I have started going to counselling again, after several failed attempts in the past (hmm, I probably shouldn't have used that word, 'failed', should I? There again, I shouldn't use the word 'shouldn't', either).
Anyway..
this is what I wrote after the first session:
I just came back from my first counseling session with my new counsellor, Jackie. My first reaction is… I’m not sure. I’m put off by her accent – she sounds uneducated – now how snobbish is that? She must be reasonably intelligent and qualified, or she wouldn’t be a counsellor. I don’t know what to think. I made a start, I told her quite a lot about myself and where I think the problem’s coming from (as far as I can tell). She didn’t say much. But she did get me to start thinking about my childhood, which, yes, I knew I needed to do.
She asked if there had ever been a time I could remember when I could say I was ‘happy’. Well, who can say? When I start thinking about that, the instant reaction is to say ‘no’, but that it probably just looking from here.
She asked stuff about the start of my relationship with Hubby, and we got on to my first marriage and how things happened from that, some of the stuff we covered in the joint sessions we went to a few months ago (different counsellor).
She also got me thinking about when I first went away to university, and I realised, yes, I was happy then, for a while, happy as I now am when I go away to conferences.
She commented on the way I said, ‘oh, but it only lasted for a term’. Well, I can remember getting seriously miserable around the Christmas time, and when I went back, boy trouble, as usual. And I know some of the way I was feeling from a diary note from that time that I came across recently. When I re-read it , I was struck by how similar in many ways my feelings still are.
But, what am I going to do? I need to make the decision, I shouldn’t just keep going because I feel obliged to, if I don’t think she’s the right person for me to see. It’s too expensive to do that. She did say that maybe the other counsellors I’ve had haven’t really given me what I wanted (which is true), and that maybe I wasn't ready then.
She will be there next week, but not the following week. I’ll go back again next week (I’ve paid already) and maybe make the decision then. Maybe I’ll talk through some of these issues with her then (without telling her that she seems ‘uneducated’).