I feel emotional as it occurs to me just how much I enjoy counsellor training and the level 3 class. A big part of this is a result of being less anxious. Anxiety has always made me feel slightly separated from my surroundings and those in it. As level 3 progressed I noticed this anxiety decreased significantly, so that not only do I feel a part of the group and accepted within it, I can also more readily absorb the information begin delivered, AND make a contribution. Where I may have made contributions in the past, they felt forced, staged somehow, not quite connected to me, perhaps what I thought others might want to hear or what might be acceptable. Now they feel much more congruent, and I feel more open with my peers and willing to discuss.
I wonder if this is because I am finally doing something that is truly a good fit and ‘right’ for me, perhaps something I have always wanted to do but was put off by the nature of the training (e.g. speaking a lot in front of groups), and now that my anxiety is no longer holding me back I am able to immerse myself fully and reap the benefits of the training. Or, perhaps whatever I have done before has been ‘right’, only the anxiety has prevented me from enjoying it and taking it in, thereby making it feel ‘not quite me’.
I suspect the former because I always had this niggling feeling that something was off. I always put it down to being someone who wanted to try everything and didn’t want to commit to one thing and so would always feel some discontent with whatever I chose to do. When exploring my past experiences and personality I can understand why the sciences appealed to me in the way that they did, and how anything subjective, like art, would have been terrifying to me and impossible to risk.
Now I seem to have flipped, from someone working with measurement and objectivity and critical thinking, to someone who feels like a sponge that doesn’t want to spend time being objective or critical, just wants to absorb everything, hear every idea and opinion, and find some way of conveying my own in the most creative way possible, or in whatever way comes to mind and feels right – that ‘Christmas eve as a child’ feeling that tells me I am on the right track. This feeling is something I look for in both my writing and painting to know if I am following my intuition.
Admitting all this is alarming to me – surely, I still think reasoning and critical thinking are important, surely I still have that ability and I care enough about fact and reason. I think I do – my employment requires it, I work in clinical research after all! And counsellor training has required this to some extent, but I suppose being applied in a very different way – a looser way, an open way, a less confined and less certain away – essentially, a way that invites and most certainly requires honesty, openness, and a willingness to change. And change accelerates by throwing yourself into the deep end not knowing if you can swim or or someone will fish you out or let you drown. I have seen this with painting – how much better I know myself through the process. Letting go of certainty has been my route to self-discovery.
Perhaps through all my self-preservation, I have been so afraid of being seen as wrong that, now I am no longer afraid, I feel more able to express myself without empirical evidence to back me up. I have been afraid of the wrong step, the wrong move, the risk of exposing myself as a fraud or an idiot that I have not allowed myself to move enough. This became so bottled up to make me feel resentful, envious and empty at every turn, threatened by those around me who seemed to be fully living in their own skin and owning their experience.
Now?
The feedback to my recent presentation was mixed, and not for one second did it bring on thoughts of not being good enough. Listening to other presentations yesterday, I noticed the tiniest glimpse of the inner critic saying, ‘why didn’t you think of that already?’ But then it went away, and I listened, and I was inspired, and I was ok.
This final level 3 journal has been a flow of thoughts occurring to me in the moment, unfiltered, in honour of this new freedom. It probably contains many contradictions and perhaps ironically sounds too certain for its own good! But that’s okay.
I’m like a kid at Christmas.
I don’t want to be afraid of sharing my interests, beliefs and opinions just in case someone should come along and tear it down in front of my eyes. I’ve been afraid of saying, this theory by such and such, I really get it, I believe it, I see value and validity in it. But why should I? If it helps me, if it helps me to create meaning, if it helps me grow …
If you assume you are unworthy and wrong, then you will see no value in what helps you. You will believe the other things must be better and the reason they do not stick with you or help you is because they are brilliant and you are not, so they must be beyond you and you’re not worth sharing anything.
Enough of that. You’ll be dead one day. Embrace what works for you. Critique and questioning is something, but it doesn’t have to be everything.
