What and How?

This week was an amazing week.  I happily accepted a job.   (Unemployed for over a year.) Later that night the happy bubble popped when I thought, "How much do I have to tell them about my counseling?" 

A previous job labeled me Emotionally Disabled.  I have also been labeled mentally ill.  I am an integrated multiple which to some people is very scary because they have no idea what I mean.  (Hollywood doesn't help with their portrayal of almost all multiples as killers or idiots.  Sybil was an exception.  I never watched the Three Faces of Eve.)  Before I got myself into a complete tizz, I decided to check in with KavinCoach. 

KavinCoach gave me a new definition.  I am working on marital problems and interpersonal skills.  Cool.  That sounds so "normal."  Not perfect but not scary.  I feel very good thinking of myself that way.  The old commercial words come to mind, "You've come a long way baby."  Someone else was talking to me today and asked me how I did it.  Then she tried to sum it up as my faith in Christ.  Why do people want one answer for a complex question?  If you go with the perspective that I prayed for answers, I guess you could say yes, but I believe that I did not do this alone.  I have a team.

I do have a deep faith in Christ and His healing power.  I pray daily to God in Christ's name.  

My medical doctor has me on medication for thyroid.  Without this I would have little hope of getting very far with anything else.  If I fluff taking the medication correctly the chemical imbalance has a side effect of, you guessed it, DEPRESSION.  So one aspect of my solution is taking care of my physical health.

Next piece getting competent counseling.  I chose the words deliberately.  Years before meeting KavinCoach I encountered another psychiatrist that did not work for me.  She told me that she would fix me and that all my problems would be resolved.  I know enough about healing emotionally to know that would not work.  I do not believe anybody can fix any body else emotionally.  I finally went for marriage counseling since the hardest relationship is marriage and it shows the greatest amount of problems when the people involved are not healthy.  I decided for myself that my problem was I couldn't communicate.  Now I strongly suspect that anyone looking in from the outside would understand that diagnosing yourself emotionally is almost impossible.   Diagnosing somebody else takes years of training and that can still be a guessing game if most the information is missing.  Some might say that it was coincidence that KavinCoach was on the list of people for me to consider.  In my opinion, if Heavenly Father interfered with anything it would be connecting my husband and I with KavinCoach.

KavinCoach had his work cut out for him since I never mentioned anything about my childhood at first.  I was very earnest and determined to learn how to communicate better.  I do admire his patience in getting me to talk about anything else.  I did have a commitment to getting better.  (I figured it would be a summer project and that everything would be hunky-dory by September when school started.  I took a couple of years to really grasp how wrong I was.)  I just didn't know what better meant or what it would look like when I got there. KavinCoach had knowledge I needed to change my life.  He was willing to work with me and use his knowledge to teach me a knew way of living.  I believe Albert Einstein when he said, "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."  I needed to change my thinking and KavinCoach had information on how to do that.   

I also had some family support in varying degrees.  When people close to me learned that I functioned in a unique way, by splitting off different personalities to be able to function, some were very accepting.  Others were reluctant to believe me.  I was blessed with friends that were willing to talk to me and encourage me during the very trying times that came after starting counseling.  (Anybody says that counseling is for sissies has never been through counseling.  I would describe it as being turned inside out then right side in again and hope that you are still functioning when you're done.)  I also experienced those that found out about my diagnosis then no longer wanted anything to do with me.  A few were brutal in their rejection.

The other factor was me.  I had to be willing to face my demons, accept that my childhood sucked, recognize the harm I did to my family by how I behaved (I didn't intend to harm anyone but living with and being raised by a multiple is not an ideal childhood for my children,) totally revamp how I functioned and continue to interact with people, go to school, and work full time.  I studied for hours, did homework assigned by KavinCoach, remembered some of my nightmares, read books in addition to the books assigned by KavinCoach.  (Some of the books are listed in the resources.)  I accepted that there is no magic bullet that fixes life tragedies instead there is faith, hard work, commitment to change, and a willingness to trust my counselor.   Probably the hardest task of all. The pay off: I can feel, I can connect, I can thrive.