Recently, my dad asked me what I had learned in counseling. He knew that I had gone for the two years I was in graduate school and figuring my way out of a major depressive episode and it had helped me a lot. His last 3 years have been really bad and he's started talking to a counselor.
I remembered a few things I had realized- being happy isn't a future goal as much as a day-to-day way of being and how I never had parents in my teens, just a mom at work and dad who was traveling for work or drunk in the garage. Despite sharing most of the things I'd figured out, I didn't think what I was saying way really conveyed what my time with my therapist really did for me. Soon after, I was talking to a very close friend and he told me the details of his childhood trauma. I knew it had happened because he's very open about the face that he was molested as a child but avoided thinking about the specifics. It was clearly very hard for him to talk about it and had so much empathy for him because I know how hard putting a dark and painful thought or memory into words can be. I listened, laid there with him and let him know I would always be there. One of the big things that hit close to home what that he needed help and no one was there for him. I shared my version of when I needed help and had no one around and felt the pain and darkness in my own memories but, despite their gravity in my mind, they didn't seem to hurt as much as my friend's.
That, I realized this morning, is what going to counseling has really done for me. Talking about the hard things for my past, having someone help me work through it and learning how to approach something that really hurts and think more about it without getting lost in shame/anger/sadness/fear. It's helped me work out a lot of things, but more importantly, it's given me enough tools to figure out how to handle the dark time of life, past or present. I know I can ask other for help when I need it and how to shut down negative thoughts that start cycling around sometimes. Therapy didn't fix my life; it showed me how to do it.
