My time with the nut-job doctor

I have been seeing a counsellor for the past three months. Contrary to popular belief, I am not suffering from insanity and don’t go there to ‘have a good cry’. I have actually never cried in front of my counsellor.

No one recommended that I should see a counsellor. I completed a self-referral form as I felt that I was at a point in my life where I needed the extra help to get some perspective on my situation and to talk to someone on the ‘outside’. I have always felt slightly alone and found it hard to completely fit-in with society at school and now at university. But the final straw was a cheating boyfriend.

When I met Adam in the first few months at university and we got along so well that I finally felt that I was filling the emptiness inside me. Then suddenly a few months into the relationship, things were not going so well. We were arguing and there was tension over the smallest things. Eventually he cheated and I found out.

To those of you who have shared this experience, I need not elaborate, to those who have not, it made my world collapse to the point where I could not eat or sleep for days on end.

University is a pressured environment. Everyone is in a rush to get somewhere, to do better, to achieve something in this world and I felt that I was being left behind. Rather than wallowing in self-pity I decided to take action and get the help I knew I needed.

I wouldn't say counselling is a magic cure and I definitely struggled with the idea that I was one of those dead-beat 'failures' who needed that extra help to look after my mental health. I had always scorned at people to attend counselling and so had many of my friends. But it helped give me some perspective on life and my situation. I discussed the negatives of what I was feeling and was then encouraged to find facts (not feelings, emotions and ideas, but FACTS) to support that feeling. Often I couldn't find any and that made me realise that actually I was wrong to feel that way because I'm simply not thinking it through and jumping to conclusions.

Ofcourse, counsellors are not allowed to give advice (though I think my counsellor was not as subtle), but she helped me consider my options and focus them by considering all the evidence I had to hand. 

I haven't told anyone that I am seeing a counsellor at all. None of my friends or family know. Once a friend referred to counsellors at the "nut-job doctor" and I lost all confidence in being able to tell her that I was apparently one of those "nut-jobs".

Sometimes I'm actually skeptical of whether this is actually helping me in any way, and worried about people finding out, but I am willing to do just about anything right now to make sure I have a successful future and my situation and the hell of the past few months don't have any lasting impact on me.