On my journey to becoming a counsellor I have developed a degree of self-awareness.
With both the self-reflective exercises on the Level 2 counselling skills course and the Jungian shadow work I’ve done in my journals, I recognise the things I have discovered as nothing but positive.
I’ve uncovered unconscious core beliefs that were blatantly untrue, which were formed as survival mechanisms when I was young.
It’s revealed self-destructive patterns of behaviour that I couldn’t see before, and have now interrupted.
I’ve had epiphanies concerning the way my mind works, and how that relates to the way that other people’s minds work.
I feel that all of these aspects are positive.
I had an interaction with a fellow on Twitter earlier, talking about one of my favourite phrases, “Self-awareness is a superpower”, and he said it can sometimes be a humbling experience, to which I agreed and added that it “Makes you indestructible”.
He added this:
“Makes you indestructible”
Yes…
if it doesn’t destroy you first.
People catch a glimpse of themselves and often can’t deal with what they see –
Fuel for addiction, self-harm, resentment-
Suicide.
I had never considered that.
From my perspective, gaining self-awareness has always been a positive thing.
I imagined an example of explosive anger – something everyone can relate to, and is a very extreme form of someone losing control – and poked around a bit. I brought back memories of when I had acted in anger in the past and I replayed them in my head and in my heart, and I noticed how I felt and thought in those moments.
I saw how scary and unsettling it could be, to suddenly have the knowledge that you are capable of such things, and not know where it came from, all of a sudden. Especially if it is out of character.
Tonight I’ve realised that there’s a distinct difference between discovering unsettling aspects of yourself at an unexpected moment, and wanting to work through it and sort your head out in your own time. People coming to counselling tend to know that something is going on inside them, they are scared, and they want resolution. It’s possible that their desire for answers was triggered by a sudden out of character moment, and they want to make sense of it, rather than go down the route of resentment, self-harm and addiction.
This also relates to what my tutor was talking about when she said that counselling is like dealing with a fizzy drink. Just let it out, little by little and don’t shake the bottle too much. Go too fast and it’ll explode when you open it, and spray everywhere.