First Day of School

Today, I met the people I will be schooling with for the rest of the year. My first impression was okay. Don't know why I did not expect this but everyone there seemed to be dealing with or have dealt with serious issues in life. At least 2 persons there looked depressed. One other person was an ex-druggie and A.A. participant. Divorce. Have kids with ADHD. Coping with grief. The list goes on and on you wouldn't believe it. Why did this surprise me?

Even before beginning this course, I knew that with psychology, people in the field are always motivated by events in their own lives. Freud for instance was said to have issues with his mother while growing up thus the interest in parent-child relations. So then, what brings me to the table? What life experiences have I had that will prove to be my motivational factor? This is yet to be determined.

At first I was uncomfortable with the level of personal information that wasbeing divulged through the discussions. We started off the morning going through things that were on our minds. We do this every morning. Some people sounded like they were going to breakdown and cry. After having half a day to digest all the new emotions, think I at least understand this.

Before one is able to help others, we have to be in touch with our own emotions and feelings. Self-care is highly stressed in my student manual. Meaning that as students of counselling, we have to constantly monitor our own emotions to make sure that they do not interfere with work. It does not take a highly exceptional imagination to understand where this is coming from.

So this coming into class and having everyone talk about their feelings has its benefits. A good counsellor is one who can perhaps make anyone cry. And crying is a good thing. I always feel better after, anyways.

Will my studies for the next year be one filled with digging deep into my own emotions? Yeah, I think so. Contrary to initial expectations, I have a feeling this course will be a very personal one. This feels weird coz in the 4 years at Uni, we were taught to be objective and to depend on empirical results from experiments. We are so confused. The human psyche refuses to be dominated. If we are trying to map out human emotions and behaviour like an electric circuit, we are generations away from it. That is, assuming that it could even be understood in the first place.