A bit of background about the organisation given us counselling. Hope House. A hospice that deal with children, over 320 and they families at anyone time. It also gives Post bereavement support to over 100 families, Some of these they have not had dealing with before the death of they child.
This is my first visit to hope house but it not my first time having counselling, but this is different. I am used to post traumatic type to stop post traumatic stress starting, not bereavement type. So I was a bit tense when I arrived.
I was introduced to the lovely Suzanne, who was going to be my counsellor. And headed of to one of the family rooms.
We just generally chatted about the family, Kim's illness. To get a basic background to my life, and also putting me at my ease. It did put me at ease with talking to her, putting in place the foundation of counselling. The feeling of being safe.
Now some of you may be thinking why being safe? In this situation you will be opening up and bearing your soul and the emotions that you would not allow others to see. You must feel secure, snug and protected to become unguarded, to let your protective barriers down to exposed your vulnerable, pained inner self.
Some of you will be reading that and thinking what a load of psychological bull faecal matter. Oh well, each to their own thoughts on it.
I have a lot of protective barriers, It come with the hobby of doing first aid. One of them is disjointing emotions, becoming emotionless. A bit like Star Trek's Spock, some times it is very handy. But it does come with a down side or two, big emotional reactions to the silliest thing or not being able to reconnect to them.
Suzanne has seen this before, and has experience in helping getting them back together with the person. in times of large emotion stress my mind runs off to Spock logic, so it was going to become a big part of my sessions, assisted by the greatest emotion link out side the family. Music*, the more I got exposed to music the more my happier emotions came to a point were I could access them, dragging the other emotions with them to a point that with the help of Suzanne meet up with them and share them, in the safe secure environment of the sessions.
The other was dark humour. I have to watch how I use this as many see it as being sick or uncaring, or even worse both. Suzanne was not phased by it, in fact she some times used it as a spring board to get though other protective barriers I had, to get to areas that were not otherwise forthcoming.
As you walk away from a session, you are trying to get the barriers back in place before you hit the real, everyday world. Sometimes I would return home, with some gaps in them. And sit saying very little, trying to get over what happened in the session and get the emotion and barriers in check.
I am sure people knew when I had a hard session. I was not the smiling chatty person I use as a mask to hid the scarred and damaged person inside.
Dear Reader
Hope house is a charity and only carry on it's wonderful work thanks to donations. If this posting touched your heart. maybe the next time you see one of they boxes, you may want to drop a pound in it or not, the choice is yours.
* The music was usually on Radio Shropshire. As I am writing this, I am listing to music to help me write. Trunk of funk then Jim on Iplayer.
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