My Weekend Consisted Of..

Last weekend, I finally watched 'Good Will Hunting' – If you haven't seen it before or heard of it, it stars Robin Williams and it’s about a boy who is a genius but with his background and other issues he doesn’t reach his potential and then a professor recognises it and then he has to go to counselling sessions once a week as part of the deal. If you haven't seen it. I do highly recommend it.

In the film, you see that previous counsellors before Robin Williams was sat with a suit  and tie and looking down on him, trying to find quick solutions for him to become “fixed”. Now personally for me, I saw similar behaviours in my counselling sessions. Now I'm not saying that when I turned up at their office that they we’re sat there with a shirt and tie on and they thought they had the answers but I definitely felt that they we’re judging me and we’re quite patronising.

When I first went to counselling, I kind of expected the American film version (or the Freudian way) where you just sit on the couch and rant about everything, however it was nothing like that. I went in and had to fill in some questionnaire about how I was feeling – then the counsellor. This women I have never met expected me to open up to her straight away. Bearing in mind I was sixteen and I didn’t really want to be there but I also wanted to get better so I tried to cooperate my very best.

Now In CBT the whole point of it was to try and change the way you think about yourself. One exercise I had to list 10 things which I liked about myself which for someone who didn’t like anything about herself it was rather hard. I understand what they we’re trying to achieve, but for me  I was lying through my teeth. It was easy to say “I think I have nice eyes” or “I’m funny” but I didn’t believe those words, I didn’t believe anything like that. If anything I came out of that session worse. Altogether, I've had three different counsellors which isn’t really that bad compared to other people I know and A lot of people said that counselling is just bullshit but I don’t believe that’s the case. Even though for me counselling use to make me more upset, I realised that it was a safe place for me.

But, like Robin Williams was in Good Will Hunting – You have to be more of our equal than thinking you are better. I've had counsellors who have rolled their eyes at me, asked me why I was crying, called me unstable and said some really unhelpful things. Now really they shouldn't have said those things but they did but to say to someone with depression to just cheer up or someone with anxiety is your just being shy is complete and utter horse poop. If it was as easy for someone with depression to just “be happy” don’t you think we would? It’s easy to say on the outside just to do something but no-one would choose to live this kind of life if we had the choice, Others may have it worse than us but that doesn't solve our own problems.