Counselling Is s not working for me

[A little step forward]

I have lived with anxiety my entire adult life.
mostly social and plain old general worry about everything.
my wife finally convinced me to go see a Counsellor. And it is just not working for me. The 1st day she tried talking about meds which is something I am very much against taking. And then on the 2nd time she started talking to me about phone addiction when I was Trying to bring up the subject of my child hood which is really where all of my anxiety is routed due to a few crappy life experiences I may go into another time.

is this what all counselling is like or did I just get a dud. Either way it’s a very expensive exercise and is not helping me one bit.

sorry for the rant and horrendous grammar and spelling. I just feel lost and don’t know what to do next I’m at a point now where I want to take ownership of my anxiety and get better. I have been controlled by this long enough.

Regards.
sam.

[Aaronsis]

Hi Sam

Welcome to the forum and it is great you have reached out to get some support and not just given up on the counselling.

It is true, not all counsellors and clients match, it is like relationships and friendships, we just don't gel with everyone, and that is totally fine. I am so sorry that your first experience was not helpful to you and that you felt unheard and unsupported. I would really advise you though to keep trying and it really might take 3 or 4 or maybe even more to find the person for you. Once you do though it is like you have found the key...I have just come out of a wonderful relationship with my counsellor, she was helping me through my brother's suicide. I was skeptical and nervous and terrified, I didn't think that it would help, boy was i wrong. Getting the right person can really make a wonderful impact on healing.

I hear that you are feeling so very lost and that you are really struggling with your anxiety, every credit to you for seeking help and for coming here to get some support, that is so fantastic and a wonderful wonderful start.

Make a few calls today and see if you can find a new counsellor, that is for you and gets you...it is really invaluable.

Hope to chat some more to you Sam..oh and please don't worry about the spelling and grammar..lol..no one is judging you here!

Cheers
AS

[romantic_thi3f]

Hi Sam,

Welcome to the forums and thanks for being here. I'm really glad that you're so committed to taking ownership of your anxiety even though it sounds like you had a bad experience with the counsellor.

I've seen a lot of counsellors, and the idea is that because you pay for them - they're about you! If your childhood is something that you want to talk about, then that should be the focus of the conversation. Likewise, if you're not interested in taking medication - this isn't something anybody should push. So yeah, I think you did get a bit of a dud - because a good counsellor will at the very least listen to you and it doesn't sound like this one did.

Would you be at all open to trying one again? I'm not sure who you saw but with the MHCP (Mental Health Care Plan) it should have brought the costs down pretty significantly. If you're not familiar with this I can talk about it more, but it does make it less expensive (or even free, depending on who you see).

I hope this is something that you'll think about. I know that with childhood stuff it can be really hard to try and tackle it on your own.

RT