A question was posed to me the other day after I wrote on "Counselling and Childhood Baggage." The question ran like this: It is alright to talk about being careful with the children so that their emotional health does not suffer, but that will help only the present day young mothers and fathers, but what about the adults whose parents had no such exposure and these adults are in their mid-forties and fifties, many carrying such wounds. How would they deal with the problems? How are they to get healing? What is the remedy?
A person must first find our whether s/he really needs such healing or not. Every body may not be suffering with such severe case of deprivation that they need counselling or some sort of help. The indications that a person is suffering from such maladjustment in life are, repeated failures in getting the right partner to marry, or repeated failures in marriage; having multiple sexual partners; inability to pass an exam and repeatedly failing in exams; isolation and not having even a single friend; being in a state of depression; bouts of anxiety attacks; not able to stick to a job; inability to face the world and so on. When such severe problems raise their heads in any one's life, such a person definitely needs some help.
I am not a great counselor as yet, but to my mind there are a few things necessary to do with such a person, before we can bring that person to a holistic healing, leading to become a well adjusted personality, able to face the world squarely and generally be optimistic about life.
1. Having realized one needs help, the first thing to do is to find out a good reputed Counselor, better still a Christian Counselor, who has the compassion and love of Christ. Not a Counselor who works primarily for money. There are a few reputed ones in Hyderabad, Person to Person counseling center, also some in Bangalore. We can always find out good referrals in other places.
2. In the process of counseling, we need to find out any childhood trauma that could have caused rejection, or abuse or damage to the child's personality, emotional deprivation, damage to self-esteem, and so on. A sensitive and experienced Counselor will be able to probe into the person's (Counselee) childhood and find out the root cause of the problem. Such experiences could have happened not only in childhood, but late also. Talking the problem through with another sympathetic listener itself will act as a major catharsis for the Counselee.
3. Once that is done, in cooperation with the Counselor, Counselee needs to go about the process of correcting the wrong done earlier and shedding the baggage from childhood. The burden has to be cast out.
4. The first step in this is to forgive the other person, who had caused the damage. It could be the mother or father or sibling or a close relative or a close friend or a total stranger. In forgiveness you let go of your anger, grudge and the hurt itself. This is not easy, but the example and teaching of Christ to forgive and pray for the enemy is of great help here. We can ask for help from Christ himself in prayer to assist us in this process and start to pray for that person who wounded us. That takes away the sting from the hurt and softens the heart of the victimized.
5. Counselee has to not only forgive but also forget the process or event that traumatized her/his life. And consciously train herself/himself never to talk about it again, to oneself or to the person who caused such a hurt or to anyone.
6. Having shed the baggage from the past, the person is now ready to face the world with positive principles to bolster the future. This process, of course will differ from person to person, largely depending on the type of problem and the seriousness of it. The Counselor can encourage the Counselee herself/himself to come up with a plan of action to rebuild her/his life afresh. This will be a transformation, a holistic healing of that person.
Well, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and heal yourself, with proper help and the Helper, and transform your life, with the renewing of the mind, if you are not already out of the blue!
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