Children. And counselling.

Erm, yes, the girls are back from Hatfield – in fact they’ve been back for 48 hours now.  Despite that, I’ve only seen them for about 15 minutes, which is far from ideal.

Wednesday night I’d arranged with friends to watch Hobo With A Shotgun (a film that, when the credits rolled, left us all sat in bemused silence for a good few minutes, trying to figure out what had just happened) so didn’t see the girls then, and last night was counselling night, so I didn’t get home till after bedtime.

So I’ve seen my children for a few minutes two mornings over the last five days.

Mel’s just sent me some hilariously beautiful footage of the girls dancing in Trafalgar Square, which was nice but was just an appetiser for the hoped-for quality time this weekend. Oh – and next week, because I’m off work Monday-Wednesday doing my first chunk of summer holidays childcare.

I’m hoping, if the weather’s nice, we can hire a car for the day and go to the seaside. 🙂

Counselling went surprisingly well last night.  For the first time I was a little nervous about it, mainly because there didn’t seem to be much to actually talk about.  Things have been steadily improving over the last few weeks for me, to the point where yesterday’s counselling felt almost unnecessary and I seriously considered calling it a day.  However, as it turned out there was still plenty to talk about – not so much about Trev but more about me, which I suppose is rather the focus of these sessions – to get me back on track a bit.

Ironically, I say we talk about “me” but mostly we’ve been talking about my parents, about Rich, about the girls, about the Lovely Melanie, and about work.  And as was mentioned in another post, it’s kind of surprising what comes out of your mouth when you’re not expecting it.

So from being worried abut not having enough to talk about there was almost too much!

Perhaps it should be pointed out that just because I was talking about these things doesn’t imply there’s necessarily a problem with any of them.  Rather, counselling encourages you to talk about everything and anything – that is it’s objective: simply to get the patient talking.

Why?

Because talking out loud about your worries and concerns is very different from simply thinking about them.  By articulating all the nebulous half-finished thoughts and day-dreams that flit through your head, by committing them to language and choosing the particular words that express and describe them you solidify them; and that’s how we learn what’s really going on in our heads.

Russell, my counsellor, told me that that’s why he got into the counselling game in the first place: because he wanted to see how this simple process of talking about problems and worries and fears seemed to help diminish them – even “cure” them!

And that’s why I’m going back for my remaining two sessions paid for by work…