Counseling

Counseling, once I gave in and went, wasn’t as bad as I thought.

Well, lemme clarify that.  It was horribly painful, but I could tell that it was doing some good. Looking back on it, I can see some of the things that the counselor was doing.  I had wrapped up my emotions and self behind so many layers of armor that I couldn’t express basic feelings (except, of course, anger.  I was good at that one).

She’d literally have to take a sheet of paper with a bunch of smily faces (well, faces showing different emotions) and have me point to what I was feeling.  Took me months to be able to simply point to a different emotion other than “mad” or “happy”.

This was an exercise that you’d do with an 8 year old, by the way. I was the definition of the “out of touch” man.

I had the emotional capacity of an 8 year old.

But I learned that, contrary to what I thought, the more out of touch we are from our emotions, the more they rule us.  To be truly free, a person needs to understand the emotional undercurrents that are driving their decisions.  Every decision is an emotional one, and unless  you have a grip on what you’re feeling, those feelings are going to drive your decision-making.

Took years for me to understand that.

One thing that was out of the norm was the length we saw the same counselor.  Debra and I were married for 13 and half years before we separated.  For about 10 of those years, we were seeing a counselor, off and on.  There was always something new popping up, and we go back.  I kept thinking “Maybe, if I fix this one more thing, she’ll be happy” or “If I fix this one thing, maybe I’ll be happy.”

Took me 13 years to figure out that it doesn’t work that way.