Habit 1 and 2

I’m beginning to change my view of therapy. I started going to a counselor in college, hoping to improve my self esteem, my sense of self and purpose, not allow my life to be controlled by my emotions and finally break some bad family patterns. It helped, it really did. I felt better, stronger, more alive and able to conquer my issues. I felt some sense of God’s healing and felt that I was really allowed to progress towards a whole self. That was great. Then I graduated from college and moved into this internship and WHAMO! There were all of my issues, staring right back in my face! I hadn’t been fixed at all! What!? I felt a sense of defeat and just a brokenness that I would have worked so hard, but made so little permanent progress. I admit I wallowed in this depression and self-pity a little too long before I finally faced the facts, and sought a professional counselor down here. And I’ve been feeling some progress. But part of me is skeptical, I told that to my therapist today, “Therapist, I feel like happiness is temporary, like it’s good for now, but soon it will end and I’ll be back with this sadness haunting me.” She looked very wise then, and gave a knowing smile and asked if I came out of my depression sooner than last time. I thought, and yes, it took me almost a year last episode, and now it has taken less than a month to see some real improvement. So, she said, there is that. And I thought, yeah, so there is that. I’ve learned skills, healthy coping mechanisms to deal with pain, suffering, sadness. These are invaluable, because I know that I will always come from the neighborhood I come from, always come from the family I come from, always be involved to some extent with the suffering of humanity. The suffering won't change. However, how I react to suffering, how I deal with it—that can change; that is my choice. If I can control nothing else, I can control how I choose to feel and how I choose to deal with things that are out of my control. (Thanks Stephen Covey)