The first counselors part I

A story of a young man's perceptions as he enters the world of psychological counseling written in the first person.

  The first time I met a therapist I was still in high school and was barely 18 years old. I was ordered to see a psychological counselor for twelve months at the direction of a judge, and was not going of my own free will.  What started this journey into the unknown land of counseling was the result of some very bad decision making. I had been caught pulling fire alarms, and phoning in bomb threats to local businesses with a friend. We had been driving around town for several weeks pulling these foolish pranks, and then watching with excitement as the fire engines and police cars raced with lights flashing and sirens screaming towards a false alarm. We were both members of the local volunteer fire department in training, and my friend’s older brother was a dispatcher on the same fire department. We both knew better than to do these things, but we did them anyway. After we were caught and went to court I was sentenced to one year of psychiatric counseling. This was in addition to one year of probation, a $500 fine and an order to pay $500 restitution to a restraint that had to be evacuated because of our ‘foolish prank’. Although I didn’t know it at the time and would not realize it for years to come, my actions were a cry for help, and these therapy sessions although not fruitful at first, provided me with my first glimpse of the fact that I was in trouble. Things were not going well inside of me and my ‘foolish pranks’ were jeopardizing the safety and well being of everyone around me, including myself.

 

  The counseling sessions were odd at and vary painful at first, with me acting like a kid who felt that he had done nothing wrong. I viewed the first counselors as ogres who were ‘out to get me’, and the counselors tried various methods of getting me to explain my actions and my feelings. Explaining something you don’t understand yourself is not very easy, and In fact it is nearly impossible. To further complicate things I was raised with the belief that mental illness was a weakness and the last thing I wanted to do was to appear weak and to admit that I had these confused feelings. My mother was in favor of me seeing a therapist and supported me as best as she could. She felt that there was no shame in asking for help when you needed it. She had a younger brother who had been in and out of jail many times for petty crimes. When my uncle George wasn’t in jail he was in the V.A. hospital in the city trying to sober up. My mother knew first hand that sometimes you just plain needed a helping hand. My father on the other hand believed that a man had deal with himself by himself. My father believed that a counselor or therapist would do more harm that good and often told me not to believe too much of what they told me. These were my grandparents but I always knew them as mom and dad. They raised me as a child because my real mother, their daughter, was too unstable to care for me. They even adopted me at age 13. It never occurred to me that these were the people who had raised my biological mother and sowed the seeds of her mental illness. Even though mom passed when I was 28 years old and dad passed when I was 32 years old, the conflict of for and against that they instilled in me lasted well into my forties. The sessions with these strange counselors helped me to see for the first time that there were causes to my pain and behavior, and that these causes were the very people who loved me. I was beginning to understand my pain, but only a little bit.

 

  I managed to have three or four counselors in a twelve month period. All but one were more closed off than I was and I felt that their only purpose was to break me down, take control away from me and make me cry. Their methods were both savage brutal. I was told repeatedly that I was hiding something and they knew what it was. I detested them for this and only went to my sessions because my probation officer told me I had to. Whatever good I derived from these sessions was overshadowed by the fact that these so called counselors were emotionally mauling me. My parents had been emotionally mauling me my entire life, but at least I knew them and deep down inside they loved me.

 

  The last counselor I saw that year was different from the others: He was older, in his forties, and seemed happy and friendly. He shook my hand when I entered the room and asked me if I would like to sit down. The others just looked at me when I met them and pointed towards a chair and barked out directions. I felt like this guy, whoever he was genuinely cared about me and wanted to help me understand the ‘pain’ I was experiencing. I felt for the first time that there might be a reason for these sessions. I felt for the first time that someone wanted to help me understand my feelings.

Author's Note

This is part one of a five part series I wrote earlier in the year. It is possibly going to morph into a larger manuscript I am thinking about, possibly called 'growing up bi polar'