Making sense of the world around us.“My children sometimes struggle to make sense of the world and the world struggles to make sense of them...” They have special needs ranging from mild to severe, but they also have great perception of others and caring natures (mostly) unless one transcends into a ‘Kevin’ teenager mode. Then we all take cover and sit it out. As a parent and a counsellor it strikes me that in counselling clients, whatever issues they face; they too are struggling to make sense of the world. They question; “Who am I”? What should I do?
They confuse body language, gestures and facial expressions and conclude their own answers without finding out the real facts why someone responded in the way they did. Personalisation, generalisation and other defences are their way of coping in their struggle to express themselves to people who may judge them and so they keep quiet and are never really heard. This is no criticism but a reflection on our way of coping with life as a ‘disabled’ family and the world around us.
We rush around in today’s modern society without really taking much notice of other people’s feelings or just slowing down enough to listen to someone by hearing their ‘pain’ and observing their body language and facial expression. In counselling it is sometimes ‘hearing’ what is not said and using advanced empathy and understanding of others that is healing and developmental to the client. Some people walk around holding emotional ‘pain’ within their bodies and it can be held anywhere physically from the head to the toes. It is only perhaps when a crises occurs that we are jolted into a reality check of how we live our lives and how we would like to be different and wish we were doing things differently. Taken from an excerpt in the book “In Praise of Slow” written by Carl Honoré , “How can I start slowing down? Embracing the Slow creed means rethinking your whole approach to life. But everyone has to start somewhere, so here are five tips for decelerating: - Leave holes in the diary rather than striving to fill every moment with activity. Easing the pressure on your time will help you to slow down.
- Set aside a time of day to turn off all the technology that keeps us buzzing - phones, computers, pagers, email, television, radio. Use the break to sit quietly somewhere, alone with your thoughts. Or try meditating.
- Make time for at least one hobby that slows you down, such as reading, painting, gardening or yoga.
- Eat supper at the table instead of balancing it on your lap it in front of the TV.
- Always monitor your speed. If you are doing something more quickly than you need to simply out of habit, then take a deep breath and slow down.
Our bodies tell us to slow down when we get tense muscles, physical illness or ailments, headaches or sheer exhaustion and sleep deprivation. Our mind is constantly whirring away, night and day, never really resting, even through sleep. You can easily recognise when you’re suffering from animbalance. Symptoms such as constantly being tired, feeling like you’re running uphill all the time and getting nowhere, feeling likeyou have no choices, no control; when life seems to be happening to you instead of you feeling that you’re managing it; when you can think of more things that aren’t getting done than are; When you see more negatives in your life than positives. Special needs people; young or old and the emotionally fragile and exhausted clients are our vulnerable members of the modern society, whom we need to take care of and nurture so they can reach their fullest potential. It is a courageous thing to be able to take that first step to approach a counsellor who is a stranger for help. Counselling both Cognitive and Humanistic can give these client groups their lives back and enable them to see their world a bit clearer and come out of the ‘fog’.
Julie Wales
Counsellor
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