Counselling- Assesment Time

I have just completed my 6th and final counselling session prior to my assesment with the consultant phyciatrist and the next round of sessions, in total to date i have had 8 sessions. I thought i would like to give my own assesment of where i think i am.

Seeing a phyciatrist conjurs up all sorts of thoughts, your mad, your a failure etc,it scares you shitless just at the thought in the begining, that first meeting is one of the hardest and emotional rollercoasters i have ever been on. I had two 1.5 hours sessions in which to cram 45 years of my life and reel off the issues that brought me in front of this stranger culminating in the issues i had in dealing with my wifes affair and my friends total abuse of my trust in joining her in that affair and the subsequent control they have had over me.

Every emotion drains from you during that assesment, Fear, hatred, sadness, guilt, etc but at the end there is a level of contentment and stregnth that a process has begun in which you begin to understand and put right some of the issues, wether of my own making or that of others.

When the assesment is complete you are then forced to go through the whole process again with the counsellor who is best suited based on your assesment. This is where the real graft begins, my counsellor is a woman, this makes it doubly tough, breaking down in the early sessions and crying infront of this person is not something i would wish on anyone , but she deals with it day in and day out, so i am no different in her eyes.

She is kind and caring but tough also, sometimes she makes me feel like a timid mouse in terms of the way i have let my STBX walk all over me, she is also on my side in terms of dealing with other issues in my life which will make me a better and stronger person going forward.

She has set me targets every session and god forbid you dont return having not completed them, she identifies areas of stregnth and areas of weakness that can get exploited, she encourages you to turn negatives in to positives and through all negatives a positive can be found even if i was the main issue with some of those negatives.

She has taught me techniques of how to deal with situations where i have not been good at previously, but most of all she has taught me to believe that i have self respect and that is the foundation of any progress i have made . She alone has given me the stregnth to start the divorce and take control of the situation and it was long overdue.

My STBX believes that she can have her cake and eat it, and to be fair i kept filling her plate everytime she ate that cake, i have spent thousands basically supporting her affair in the hope that it would end and she would come back and she gladly controlled me emotionally.

I have learnt many things about myself and how to adapt and change to situations and manage them correctly.

Its also helped in other areas, dealing with people and their emotions, you do begin to understand and apply what you learn to everyday situations and not just the dealings of the breakdown of your marriage and the emotional baggage that it generates.

I can only give an assesment of how i feel, and i feel positive , but the real measure will be if others see a diff, my kids see a big diff, they have always encouraged me to move on with my life, and my work colegues have seen a diff as well.

I dont have a huge circle of friends, thats something that will be re-aligned after basically being here for the kids for the last 3 years whilst she played away, and i have to learn how to make ande keep friendships again and trust those friends.

We start mediation next week, its a challenge i am looking foirward to.

The objective will be to complete it in the best interests of all concerned but with my kids as the primary focus, however she has had her cake and i will not be providing seconds anymore, i may lose some things but thats part of the process, but most of all i will let go of her, over and above everything else that will be the most satisfying achievement.

Take it easy

Ricky