Counselling Conundrum

[sae]

.. for perhaps the strangest reason. A few months back I started with a counseling center run by college students at the local big name university. Those students worked hard and diligently with me and I wasn't dissatisfied at all with their techniques. My problem stemmed from something entirely different that had me feeling like a real asshole.

March is hell month for me. That's the month my thoughts unwittingly reopen old wounds concern my late husband and our marriage. The trouble came when I found myself sitting across the room from a girl likely barely 20 years old. Chances are my story is not wholly unique, really, but I couldn't shake the fear that just retelling old stories was like opening a Pandora's box of all the evil shut the world is made of.
At 20 I didn't want to be reminded that people hurt others because they hurt, or out of mental illness, addiction and anger. It just didn't seem fair, you know, to share these kinds of truths, the pain of being helpless under the bruising grasp of another, or the mental anguish that comes with losing someone to addiction over a number of years.
I looked in that woman's eyes and found an innocence and naiveté that I had lost so long ago. Truth is something that can never be unlearned and a small part of me thinks that my anxiety and obsessive maladaptive behaviors are in part at least manifestations of learning so many hard truths.
I am a cheerful person, yet the cheer hides an angry bitterness that lends a curiously conflicting quality to my speech. I can tell the story of hard days with a low, uneasy chuckle. To me these incidents are funny because I will never admit that I have already cried over them.
In counselling I could only say so much before I watched the expression change on my counselors face. There are some truths better left unspoken; unfortunately they are the same truths that haunt me still. They are like a communicable disease, infecting everyone it comes in contact with. Is it right or fair for me to spread them?
Likely not, and that's okay. If it is one thing I have learned in this whole ordeal it is that my anxiety won't kill me, just exhaust me.

[Ponder]

Well written. Being able to hold your thoughts in such a manner shows just how far you have come. I struggle daily and appreciate the sincere words your able to muster here. I find strength and peace through accepting whatever comes my way and when able to write in such a way as you have done here, I'm better able to catch the breeze and find a moments peace.

With regard to teenage and early 20's councillors, I understand what you mean. I even think they do to some degree. In those situations, I remind myself that we are all our own audience and that we all have to start somewhere. That outlook helps me a lot in those times.

I'm already looking forward to the next gust of wind, despite sitting here knowing that none of us will ever be completely free of pain. (I'm learning to accept and that helps the pain turn into something else, something better) It's been a while since I have been able to hold my thoughts and feelings like that.

TY for sharing - especially in the manner you have. That takes quite some skill.
May you too, soon catch a breeze.

Dave.

[Dahila]

Thanks Sae, I had read it with interest, no many post are good enough to waste the time, Your is the one I could read twice or more. yeah all of us are pretending that we are ok.........masks and masks over the masks. I do not believe in therapy, I do not even open to my psychiatrist after 4 years of seeing her regularly

[sae]

Thank you for the kind responses. Part of my journey has been changing the way I view my past experiences. A part of me wants to share them with the world, wag my finger and say "nope, don't do what I did." The rest of me has come to terms with the fact that not everyone I meet will ever have need of the stories I tell. The saying "ignorance is bliss" is a very kind statement in this sense. At the same time I have stopped inventing things to be afraid of too. I don't have to know all the ways this brutally short life of mine will go wrong, and not everyone has the need to know my torment either. My job is to spread joy and kindness to the best of my ability, no more and no less.