This is worth reading if you’ve got the time, especially if you’re facing mental or other struggles, for any reason.
I was out in the city and a guy comes up to me who I vaguely remembered from I didn’t know when or why. He told me his name and the barest hint of a memory came to me then. He told me he wanted to thank me for the help I gave him and his friend. I immediately felt really bad I couldn’t recall, and he must have noticed my confusion on my face.
“It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember what you did,” he said. “We’ll never forget. You didn’t know us but we came to you and you listened, you thought about what was said to you, you offered advice because we asked for it. You were very kind. I just wanted to say you changed his life. You gave him hope and a direction to go in. I don’t know if he’d be here now if you hadn’t been who you are, saying what you said. Thank you again, from both of us. Please let me buy you a drink.”
I motioned with my hands a steering wheel and said I was driving home later, adding, “Oh, okay, thanks, um, can I just have a diet Coke, please? That’s really nice of you.”
“No,” he said. “It’s the very least I can do and I’ll tell him I saw you. He’ll be made up.”
So, he went to the bar, got me the drink, nodded, smiled and went away. I didn’t see him again. I didn’t know what to feel or think and went on to have a nice time with friends but I was calm, relaxed, a little detached but not in a concerning way. I didn’t think about that exchange beyond telling a small number of people, but we were out, doing stuff, and what I relayed didn’t turn into conversations about it.
I wasn’t a counsellor when I helped the person I couldn’t remember and, in so doing, helped his friend. There had been no contract, no payment for work, no confidentiality hardwired into my ethical practice but I told no one else, I wouldn’t. That’s why I didn’t recall, I’m sure. I don’t keep what isn’t mine.
That encounter in a bar made me think a lot. I’ve had times in my own life when I’ve struggled, felt overwhelmed, exhausted, feeling imposter syndrome, thinking ‘I can’t do it’, ‘how can I’, ‘I’m a failure’ and all while waiting for everything in my life to fall apart, because if it always had, it always would – that was the pathway I went down. Not good. I still go in that direction of travel sometimes, but some of the work we do on ourselves has to be a lifetime commitment to keep on relearning the same lessons over and over. If we let go, if we stop, we fall.
It’s because of experiences and what we counsellors and psychotherapists term ‘conditions of worth‘. That’s a link to where I write about them in more detail, but, in essence, I wasn’t the first person to say those things to me and they came attached to, ‘…but if you do what we expect of you, we will be happy and stop making you feel bad’. I tried for others. I stopped trying. I felt better. I started saying that stuff to myself instead, though. The final ‘go away’ to those people has yet to be said in my head. Counsellors are works-in-progress no less than anyone else. Nobody is ever finished, done, cooked, completed. Not until their last breath.
I had to write this story down because I need to recall it when I need to remind myself that what I’m ever able to do in terms of kindness doesn’t require me to push or break myself physically or mentally. Whenever I have done that, it was down to the impact of the aforementioned conditions of worth, even long after they were recognised and rejected. Again, there’s a need to keep at it. The processes of change are ongoing.
What counsellors and psychotherapists offer is a conduit to your own self-discovery and strength-building. We don’t fix anyone, least of all ourselves. A good therapist enables you. They do not change you. You do that.
I needed that man to come up to me yesterday. I really did but I won’t detail why. Some would say it was fated or chance, spiritual intervention or coincidence. What we call the right thing at the right time doesn’t matter nearly as much as the benefits received.
As with the man and his friend, I won’t remember every client nor every client’s story. They’re not my stories. Maybe they’ll remember me, I don’t know. What matters is I helped someone in a big, life-changing way and didn’t know until years later, when I got feedback I wouldn’t have got if I’d gone somewhere else or stayed home. I should be proud of it, so I will be. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember what you did,” he said. “We’ll never forget.” And he was right.
Thanks for reading.
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