When Life Feels Overwhelming: Why Counselling Can Be a Safe Place to Start

There is something incredibly powerful and therapeutic about having a place where you don’t have to hold it all together.  A place where you don’t have to say, “I’m fine” when you aren’t.  A place where you don’t have to worry about making someone else uncomfortable with your sadness, anger, grief, fear, confusion, or even the things you aren’t quite sure how to put into words yet. This is one of the reasons I believe counselling can be so important – because sometimes life is just….well, A LOT.

We are expected to navigate relationships, work, adulting, parenting, family dynamics, supporting our parents, loss, change, expectations, disappointments, health challenges, old wounds, new wounds, and all of the little (or not so little) things that pile up along the way.  And somehow, we’re often expected to keep functioning through it all – whether that expectation comes from ourselves or others.

We go to work.

We make dinner.

We answer the emails and text messages.

We put out the fires around us.

We take care of everyone else.

We smile when we think we’re supposed to smile.

And meanwhile, somewhere underneath it all, there may be a part of us desperately trying to get our attention, saying, “I don’t know how long I can keep doing this.”

Counselling doesn’t magically make the difficult things disappear.  Wouldn’t that be nice?!?! Instead, counselling can offer something much more realistic, and in my opinion, much more valuable.  A safe space to stop running from what is happening inside of us.  To instead get curious with it, to name it, and then to explore what’s underneath it. 

What is It trying to tell us?  What do we need?  What have we been carrying?  And perhaps, instead of judging ourselves for feeling the way we do, we can begin to understand ourselves with a little more compassion. You don’t have to wait until you’re falling apart

I think one of the biggest misconceptions about counselling is that you have to be in crisis before you reach out.  That thigs need to be really bad.  That you should be able to handle it all yourself.  That other people have it worse, so maybe you don’t have any business complaining. But struggling doesn’t always look like falling apart. Sometimes it looks like being exhausted all the time.  Sometimes it shows up in aches and pains in our body.  Sometimes it looks like overthinking everything.  Sometimes it looks like snapping at the people you love and then feeling terrible about it.  Sometimes it looks like feeling disconnected from yourself.  Sometimes it looks like lying awake at 2 a.m. replaying conversations in your head.  Sometimes it looks like being the person everyone else comes to for support while secretly wondering who you can turn to when you’re the one who needs it.  And sometimes it simply looks like thinking, “I just don’t want to feel like this anymore.”

You don’t have to wait until you’re completely overwhelmed before asking for support.

Sometimes we need someone outside the story When we’re living inside our own lives, it can be difficult to see things clearly or more simply. We have our histories.  Our assumptions.  Our fears.  Our emotions.  Our protective patterns.  The things we’ve been told about ourselves.  The things we have come to believe about ourselves.  The things we’ve come to believe about other people.  The experiences that taught us how to survive and stay safe.  And sometimes those stories become so familiar and so engrained that we don’t even realize we’re still living by them.

Counselling can provide a space to slow all of that down. Not because a counsellor has all the answers.  And certainly not because someone else can tell you how to live your life.  But because sometimes having another human being (who is not part of the history or the story) sit beside you safely with curiosity and compassion allows you to see things you simply couldn’t see from inside your own head.

Why does this feel so hard?

What is happening underneath this reaction?

What are the beliefs I am holding about what is happening?

Are these beliefs my own or were they adapted from someone or something else?

Does this way of being still benefit me now?

Where did I learn that my needs weren’t important?

Why does setting a boundary feel so uncomfortable?

What am I actually afraid of?

What do I need right now?

Sometimes just having someone ask these types of questions can be incredibly powerful.

You don’t have to have the right words

You don’t have to arrive at counselling with a beautifully organized explanation of what’s wrong.  Again – you might not even realize yet what is even causing you these feelings of anxiety, sadness, anger, overwhelm, disconnection, or just feeling “off”.  You might simply know that something doesn’t feel right even though you can’t put your finger on it. And that’s okay. You don’t need to understand “why” before you reach out for support. Sometimes we feel the effects of something long before we understand where those feelings are coming from.  Our body might be telling us something before our brain has caught up.  There may be experiences, beliefs, old wounds, unmet needs, or patterns that have been secretly influencing us for a very long time.  And sometimes, we’ve become so used to feeling a certain way that we don’t even recognize it as something worth exploring.  We just think, “This is how I am”. But what if it isn’t?

What if there is something underneath the anxiety?  What if the anger is trying to tell you something?  What if the exhaustion isn’t simply because you’re busy or lazy?  What if that feeling of disconnection is your minds way of protecting you from something that has felt too difficult to face?

We don’t have to know the answer before we begin.  That’s part of the work.  Counselling can be a place where we slow things down, get curious, and start gently putting the pieces together. Sometimes the most important thing you can say in that first session is simply, “I don’t know what’s wrong,  I just know I don’t feel like myself anymore”.

That’s enough.

We can start there.

Counselling isn’t about fixing you

This one is EXTREMELY important. 

You are not a broken person who needs to be fixed.

Life happens.  We experience things.  We adapt.  We develop ways of coping that might have served a very important purpose at one point in our lives, or that we even feel might have saved us.  But what worked at a different time in our life may be impeding us now.  That doesn’t mean they were wrong.  It means we may have outgrown them. Maybe healing isn’t about becoming someone completely different.  Maybe it is about stepping more fully into ourselves.  Understanding why we respond the way we do.  Learning to recognize and fulfill our own needs.  Making peace with parts of ourselves we’ve spent years judging.  Learning that boundaries aren’t selfish and can actually save relationships.  Learning that rest isn’t laziness.  Learning that emotions aren’t problems that need to be eliminated.  Learning that what has happened to us may be part of our story, but it does not need to be the whole story.

Sometimes healing is really, really uncomfortable – but you will find your way through Healing can be messy.  Sometimes we uncover things that we have spent years avoiding.  Sometimes we realize that something we thought was “just the way I am” is actually something we learned or took on from someone or someplace else and that it really has very little to do with who we actually are.  We learn that values, beliefs and ways of being are passed down from generation to generation and often adopted without thought. Sometimes we have to grieve things we never got…..the childhood we wish we’d had.  The relationship we thought would last.  The person we used to be or the person we thought we would be.  Sometimes we have to acknowledge that something hurt us more deeply than we wanted to admit.  And although one of the hardest pills to swallow is that we can’t change what has happened, we CAN begin to change how we carry it. And this is often where the uncomfortable can begin to shift into understanding, relief, and even power.  When we become willing to sit with the uncomfortable, understand it, and work through it rather than continuing to avoid it, we can begin to develop a different way of being – one that feels safer, more grounded, and more secure within ourselves. We can learn to hold two truths at once.

I’ve written before about the importance of being able to hold two truths at the same time….

Something can hurt deeply and there can still be hope.

You can grieve and still have moments of joy.

You can be angry at someone and still love them.

You can be struggling and still be incredibly strong.

You can acknowledge the shitstorm and still notice the diamonds within them.

Counselling isn’t about forcing ourselves to find the positive in every painful experience.  Please don’t misunderstand that. Sometimes things just hurt.  Sometimes we need to cry.  Sometimes we need to be angry.  Sometimes we need to sit in the sadness for a while without someone telling us to “look on the bright side”.

But with time, support, and a little curiosity, we may begin to notice things we couldn’t see before....a boundary we finally set.  A need we finally voiced.  A relationship we understand differently.  A strength we didn’t realize we had.  A little more compassion for ourselves.  A willingness to ask for help.  A realization that maybe we don’t have to keep doing things the way we’ve always done them. Those can be diamonds too.

Asking for help is not weakness

We live in a culture that often celebrates independence.  Prides it actually.

How many times have you found yourself saying “I can do it myself”, “I don’t need anyone”, or “I’ll figure it out”?

And independence can absolutely be a wonderful thing, but humans are not meant to do everything alone.  We need and are built for connection. 

We need safe relationships.  We need unbiased people who can witness our experience without judging us, minimizing them, or immediately trying to make everything better. Asking for help does not mean you’ve failed.  It does not mean you are weak.  And it does not mean you are broken.  It means you are human, and sometimes reaching out for support is one of the bravest things we can do. You don’t have to carry it all alone

I think this may actually be one of the most important things counselling can offer. Not answers, not a magic wand, not a promise that life will never hurt again, but a place to put some of the weight down.  A place where you can be honest.  A place where you can be messy.  A place where you can say the things you’ve been afraid to say.  A place where you don’t have to protect someone else’s feelings.  A place where you can begin to understand yourself with a little more compassion and a little less judgement.   And perhaps, over time, a place where you begin to discover that you are capable of more than you thought. Life is going to throw us shitstorms.  That’s part of being human.  We don’t get to choose every storm.  We don’t get to change things that have happened.  But we don’t need to weather the storms alone.

Sometimes we may need someone to sit beside us while we find our footing. Sometimes we need someone to help us make sense of the mess.  Sometimes we just need somewhere safe to put it all down. And sometimes, when we finally allow ourselves to stop, to listen, and to get curious about what’s happening inside of us, we discover the things we’ve been fighting so hard to get rid of were actually trying to tell us something. Maybe that anxiety was asking for safety.  Maybe that anger was pointing to a boundary that needed to be set.  Maybe that exhaustion was telling us we had been carrying far too much for far too long.  Maybe that feeling of being “off” was a part of us desperately trying to find its way back home. Counselling doesn’t promise that life will suddenly become easy.  But it can help us develop a different relationship with the hard stuff.  One where we can meet ourselves with a little more understanding, a little more compassion, and perhaps a little less judgement. Because may healing isn’t about becoming someone who never struggles.  Maybe it’s about becoming someone who knows what to do when we do, and maybe, just maybe, we don’t have to do it alone.