-Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
I may have changed that slightly from the original quote but the point still stands, it's really not that much fun. Around 5 or 6 years ago I noticed I felt bad pretty much all the time and my already pretty low self esteem became even worse. It took a year or so to work out that it was probably depression, another year for me to go to the doctor about it and, after doing nothing with the doctors advise, another 3 and a half years to go back to the doctor. Then 6 months later (after ignoring lots of phone calls) I ended up going to counselling and had 18 weeks of that which brings me up to right now. Well, Wednesday.
I hated the idea of counselling and I hated counselling at first. I assumed it would do nothing and I found it grim talking about myself as it's something I always have hated (and probably always will hate). But I started to get into it and found it was actually having a decent effect on me, I found it easier to talk every week and was actually making connections between things that I couldn't have mapped out in the confines of my own head. I found splitting the week up into little week bites rather than every event being sent to the great past abyss. It was also quite nice remembering everything I said as usually I only ever opened up about problems after a few beers and my memory at that point does not exist (there's probably people out there, both friends and strangers, that know more about me than I do).
So the 18 weeks finished and I'm now officially cured. Session 18 my counselor exorcised the demons out of me in a ritual known as 'the undepressionato' and everything's now sunshine and rainbows. That's obviously a lie but I am in a sort of odd place now where, although I don't really feel any better than I did when I started (ie: shit) but I'm a bit clearer now, I feel a bit more comfortable talking to people about stuff (soz guys) and I'm making some form of effort to try and start liking myself (slow progress so far, I'm sure it'll all work out).
I have no idea why I wanted to post any of this. I got the idea in my head the other day when I walked out of the counselor place and I imagined I'd come out with some philosophical wonder about the human mind but as per I'm basically just chatting maca. Fair one if you've actually read this far. As everyone's favorite marsupial based Liverpudlian band says 'I don't know why I wanna voice this out loud, it's therapeutic somehow'. I don't really have an end to be honest. I will say thought that I wholeheartedly recommend counselling to everyone, it's an oddly rewarding experience and it's a conversational experience you can't really get anywhere else. Beacons in Stockport are top. Anyway. Yeah.
Peace
