Why Counseling? The Answer to My Most Frequently Asked Question

 Two weeks, people.

Two weeks until I start my MASTERS DEGREE in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Denver Seminary!!

I can hardly wait.

Lately, when I meet new people and tell them I’m headed to seminary, they ask if I have a focus. Which honestly almost makes me laugh. If you’ve known me at all for the last four or five years, you know how much of a nerd I am about counseling. While I supposed I would enjoy grad school for a lot of reasons, as of now there’s not a better goal for me than becoming a licensed professional counselor. Just the idea of it makes me giddy.

The underlying question, though, is why. Why counseling? Why that and not something else? What made me such a nerd in the first place?

Sometimes people ask this. More often, I just see it in their eyes, unasked because they assume my reasons are personal.

They are. Deeply.

Which is why I don’t have a great twenty-second answer. It’s more like, “Ummmm, wanna get coffee for two hours so I can tell you a satisfying story instead of a summary?” But alas—what adult has two hours to fork over on a whim?

So, in lieu of coffee with you, I’m writing this blog post, in hopes that it will not only answer the question, but maybe even convince you that stepping into the counseling office (on either side of the metaphorical couch) is a worthwhile endeavor.

And to do this, of course, I have to take you back to my childhood.

Once upon a time, I got strep throat. Whether this is a consequential detail or not, I will never actually know. But there is a distinct possibility that it is. In recent years, neurologists and psychologists have discovered a neurological condition called PANDAS syndrome—Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal infections. Translation? In rare cases, strep changes a child’s brain in such a way that they develop obsessive compulsive disorder.

There are other options, of course. Attachment issues, exacerbated by many moves in the space of two years. The trauma of a suicide in my church. Spiritual warfare. A combination of all of the above. But shortly after the strep, my brain started to act up in ways it didn’t for other kids my age.

I suffered intrusive thoughts, distressing ones, that often came with the terrifying urge to act on them. I second guessed everything—my personality, my love for others, my faith. There was no solidity in my life, no safe place to land. For years, I was even convinced that some of these thoughts were the voice of God.

The panic attacks came on the heels of these thoughts, waves of nausea and cold sweats that rolled through my body and left me tense and perpetually shivering.

That was the first thing the psychiatrist noticed about me when I shook her hand at fourteen years old. “Cold hands,” she observed, her brow furrowing in concern.

I withdrew my fingers, self-conscious. “That’s what everyone says.”

I spent an hour in her office, along with my mother, but when the doctor diagnosed me with OCD and wrote me a prescription for medication, we marched out.

No. We would not consider medication this early in my mental health journey.

Looking back, I wonder what would have happened if we had. To be honest with you, I probably would have gotten addicted, and I’m not sure I would be where I am now. Because the medication would have fixed things. It’s made to. Now, having been on meds for nearly two years, I know how it feels to have my neurotransmitters stabilized and there’s not much that beats it.

It would probably have kept me out of counseling.

As it was, I went home terrified and swore off of seeing anyone else. Anytime my mother offered to take me to counseling, I said no. I slammed that door shut. I remember feeling depressed and hopeless that night after seeing the psychiatrist, lacking the vocabulary to express these emotions. I remember the things my parents said in an attempt to help me, words that missed their mark. We were all flailing, desperate for solutions but ignorant of where to find them.

This lasted for another year and a half, until the panic attacks were so bad that I stopped leaving the house. And for every piece of ground I surrendered to anxiety, it took another. There was no outrunning it. That’s the problem with giving into fear—eventually, you do become its slave.

Like I said, I didn’t have words for this then. Mental health meant nothing to me. I denied that I was depressed or anxious, because I viewed those words as preludes to suicide. No one told me this, but in my head, getting outside help seemed unbiblical, like giving up on Jesus.

I had no idea then that it would be counseling that revealed to me the fullest picture of Jesus I’d ever seen.

All I knew was that I wanted my life back.

Honestly, even this desire was mostly—if not all—the Holy Spirit. Naturally, I am timid and stubborn. I can suffer needlessly for a good long time without doing anything about it. I don’t remember when the switch flipped, but I do remember walking into my room one day; realizing that even in my safest place, I was still afraid; and saying out loud, “Lord, I can’t live like this anymore.”

And I remember the shift I felt in that very moment. It was the beginning of my freedom, and even, I would say, my repentance.

Sometimes, I pray prayers that I know God will say yes to. Does that ever happen to you? Like, there’s just something so energizing about praying what you know is in the Lord’s will. It’s exhilarating. It’s joyful. And it is lethal to anxiety.

I think it was that day that I told my mom I wanted to go to counseling.

So, at fifteen years old, I walked into Melissa’s office, in what I now know was a walking panic attack. She told me that day words that will be ringing in my ears for the rest of life:

“You don’t have to share anything in here if you don’t want to. But the times I’ve seen counseling really work for people, it’s been when they laid everything out on the table.”

This is challenging exhortation, and I plan to use it with some of my clients. It wouldn’t work for everyone. Some people hear these words and instantly shut down. But desperation can be a good motivator and I was desperate. Her words were exactly the instruction I needed.

Trembling, I laid it all out on the table.

Looking back, I see that first layer of vulnerability and it makes me smile. I didn’t know then how many years I would spend peeling the onion of my own spirit. I had no idea what my insecurities were, my triggers, the lies I believed. And I was entirely blind to how much Jesus loved me in each of them.

If you had asked me then if Jesus loved me, I would have said yes. I would have confessed to not fully understanding it, but I would have said yes because it was true. I knew it like I know 2+2=4. I could rattle it off, but it had little consequence to my life. At least that I could perceive.

Seven years later, after several severe bouts of anxiety, eight counselors, and another visit to the psychiatrist—this time saying yes to the meds and to the diagnosis of OCD—I sat in a telehealth appointment, weeping in frustration like I have countless other times in therapy. My counselor—this time, it was a woman named Sarah—had asked me how I felt about a certain struggle and I had said I hated that part of myself.

“Do you hear yourself?” she responded. (She has earned the right to be that direct over the years.) “You just said you hate a part of yourself that Jesus loves.”

Dear reader, I don’t know how you feel about Jesus. Warm, cold, indifferent—I’ve been all of the above at different times. In that moment, though, I could see Him—crouched before me with a look of compassion at my tears.

The same look Sarah was giving me over the screen.

And I knew exactly why I was going into counseling: Because I love a counseling God.

That may sound like a theological faux pas, something conjured by my therapeutic generation, but hear me out.

Jesus spent His life attending to the broken and vulnerable. He, too, asked them to lay “it”—their baggage, their sin, their shame—all out on the table, and in return, He offered them healing and redemption. To do this, He spent hours upon hours building rapport and asking probing questions, listening intently to the answers and making corrections where they were needed.

When Sarah reminded me that Jesus loved the struggling part of me, she wasn’t talking about something that neatly fit in a box. She was talking about deep brokenness (a story for another time), shame she had listened to me process for the better part of a year. I cried when she said it, not only because of the shame, but also because she loved me in it.*

She showed me, tangibly the posture of Jesus toward me. She preached the good news to me in two sentences, far more effectively than any preacher I’ve ever heard.

This is why I’m going into counseling. Because I have witnessed firsthand the transforming power of God in the most vulnerable places of the human experience and I long to spend the rest of my life offering that kind of healing to as many I can. It is not because counseling “fixed” me. In fact, I am still the same kind of broken as I was at nine years old after the strep. The difference is my understanding of God and His perfect love that casts out fear and gives purpose to my suffering—much more than the bent of my neural pathways. Although, the gospel changes those, too. ;) 

So there it is. There’s my story. Now you know why I need a coffee date to tell it. It’s as raw and personal as the reasons people come into the counseling office as clients. And it’s as beautiful as the victories only counselors get to see.

Two weeks, y’all. Two weeks till I start my masters. But the calling came long ago, and I suspect this glorious education will continue for a lifetime.

_______________________________

*Don’t listen to anyone who says that a therapist can’t love their client. Professional relationship or not, there is 100% genuine affection and love for those we care for. I will fight you on this.