When I started going to Kim Dodd (www.cfmft.com), I thought a couple of sessions would be enough. After all, I had been to counseling at various times during my life and was sure I had dealt with past hurts, losses, etc. I didn't realize that Kim had a different approach and that old hurts don't magically go away. It can be exhausting peeling back the layers of the onion and revisiting some of those things I had buried. I know from being an administrator for GriefShare (www.griefshare.org) that grief will hit you like waves at times you least expect it and that grief is a journey, one that never ends. So I shouldn't be surprised that our past can come back like waves - you get the same lump in your throat, your heart beat accelerates and you fight back the tears. I also shouldn't be surprised that I have cried more in the last couple of months than I can remember for quite some time. Part of that is holding things in to have some semblance of control so I could function in my busy, demanding life.
I became acquainted with depression as a child even before my father died when I was 13 and my mother at age 34. I am more aware as an adult that there were memories I buried so deep because they were just too painful to acknowledge. Some of my earliest counseling advise was to just move on and not deal with things you can't change. You can imagine how that worked. At age 40 I could no longer ignore the fact that something was not working right in my body. All the churches in which we had been involved believed that depression was a sin and people with mental illness were probably at least demon oppressed. Wanting to be viewed as spiritual, I kept this secret until it blew up in my face as well as my family. That began a very painful journey.
I think this is enough sharing for one day. And yes, Kim, this exercise in writing may be very healing.
God bless.
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