Counselling - by Darylynn Starr Rank
April, 2005

So you’d think we know better.  How many of us would wait through two years of a pounding headache to get the darn thing checked out.  Whew, thank goodness.  The doctor referred us straight to the optometrist because it was just that our stupid eyeglass prescription needed to be updated.  But how many of us would  suffer through that for two solid years.  (Yes, I know, many of us are seriously stubborn about this kind of thing, but still…)  Most people would worry about a pounding headache pretty darn quickly and go visit  our GP.

Or who among us (even those who never have smoked, or no longer do) will allow a cough to go on for seven or eight months, keeping us up at night, interrupting conversations with bouts of hacking?  Not many.   We’d think we were being pretty dumb.

But so many people will walk around feeling as sad as can be, practically forever.  Or feeling so nervous and anxious all day long that we sweat through our clothes.  Over, well, practically anything;  or nothing.  We’ll allow ourselves to be filled with doubts and concerns about our relationships with mates, or kids, or bosses for months at a time.  Or years.  But never even think of getting help for it.

It’s just life, we say.  It’s the way things are, we say.

Well – no – it isn’t. 

And it certainly doesn’t have to be.  This is an age when the preventative approach to physical health and well-being is becoming more and more mainstream.  We know it’s appropriate and sensible to think and worry and educate ourselves about nutrition and exercise, hygiene and proper rest.   We’ll willingly visit the massage therapist or physiotherapist or chiropractor when things get difficult in our bodies.  And listen to endless messages on the physical benefits of relaxation, meditation, Vitamin A, B, C, D, and on and on.

But even so, we still tend to think about psychological counselling and therapy as  only  being what you do when you’re “officially” diagnosed as mentally ill:  schizophrenic, manic-depressive, abusing alcohol or drugs, suffering from post traumatic stress, or dealing with serious childhood or marital abuse.  Even in this age, we often see it as OK to take care of our bodies, but embarrassing or shameful, or trivial, to take care of our minds and spirits.

Rubbish, I say!

If we live in an age when it’s healthy to look at the effect of the amount of caffeine we drink, the sugar we eat, or the walks we take, then it’s time to accept that it matters equally how we cope with the mental and psychological stresses of everyday life.  Where we acknowledge the importance and power of taking care of our relationships, of our day-to-day  anxieties, of our emotional well-being.  Where striving to feel better and be better psychologically, matters.  A lot! 

And if that matters, then we should allow ourselves to get as much help as we can, just as we do for our physical health.  We can seek out support and guidance from a counsellor, or a therapist, even a trusted friend, whatever kind of life-guide works for us. 

And we need to do it long before we “lose it” completely, and walk around suffering in desperate, silent pain for years on end. 

Heck, we might simply need  some kind of new, more realistic, rosier (internal) lenses to look at the world through.

Take care, all.

Darylynn Starr Rank (psychologist/writer) works part-time for Family Services of Greater Vancouver as a group facilitator. Her articles appear bi-weekly in The Record (New Westminster) and the Richmond Review.

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