KavinCoach

After rereading my entry “What is Depression?”  I realized how much of this I learned from KavinCoach.  I think introductions are needed.  Or maybe I just need to acknowledge that KavinCoach’s words are sprinkled through out mine for a reason.  KavinCoach taught me about continuums.  I was raised in a black and white world with the concept that ‘They’ were right and I was wrong.  If you didn’t do things perfectly the way somebody else wanted you were wrong.  If I didn’t believe or act or say what ‘They’ wanted, I needed to be corrected of the errors of my ways.  The possibility that ‘They’ were wrong and I was right entered my head from time to time.  What never occurred to me, where KavinCoach came in, we were both partially right from our perspective and there was plenty of shades of gray in between.  

How KavinCoach came into my world.  

I remember when I was about 15 years old complaining to my parents that something was wrong with me.  Trying to be encouraging, they reassured me that I was like every other teenager.  I talked to other teenagers and felt even stronger that there was something wrong with me.  I read self-help books, took a ‘Search for Identity’ class, and felt more and more that I did not think like everybody else.  Self-help books seemed to leave me more and more confused.  (Talk about feeling inadequate.)  I did the best I could - married, moved cross-country multiple times and gave birth to 6 amazing kids.  During this time my physical health deteriorated.  After our last child was born I became bedridden for over 3 years.  I was in my early 30s.  In and out of doctor’s offices to be told that physically nothing was wrong with me.  More than once, I was told I was depressed.  I couldn’t grasp the concept that if it was all in my head, why did my body hurt so much?  If you are in a deep, dark pit how do you dig yourself out?  I kept searching.  I finally hit break point of 3 choices, divorce my husband and live as a hermit, commit suicide, or get professional counseling.  (A later blog will discuss some of the reasons why I didn’t seek professional counseling help earlier.)  I asked a friend for some names of counselors that could teach me to communicate with others.  In my own opinion that is what I thought was wrong with me.  I just didn’t know how to communicate.  She kindly gave me 3 names.  I prayed about the names and felt I should call KavinCoach.  I can honestly say I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  KavinCoach gave me very clear expectations that it was his job to teach me new ways of looking at the world and my job to work.  He clearly defined his role as COACH.  Imagine for a moment a football stadium with a huge maze on the field.  I am down in the middle of the darkest part of the maze.  KavinCoach is up in the press box with a microphone.  The way I viewed it, each session I would describe what I was seeing in the maze and he would give suggestions on how to move through it.  Sounds easy right?  Wrong.  There were several difficult obstacles.  I didn’t trust him or anyone else.  I had funny, weird glasses on that distorted everything.  Sometimes when I heard his suggestions I reinterpreted them with a few strange twists that KavinCoach would patiently straighten out and explain to me again.  I would do the opposite of what he suggested and get myself stuck in a dead end.  I sometimes just ran around in circles.  KavinCoach would wait patiently until I wore myself out and then he would give me another suggestion when I was ready to listen.  KavinCoach has years of experience, PhD, loads of patience, and a willingness to really listen.  KavinCoach recognized very early on that I did indeed think differently.  He acknowledged my right to think differently.  Allowed me through different homework assignments, chosen by him, to guide me to revise how I thought.  Albert Einstein once said, “You can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it.”  KavinCoach persuaded me that ditching the weird glasses was in my best interest.  He patiently taught me that he could be trusted and there are other people in my life I could trust too.  His teachings are intermingled in almost everything I write now.  I won’t always give him credit when I say it, but the bottom line is I am where I am today because he taught me how to get here and I ran the maze.  I am no longer in the darkest part.  I am learning more and more everyday how to run the maze on my own.  My goal is graduating from KavinCoach telling me how to run the maze to me being with my family in a way that is emotionally healthy.  In this blog I am sharing some of what I learned.