three (NHS) sessions with her before I’d rather extravagantly interpreted any  ‘advice’ she’d given me into “Find the first guy you meet who takes an interest in you, no, no… of course it doesn’t matter that you’re both completely rat-faced at a house party in Aberdeen… and move him in with you and your bewildered 6 year old daughter until you realise he’s an idle alcoholic who’s hell-bent on self-destruction and doesn’t mind who he takes down with him.  Oh and let him buy a dog that will turn into the size of a donkey before it’s 5 months old and scare the living sh*t out of  anyone that might want to beat a path to your door. (Perhaps to rescue you and/or daughter). Um..  Okay?”

Suitable candidate for counselling?  Yup, she wasn’t kidding!.

The third counsellor I had was the lady I started seeing last year, following the 2^nd car crash in five months and she was a private, fee-handler, recommended by my doctor who needed me to be ‘fast-tracked into the system’. Again, she reassured me I wasn’t wasting her time (of course not – I was paying her for it, after all!) and that she considered me a suitable candidate for counselling. 

Oh, I think I see a pattern emerging.

But as the weeks drew on, I realised that she wasn’t actually paying much attention to me.  For instance we’d stop after 50 minutes and she’d always say: “we’ll take this thread up again next week” and we never did.  Of course I COULD have informed her of this fact, but I rather thought that was more her job than mine and so I silently seethed until I’d relaxed enough to just blether on about whatever was angsting me that week – usually the Hubby or Road Users.

And after 8 weeks I didn’t feel I’d got anywhere.  And I kept asking her if we were making progress, to which she’d reply: “Do you  think we’re making progress?”.  All very “bah” and frustrating.

So when the snows started before Christmas and I was told that my lovely hubby wasn’t allowed to wait in the Waiting Room for me and would have to endure sub-zero temperatures outside in the car for 50 minutes, I decided that was my last session with her. 

I was even dismayed not to get so much as a ‘feedback’/report’ or even flippin’ Christmas card from her and wouldn’t recommend her services. She knew how to drag it out a bit and still achieve nothing whilst being paid handsomely for whatever it was she thought she was qualified to do.

*breathe*.

Now the lady I’m currently seeing – and have only seen twice – is someone I like very much.  She’s already right Up There in my estimations, not merely because she remembers what we were talking about last week (okay, so it’s only been 2 but hey…) she also makes comment.  This week, after I’d told her how my mum had died, she said: “you look terribly sad” – which I know sounds like an obvious thing to say but I never realised my mother’s death actually made me sad until yesterday when she told me how my face had reflected the words I’d just spoken.

We have only 8 sessions before the NHS runs out but already I am confident she will help me find out what's holding me back and preventing me from leaping at life with arms outstretched and a giddy smile on my face.

She’s used two words so far that I have chewed over and over in my head endlessly and which I’m becoming very familiar with and have even started to attribute to parts of my life that have, for whatever reason, gone ‘wrong’ and these words are Blocked and Shocked.

Quite apart from anything else I’m oddly gratified that they rhyme.

And how do you feel about that?

*see below*

So the counselling is still happening.  And throwing up the occasional surprise, it has to be said.
Bearing in mind the initial reason for having these sessions was because of my shattered confidence behind the wheel of a car - due in no small part by having two die at my hands in 5 months, as regulars will already know - the 'conversation' occurring once a week doesn't seem to be tailored to re-building my assertiveness on the road or anywhere else.

I don't know what I expected to be frank (although it IS quite refreshing to be Frank once a week). But I think I kind of imagined it would be a bit more structured than it is.  I mean, I  seem to go inside the room, sit on my chair and just vent my spleen.  Not in an altogether *bad* way - although last night I did seem to simply sit and bitch about The Husband for an hour solid (I was still making mental addendums on the way out for next time.... sad, but true). And  I think I thought that by now we'd be... I don't know... doing psychological exercises in self-delusion techniques so that when I get behind the wheel of a car I imagine I am an Invincible (female) version of Damon Hill or Jensen Button or whoever is the greatest driver of all time.  So not Jeremy Clarkson.

This doesn't seem to be happening.
But these things I have learnt thus far from my sessions:

1. I can recall a six digit code to enable my entrance through the front door of the therapy centre after only having looked at the piece of paper once.  (I was unbearably smug at parties with the *guess what's missing off the tray* game).

2. I don't blame my parents (as much as I thought I did, anyway).  Or maybe this has more to do with "not speaking ill of the dead" than proper, actual forgiveness - my counsellor has yet to give me the 'nod' on this one.  That's how it works, right?.

3. Whilst I can speak for a whole 53 minutes without repetition and hesitation,  I can still deviate for England.

4. I think I'm stupid.  Every time I say it, it echoes through my head.  "I know that's a stupid thing to think" I say.  Or "I know I'm being stupid".  And she doesn't do what 'ordinary' listeners would do in a 'usual' situation.  She doesn't frown, shake her head and say back "Oh no, no you're not...".  She just sits and waits to see if I need to quantify my stupidity and when I don't (because I'm waiting for the 'normal' noises of assurance that I'm not stupid, and that's a stupid think to think) she says something like "you say you think you're stupid a lot...".  Which makes me think.  And then she'll say "why do you think you're stupid?".  And when I think about it properly, I realise I actually don't think I'm stupid, I just need assurances that I'm normal.  

5.  Even though I was never a Brownie ( they scared me and I couldn't even go into the village hall to join them because I was convinced they'd all laugh at me and hate me) or a Girl Scout, I have a very real need to Be Prepared.  This manifests itself in my kitchen cupboards.  There is nothing there that hasn't got a back-up.  And, as the Girl and the Hubs will confirm, my mantra is "we never run out".  Which is currently not working at the moment because both we and Sainsburys have  run out of Tomato Puree and for this reason I am mightily glad I have sleeping tablets to get me off of a night otherwise I'd be lying awake 'til the small hours re-scheduling meal plans for the remainder of the week or until I have enough bravado to scale the winding car park of the nearest superstore (ironically Sainsburys).


6. The tiniest glimmer of understanding can make me weep.  As I was leaving my session, my counsellor said 'see you next week' and I must have looked a bit non-committal.  'Do you still think you're wasting my time?' she asked, and I nodded.  'I'm sure you've got better things you could be doing,' I told her, 'people with far bigger problems than my stupid (see?) ones...' and she smiled like I'd imagine the Virgin Mary would, if I believed she ever existed.  'You're not wasting my time,' she said.  And with that reassurance I left, in tears.

Then on the way home I realised that she could also have meant that I am a prime candidate for counselling, I'm as mad as a box of frogs* and will keep the Counselling Centre afloat single handedly for the forseeable future.

And I still don't know how I feel about that.

"I Believe I Can Fly...okay then, meow really loudly"

My lovely (separated-at-birth) writer-sister Fionnuala blogged about self belief/confidence today here and she couldn't have posted at a more appropriate time.

I my teens I had a book of Quotes.  The most heavily-thumbed section of which was self-belief/worth/confidence/ goal-achieving; that kinda thing.  And it didn't matter how many times I repeated whatever quote I liked best that day/week, it really didn't seem to have any major influence on how my life was going at the time.  And now I know why.
Because the words were just that.
Words.  On a piece of paper.  Whereas what was most important was how much I believed in these words inside.  And how hard I really wanted these things to happen.  And how much confidence I had in myself that these things could really come to fruition.
Which I clearly never did.
I was always too distracted by others achieving their personal goals and marvelling at the way they seemed to have managed success so effortlessly (it appeared to me, the bystander) that I lost sight of what it was that I really wanted.  And in the end I convinced myself that it didn't matter, it was nice that fortune favoured others and I was probably just destined to be part of the audience in this great performance called Life.  Even if that's all I had, it was still probably quite important.  But it's never felt quite enough.


And even though I vehemently oppose the whole "I blame my parents" adage, I am completely convinced that had I been brought up surrounded with a lot more (for "more", read "any") encouragement and support and just unconditional love of wanting the best for me, as a child and growing adult, then I certainly wouldn't still be beating my head against my literary blocked wall and wondering when it's all going to happen. (oh, I didn't say 'If'  I wonder if that means anything?).

But now I need to locate, pin down and trust in this elusive 'self-confidence' thing.  I was never shown where it was kept before.  And on the rare occasions I do think I 'found' it, I was told to 'stop being such a selfish show-off' or berated for 'having ideas above my station' or even (seriously) that I wasn't allowed to have an opinion whilst I still lived under my parents' roof.  And, no, I'm not blaming them. Anymore, anyway.
No, I have come to accept that that was the way they thought parenting should go.  After all, they must have learnt by example, so if I want to 'blame' anyone, then I could just keep going back and back through generations of them and still never stop. A pointless exercise and one which sounds too exhausting to begin.

That's why God invented  Support Groups, Friends, Counsellors (fee-earning Friends) Networks and the Internet.
Just for me.
I know He didn't really.  I thought I'd just write that to see how much more important it made me feel.  Which it didn't at all.  It made me feel a bit blasphemous to be honest.  Which is another childhood throwback.
Oh, and which is also why I get a lovely, encouraging Note From the Universe every (week) day, telling me how great I am, how much fun I'm going to have and how my dreams, if I want them hard enough, WILL come true.  And for the time it takes me to read it, I really DO start believing it.  Until I realise that a hundred million other people are also receiving the same mail.
But  if we went around believing in ourselves then we'd all be happier, wouldn't we, and everyone would be nicer to and love one another more, and really, isn't that what IT's all about?

"Tell me about your childhood..."

So my first 'counselling session'  left me emotionally drained and physically wrecked.  God knows how I'll be feeling once  - or if - I start having them regularly and intensively.
And even though it wasn't a 'real' session (it was more an assessment and a discussion on how it could/might help, but we did touch on some very painful points) I do think I learnt stuff about myself I either never realised or else wanted to admit to before.
Here's a taster:
1. I don't *actually* blame my parents for everything.  Even though most times I feel like I do.  What I do is reason that I am the way I am because of the way I was brought up - not intentionally damaging -  but merely the only way my parents knew *how*.  My husband also helped me learn me this when we first met and it was one of the reasons (even though there are thousands) that I fell in love with him.
2. I do not cope well with the unexpected. I seem to react the same way to a sudden scare (i.e. car in side of mine) as I do with either the death of a parent/marriage or, perversely, a spider appearing from nowhere into my line of vision.  I am momentarily frozen, then shaken, then after a brief spell of bravado, I crumble.
3. Although I do not 'have suicidal thoughts' (as left decidedly UN-ticked on the checklist) I DO think about death - and dead people - every... single... day. But then so does Joanna Lumley so I'm in good company.  Although she IS slightly closer to it than I am....hopefully...not in a bad way I don't mean... god,  now I'm rambling.
4. I believe I've always had a serotonin deficiency (that's the happy hormone in the brain, right?) and that's why I get such appallingly bad PMS (which HAS occasionally resulted in *real* thoughts of No.3 above) and am prone to high levels of worry, anxiety and stress and extreme states of weepiness.  It's probably about time I got this deficiency addressed so it stops impacting on everyday 'life'.
5. I'm an emotional old pongo.  I cried openly in front of a total stranger, whether there was a hat dropped or not and felt a lot lost and vulnerable after I got back (shaking) into the car to come home. I think I need to cry more.
And not just during X-Factor or Deal or No Deal.