Counselling: The End.
I haven't written about my counselling in awhile, mostly coz I haven't seen my counsellor for weeks. Remember the first time I saw her, she told me she would probably only have six sessions with me? Well, we'd already had five, and then she informed me that the next time she saw me would be the sixth and last -- obviously keeping to quota, I thought. Then she gave me 'homework' (I was supposed to read my Bible every day and write down whatever insights or stuff I felt God was saying to me), and asked me to call her in two weeks to report how things were going.
I did, and then she asked me to call her again the following week, but I forgot. I know this sounds like an excuse but it genuinely never entered my mind at all, except sometimes at night, at which time I couldn't call, because my counsellor doesn't have a mobile phone and I only contact her through her office (she's one of the church staff). Of course, I could then have programmed a reminder into my phone to call her the next day, but... the less said about that the better! :P
Two weeks after I was supposed to call her but never did, she called me instead and we made an appointment to meet up. We met for our sixth and final meeting today.
She has said that it's just this portion of the journey that has ended and that if anything else comes up in future, I can always call her again. On the other hand, having her tell me, "This will be our last meeting, unless you have anything else to bring up" -- and not once, but several times -- kinda gave me the impression that she was in a hurry to end things and tie it all up in neat knots with a pretty ribbon on top. I felt like, okay, let's just end it, then. I woke up earlier than usual this morning because I was to see her before going to work, and when my housemate Emmy asked why I was up so early I mumbled, "Counselling. Last session. May as well get it over with." Then I added, "I sound so enthusiastic." Emmy replied, "Very!" Have I ever told you that I am not at my best in the mornings?
So I saw my counsellor and we talked and she asked if I was ready to make a commitment to God, stop rebelling, ask forgiveness, and give Him total control of my life. "Or do you want to remain in bondage?" I mean, when you ask that kind of question, you do rather put people on the spot, you know? I didn't feel like I had a choice to say anything other than 'yes, of course I want to make God Lord of my life', because 'yes' is the only answer that makes sense. After all, if I didn't at some level want to make that kind of commitment, I wouldn't be in counselling in the first place.
But I feel that it was precipitate, like I said 'yes' just because I was EXPECTED to say 'yes'. Like, okay, okay, let's not prolong this, let's just do all the right things and get the hell out of here and it'll be all over.
It's not that I didn't mean what I prayed. I did, but maybe not with my whole being, if that makes any sense. For me, it felt very much like going through the motions. I meant it as much as I was able to mean it, but I really wasn't "all there".
Now that the counselling is over, I don't really know whether it helped or whether anything has changed. My counsellor asked how I feel about my progress and I told her I feel it's been very slow. Then I added (in the interest of torpedo-ing myself) that I'm impatient and want to be 'okay' immediately. (So you see, the interpretation is: the progress is actually not that slow, it just seems slow to me because I want things to change overnight. Therefore everything is in fact moving ahead according to plan and there is no need to prolong things or try anything different.) I didn't lie, it is true that I'm impatient; as for progress, I'm not sure whether there has been any!
Oh well. At least I tried. I know now that I didn't really trust my counsellor. Oh, I was open & honest with her and I told her stuff about me & my life, but it wasn't anything that I haven't already written about here or told my closest friends about. When push came to shove, we didn't have the kind of relationship that would have allowed me to say, "I don't feel I'm ready to do this," and still trust that she would not feel exasperated or want to wash her hands of me -- a subject who was seemingly just being difficult.
UPDATE: After more thought... I believe I did make a little progress through counselling but the precipitate conclusion forestalled any further progress (that kinda goes without saying). Oh well.