Going to a counsellor has become fashionable and popular. Even in today's cinema we very often see scenes from a counsellor's practice, complete with whole excerpts from sessions. So what has been pushing us towards this decision lately — what makes us ready to share the unbearable pain inside us, the pain we have long since got used to living with?
The older we get, the more weight we give to questions of existence, and the harder we try to arrive at awareness, at a life without strain, at enjoying what we have achieved. But the children grow up, we grow older — and here comes that very midlife crisis. And this is where a phrase comes to my mind: "there is a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together". You would think one could simply live and be glad — but no such luck. We start drawing the bottom line, and some of us come to the conclusion that life has passed us by and we have not really lived at all. And our vital strength and our stock of resources have been spent, with nowhere left to draw more from. That is when we start looking for that one specialist who will patch us up, give us a drop of hope and a ray of light to show us the way out of the dark kingdom we have built for ourselves. We come to a specialist — and thank God if we happen upon a seasoned, experienced counsellor who will heal us a little with a healthy psyche, or at least with the healthy part of it.
What do you feel as you leave the consulting room? A surge of strength, because the inner awareness of your own personal processes has broken through part of the dead end you have long been sitting at the bottom of — did you feel euphoria, or disappointment at the time and money wasted? If my subject interests you, I invite you to talk it over and to share your own experience.
