Courage Dear Heart- Beginning a counseling journey
By: Megan Brewer, LMHC
Some of the bravest people come to counseling. They are brave because of what they have faced and overcome just to make the appointment and walk into the counseling room. I like the word brave because it has little to do with the absence of fear or anxiety. Bravery is courage to face fearful, uncertain, or painful things while still feeling fear and anxiety.
When I ask a new client what it is like to be in counseling, the client often says that they feel anxious. This anxiety usually exists because of two reasons: First, they do not entirely know what to expect, and second, they know that they will be walking into their own story in ways they have become skilled at avoiding. They are afraid of what they may find. I think new clients are brave for stepping into the therapy process in the face of anxiety because these things are completely reasonable things to fear, especially at the beginning of an unknown and potentially life-changing journey.
Think back to your favorite story: one where the main character embarks upon a journey that changes him forever. At the beginning of his story, we often find him existing in a life with familiar patterns that feel certain, even if those familiar patterns are not good for him. Then suddenly, something happens that shakes the familiar from its rooted routine and starts the character on a path toward a very different set of experiences. All good stories start like this—like when Gandalf enters Frodo’s home in The Lord of the Rings and instructs him to take the ring out of the Shire, or when Harry Potter gets his first letter from Hogwarts, or the moment God calls Abraham to a new land, or when the Pevensie children find the wardrobe leading to the magical land of Narnia, or when Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take her sister’s place in the Hunger Games. You may have other stories that come to mind. How do they start?
As each of the stories above begin, we see a person who feels anxious and unprepared for what lies ahead. Knowing what we know about how these stories play out, none of these characters would ever be ready at the beginning of the journey to face what they later are able to overcome in the end. This is because they learn and gain new abilities along the way. Katniss Everdeen is petrified at the beginning, and we can read it all over her face. We see it in Frodo’s shock when he realizes the evil Nazgul are on their way to the Shire to get the ring. Harry Potter has only ever known a life of neglect and harm and knows nothing of the world of magic or the evil Voldemort. Abraham has never lived outside of his hometown and has no idea what journey lies before him. The Pevensie children had only ever been children and never dreamed of being kings and queens or of fighting against evil. In fact, none of the characters mentioned has any idea what lay ahead when we first meet them in their journey. Starting a counseling journey is a little like that.
What is powerfully moving about the journey of these characters is that the journey they choose to embark upon brings out abilities they had inside of themselves all along but were underdeveloped because of the familiar patterns of life we find them in when their stories begin. As you walk through the door and into the counseling office, all you have is what you’ve always known. You have no idea what courage, strength, and ability lies dormant because right now all you know is anxiety. You can’t know at the beginning how much more of you there is to be discovered and developed that is just waiting on the journey to be drawn out and brought to life. That is what pulls us into the stories we’ve mentioned and keeps us engaged—the discovery that each character makes about what they are really capable of as they continue on their journey.
Sometimes all you may be able to see before starting the journey of counseling is all the ways you don’t have what it takes to grow into the person you long to become. Your experiences so far may sit in judgment against you, extinguishing the faint glimpse of hope that shone bright enough for a moment to bring you into counseling. But as we have seen in every good story about a transformative journey, success takes an initial step followed by another—and then another—with the refusal to give up. Those steps are not taken alone, particularly in the beginning. We need help from someone outside of ourselves. Someone who can reflect back the ability they witness in us and guide us along the way.
So as you consider beginning your counseling journey, remember that being fearless is not the prerequisite. You are in good company with many who have gone before you who have walked in anxious and apprehensive. But you also share in their bravery and their hope, and hope requires the most courage.
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