There is the belief among counsellors that people who have fallen upon hard times have the capacity and resource within themselves to recover. Those having difficulty adjusting to their new situations, many of which have occurred beyond their choice, can negotiate these situations; but help, of course, helps.
People in many counselling capacities, whether in private practice, from churches, or as caseworkers, have an innate belief that people come to them WITH their own answers.
The counsellor merely provides space where a special therapeutic relationship can be developed where perspectives may be viewed together and anew.
But when we fall into a depression, when life turns awkwardly, and we begin feeling incapacitated or overwhelmed, where our confidence plummets, we may stop believing we have anything at all like the answers to the perplexing questions that comprise our situations.
WHERE WILL OUR HELP COME FROM?
The concern of where will our help come from—how will we recover, and when?—more easily becomes our overriding concern. And such concern can become desperate.
What was a very good life can seem to have come to an end—and we do all sorts of bargaining to bring back that which we so solemnly miss.
Or it could be the case that we’ve never risen to the heights we see others have risen to as far as peace, hope, and joy are concerned.
We can become so polarised to our helplessness; we begin to seriously doubt recovery will ever come. We see more barriers than this mysterious aspect of agency which is the power we need to thrive. We see more reminders of our helplessness than we do of reason for hope. We may feel incredibly isolated. We may feel stuck immobile in an in-between waystation.
We hardly think that the answer might come from WITHIN us. We cannot see just now.
Perhaps it may turn out to be that we had the answer all along, but we needed the space and the assurance to give us confidence for a fresh onslaught in the living of life.
Help out of a depression can certainly seem impossible. But it is amazing what support and encouragement, coupled with an openness to explore new perspectives, can do.
A VISION OF RECOVERY
A lot of the time the sort of help we need is actually miniscule. But it is no less critically important. It might be as if we are trudging through a never-ending dark valley, and we have no idea where the end is. The person who helps us may merely lead us a few steps along the way where we can see our lives just a little more clearly.
As we pirouette and look behind us, we see the misty fog we came through, and we begin to see, more, from a safer perspective, that life is full of such foggy formations.
We begin to see the purpose in trudging through that dark valley, so morbidly fearful for the trap that seemed in store for us, which we find wasn’t there.
Now it is that others’ dark valleys have our attention and empathy. We draw confidence that getting through our tortuous dark valley was due to our own capacity and resources—with just a little help from a friend.
When hope has returned, and maybe even magnified our view of life, we have a strange new capacity for living. The rut we endured actually worked out for our best.
We have endured what can be known as a “revenant” experience, where once it seemed we were spiritually dead and only through such adversity to be spiritually reborn to be never more alive.
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Little things make big differences in the difficulties of life. There is power in renewal as there is power in having openness within ourselves.
Searching for and seeking help out of a depression can prove the making of us.
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