Personal Experiences of Counselling
I absolutely concur with Sam, having worked in a wide variety of sales roles and having experienced so many personal ups and downs particularly in relation to professional career goals and with reference to personal relationships, I can say that eventually it did come to a head. Seeing a counsellor has given me a better level of self understanding and made me more enlightened at the very least.
I decided to visit a counsellor to find out more about myself and understand why sometimes I felt depressed and sometimes on top of the world. I was very glad to find Counselling Directory, the profiles were in depth and allowed me to select someone who I felt comfortable with even before meeting them for the first time.
Since going I have seen a number of positive benefits in my life mainly as I started to connect with feelings that I didn't know I had repressed. I have found the more I put in, the more I get out and whilst sometimes it has been hard I am glad I started going.
I think ultimately everybody has issues one way or another and it's great to have someone to talk to who accepts you and is able to help you make continual progress. So in short great site, great experiences so far.
Since going I have seen a number of positive benefits in my life mainly as I started to connect with feelings that I didn't know I had repressed. I have found the more I put in, the more I get out and whilst sometimes it has been hard I am glad I started going.
I think ultimately everybody has issues one way or another and it's great to have someone to talk to who accepts you and is able to help you make continual progress. So in short great site, great experiences so far.
I’ve always suffered with bouts of depression and anxiety, but never enough to seek help. That is until I had my son, Thomas, who’s now three. After I split up with his father when Thomas was two, I was at an all-time low and worried about my ability to be a good mother.
I found my counsellor/therapist nine months ago in a small ad, and checked out her website. She specialises in something called Psychosynthesis, which is “soul-centred” and helps you get in touch with your inner self and deal with problems by seeing how your own thoughts and interpretations have shaped them. I discovered that I’d felt very judged all my life and that I subsequently took any negative comments to heart, always beating myself up for not being good enough. I hadn’t previously realised was that it was my own emotions that caused me to interpret other people’s words and actions so negatively.
Because of the way I was, I couldn’t trust myself I constantly questioned my ability to perform well – and I couldn’t trust anyone else either, so my relationships with men were always disastrous.
Sometimes my counsellor/therapist would help me go back to painful childhood memories that I’d buried so I could see how they’d frozen me in time and stopped me moving on. She didn’t ask intrusive questions, but got me to talk with subtle prompts, for example, “You haven’t mentioned much about your dad”. It was up to me to explore those areas when I was ready.
I was seeing her every week for nine months and with each session my confidence grew. I realised I had a lot of buried resentment inside me. In my family, we hadn’t been allowed to show our anger, but she helped me release it, and doing so strengthened me as a person. I could see how repressing it had depressed me.
Understanding my anger helped me as a mum, too. I could allow Thomas to be cross, and let him know it was a normal emotion. I don’t want him to end up burying feelings as I did. The sessions have made me feel more confident as a mum and as a person.
I found my counsellor/therapist nine months ago in a small ad, and checked out her website. She specialises in something called Psychosynthesis, which is “soul-centred” and helps you get in touch with your inner self and deal with problems by seeing how your own thoughts and interpretations have shaped them. I discovered that I’d felt very judged all my life and that I subsequently took any negative comments to heart, always beating myself up for not being good enough. I hadn’t previously realised was that it was my own emotions that caused me to interpret other people’s words and actions so negatively.
Because of the way I was, I couldn’t trust myself I constantly questioned my ability to perform well – and I couldn’t trust anyone else either, so my relationships with men were always disastrous.
Sometimes my counsellor/therapist would help me go back to painful childhood memories that I’d buried so I could see how they’d frozen me in time and stopped me moving on. She didn’t ask intrusive questions, but got me to talk with subtle prompts, for example, “You haven’t mentioned much about your dad”. It was up to me to explore those areas when I was ready.
I was seeing her every week for nine months and with each session my confidence grew. I realised I had a lot of buried resentment inside me. In my family, we hadn’t been allowed to show our anger, but she helped me release it, and doing so strengthened me as a person. I could see how repressing it had depressed me.
Understanding my anger helped me as a mum, too. I could allow Thomas to be cross, and let him know it was a normal emotion. I don’t want him to end up burying feelings as I did. The sessions have made me feel more confident as a mum and as a person.
I am currently having counselling. I found the first several weeks quite difficult and emotionally very exhausting - but - also liberating. I was going (and still am) through a delayed grieving process, amongst other things, which is why, I expect, it was particularly intense. It is still very much 'work in progress' - cliche but an accurate description.
My confidence has increased dramatically. Confidence in my own judgement. I am still me, but with a changing perspective on life. It's very interesting to learn new positive and understanding ways of viewing things - past, present and future.
I also started the counselling for anxiety (it stops me from doing certain things - phobias etc) but that is still being worked on, it's going to take time. I have found that a lot of things connect and make up the bigger picture, as I go along. Things that wouldn't have occured to me otherwise and believe me, I am well practiced at self analysis!
Sorry if this seems disjointed I am really tired at the moment! Anyway, even though I still have a way to go with my anxiety (but it is getting better) it's really helping me overall and there are issues that I am very much making peace with which make a big difference to my life and how I feel about me.
If you feel you want to and need to - do it. If you're open to it, it can only help.
My confidence has increased dramatically. Confidence in my own judgement. I am still me, but with a changing perspective on life. It's very interesting to learn new positive and understanding ways of viewing things - past, present and future.
I also started the counselling for anxiety (it stops me from doing certain things - phobias etc) but that is still being worked on, it's going to take time. I have found that a lot of things connect and make up the bigger picture, as I go along. Things that wouldn't have occured to me otherwise and believe me, I am well practiced at self analysis!
Sorry if this seems disjointed I am really tired at the moment! Anyway, even though I still have a way to go with my anxiety (but it is getting better) it's really helping me overall and there are issues that I am very much making peace with which make a big difference to my life and how I feel about me.
If you feel you want to and need to - do it. If you're open to it, it can only help.
I am currently receiving help with abuse from a mentally ill/emotionally unbalanced parent when I was a child. As I still get verbal abuse in the form of email, telephone calls when she's ill, I felt that I could not continue with my life as an adult also getting ruined. Getting the right help is a lot cheaper than my funeral as I was getting that low.
The enormous inconsistencies and neglect are being discussed with boundaries and a coping plan arranged. I feel drained by each session but the counselling is working. If anyone is considering pros and cons of it, it will work.
The enormous inconsistencies and neglect are being discussed with boundaries and a coping plan arranged. I feel drained by each session but the counselling is working. If anyone is considering pros and cons of it, it will work.
I spent a good few years thinking about contacting a counsellor before I actually made the phone call to arrange a session. Whenever I hit a really low point in my life, I would decide it was time to get some kind of help, but somehow I always managed to pull myself out of the low point and then decide perhaps I didn’t need a counsellor after all. My life went on like this for a while, but there finally came a time when I was unable to pull myself out of it and decided I needed to do something about it. I felt like something inside finally gave in and I accepted that feeling this way wasn’t going to go away by ignoring it. Hitting that particular low point was almost a relief thinking back – at least now I had acknowledged I wanted something to change.
After I’d made the decision to speak to a counsellor I immediately started to feel a little more in control – as if I was making an effort to do something about feeling so low all of the time. I remember phoning up and arranging a time, and feeling hopeful about the future, glad I was finally making a positive step forward.
The day before my first session I remember feeling extremely anxious. I wondered what I’d have to talk about – I mean I felt low a lot of the time but I didn’t know why. I wondered if my counsellor would think I was wasting his time by going along and saying I didn’t know what was wrong with me! I mean if I didn’t know what was wrong with me maybe there wasn’t actually anything wrong?! Maybe it was all in my head and he’d laugh at me for thinking something was wrong! I was worried that I’d have nothing to say and the things I did want to say felt too personal to talk to someone else about anyway.
I almost cancelled my first session but somehow I forced myself to go. I think the fact that I’d spent the last few years contemplating counselling meant I had to go through with it now I’d finally made the call. I can imagine a lot of people cancel their first session and I completely understand why.
When I got there I felt sick with nerves – I’m not the kind of person who talks openly about my feelings so how was I going to talk to a complete stranger? The whole thing seemed ridiculous! I think I’d built it up in my head to be far worse than it really was though because as soon as I met Jeff, I felt more at ease.
I don’t remember the first few sessions very well. I think I spent most of my time trying to get my head around the fact that I was actually having counselling. Even though I’d thought about counselling in the past, I always thought I was the kind of person who wouldn’t need to go through with it, and now that I had, I wondered how it had come to this. I think I spent a lot of my time watching what I said, not wanting to say anything too personal that I’d have to expand upon. Looking back, this now makes me laugh!
I think it takes time to build up trust with another person and I realised it’s probably quite normal to feel like that during the first session. Once I trusted Jeff, I opened up and once that happened I knew counselling was going to help my life a lot. I could speak about anything I wanted to, without worrying that I was being judged. I think this is the biggest difference between talking things through with a counsellor and talking to friends or relatives. While friends and relatives want to help, they don’t always understand and some of the things you might say could be taken personally or the wrong way. This didn’t happen with Jeff; he didn’t judge me or take things personally, and was able to give a new perspective on lots of the things we discussed.
He didn’t laugh at me for thinking something was wrong, or tell me I was wasting his time. He said he admired the fact that I wanted to change my life for the better. For me personally, I leant how to cope better when things in my life were hard. Rather than building everything up in my head, I felt that talking about things helped me to see them how they really were.
Before I had counselling I had two perceptions of having counselling: one, that it would make everything better, or two, it wouldn’t work at all and was a waste of time. Now that I’ve experienced it for myself I have to admit that both of my perceptions were wrong. While counselling can’t make everything better, it can help to put things into a different perspective, and teach ways of coping better. It’s also nice to know there’s someone there for you no matter what. I'm glad I didn't cancel my initial session as talking to a counsellor is one of the most positive steps I have taken in my life.
After I’d made the decision to speak to a counsellor I immediately started to feel a little more in control – as if I was making an effort to do something about feeling so low all of the time. I remember phoning up and arranging a time, and feeling hopeful about the future, glad I was finally making a positive step forward.
The day before my first session I remember feeling extremely anxious. I wondered what I’d have to talk about – I mean I felt low a lot of the time but I didn’t know why. I wondered if my counsellor would think I was wasting his time by going along and saying I didn’t know what was wrong with me! I mean if I didn’t know what was wrong with me maybe there wasn’t actually anything wrong?! Maybe it was all in my head and he’d laugh at me for thinking something was wrong! I was worried that I’d have nothing to say and the things I did want to say felt too personal to talk to someone else about anyway.
I almost cancelled my first session but somehow I forced myself to go. I think the fact that I’d spent the last few years contemplating counselling meant I had to go through with it now I’d finally made the call. I can imagine a lot of people cancel their first session and I completely understand why.
When I got there I felt sick with nerves – I’m not the kind of person who talks openly about my feelings so how was I going to talk to a complete stranger? The whole thing seemed ridiculous! I think I’d built it up in my head to be far worse than it really was though because as soon as I met Jeff, I felt more at ease.
I don’t remember the first few sessions very well. I think I spent most of my time trying to get my head around the fact that I was actually having counselling. Even though I’d thought about counselling in the past, I always thought I was the kind of person who wouldn’t need to go through with it, and now that I had, I wondered how it had come to this. I think I spent a lot of my time watching what I said, not wanting to say anything too personal that I’d have to expand upon. Looking back, this now makes me laugh!
I think it takes time to build up trust with another person and I realised it’s probably quite normal to feel like that during the first session. Once I trusted Jeff, I opened up and once that happened I knew counselling was going to help my life a lot. I could speak about anything I wanted to, without worrying that I was being judged. I think this is the biggest difference between talking things through with a counsellor and talking to friends or relatives. While friends and relatives want to help, they don’t always understand and some of the things you might say could be taken personally or the wrong way. This didn’t happen with Jeff; he didn’t judge me or take things personally, and was able to give a new perspective on lots of the things we discussed.
He didn’t laugh at me for thinking something was wrong, or tell me I was wasting his time. He said he admired the fact that I wanted to change my life for the better. For me personally, I leant how to cope better when things in my life were hard. Rather than building everything up in my head, I felt that talking about things helped me to see them how they really were.
Before I had counselling I had two perceptions of having counselling: one, that it would make everything better, or two, it wouldn’t work at all and was a waste of time. Now that I’ve experienced it for myself I have to admit that both of my perceptions were wrong. While counselling can’t make everything better, it can help to put things into a different perspective, and teach ways of coping better. It’s also nice to know there’s someone there for you no matter what. I'm glad I didn't cancel my initial session as talking to a counsellor is one of the most positive steps I have taken in my life.
