h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The amazing thing I discovered about this when they sent me to see a counciller was the fact that the person they send you to has had never even been in a position of stress. They seem to be really good at listening, or at least appear to be listening. Never knew any thing about this until I found myself staring into space for hours and losing all track of time. Funny thing is that it is the incidents that happened ages ago that come back to your mind. So you know inside yourself that the ones you are going through now, are going to hit you later. Yeh you can talk to your mates about it, at least they know what your saying. Cause chances are they are hiding it as well, yet they dont know it. When you recall an incident your memory seems to add more details every time, like a smell, a sound, a scream but you never noticed at the time. Well that was because you just got on with the job in hand and never had a thought about it at the time, but time is your enemy.So I never went back to see that counciller, no good at all.

I have seen two counsellors over long periods of time. The first one did me no good at all - simply listened to me talking, gave barely any response and just left me feeling frustrated.

I'm now seeing another counsellor as part of a programme that has been helping me, very successfully so far, to fight a drink problem. He's actually had conversations with me and encouraged me to be more positive. He's helped me to come to terms with certain traumatic things in my past and to see destructive patterns in my behaviour. He has, generally, been a huge help.

And guess what? I paid the first, useless one. The one who's doing me a power of good comes free, courtesy of the National Health Service.

Im glad you are pleased with your councellor, and the fact that you are on the way to recovery The one I was sent to see was employed by the service, which caused the problem of anything told to them working its way back to management. Now that Im not working any more seems to be better, but I still miss the crack we used to have.Still have the bad dreams though.
Smudger.

I was once offered in-house counselling for stress by my then employers. I didn't take it. Given that they were responsible for most of the stress, I thought it was a bit like being offered anti-smoking counselling by Benson & Hedges.

Yeh! employers are good at that, dishing out stress. The trouble with my one was that these so called councellors, that they had no idea of what life was like out in the streets. It had been suggested that one go out with a crew for a day she did! and was off sick for a week!
This being at home all day takes a bit of adjustment
Smudger.