Why are people afraid of seeing a counselor?

It can be difficult talking to a counselor. You might be opening up on painful topics to improve them. Sometimes pain from issues, such as trauma or losses, can get a little better just by not thinking about them. Don’t be fooled. The pain will often come back.

However, painful issues in a person's past can cause issues even in the present. If you were not treated well by a mother or father, as a child, you might have interpreted that as you were not good enough so they didn’t treat you well. That is natural enough as a child. But if you are an adult, it is time to give up on childish perceptions. Maybe they yelled at you or called you names or other such bad behavior. There is no excuse for a parent to act like that. I’m a parent as well, and I couldn’t imagine treating any of my children that way. But some do. Those parents are often not adequate as parents. They are yelling because of some personal issue they are not talking about: The brain damage from a car accident. They have a personality disorder (like borderline personality disorder), or they at the time of the yelling are drunk on alcohol or some street drug (like fentanyl).

The parent’s behavior isn’t because of the child, but the parent will often blame the child. Then the parent doesn’t have to explain their reprehensible behavior, and in many states, it meets the definition of harassment when they raise their voice and use obscenities to coerce the child. In other words, it is criminal behavior for which a court could send the parent to jail. That’s how serious the parent’s bad behavior is when they raise their voice to coerce their child. The child doesn’t know all this. So, the child often believes the abusive parent.

But it would be normal for a child to take such behavior personally and to blame yourself because then the parent is OK. It would be intolerable for most children to realize that they have a parent who is a bad parent, who lacks self-control, who has issues such as anger and isn’t doing anything to take care of that. Then, they punish their children because the parents do not take responsibility for controlling their behavior. Because a child depends on parents for safety, food and shelter, it would be terrifying to admit that the one you depend on for everything is mistreating you because they are avoiding their responsibility as a parent.

So it’s common for children to blame themselves because of other people’s bad behavior. Then as they grow up, they can continue that pattern. They can blame themselves when they deal with friends and things don’t go well. When they get bad grades in school they can blame themselves. After high school, they might get a job and then lose it, and then blame themselves. If they don’t know what else to do, it’s understandable some people would do that and fall into this, “rabbit hole.” The problem with “blaming yourself” is it doesn’t tell you what to fix. Also, it is irrational. Not you but your actions perhaps caused a problem. A bad thing happened. It was from what you did or didn’t do. Then, identify it and change it. Chalk it up to a “lesson learned.” But many people don’t do that. They wallow in the self-limiting behavior of self-pity and self-blame, which isn’t true and doesn’t do you or the world any good.

You might be doing this and not even know that you’re doing it. It becomes automatic.

But in a meeting with a therapist, a person might talk about superficial things at the start. The patient is wondering, can I trust this therapist? Will the therapist remember what I’ve said in the past? Will I have to repeat myself over and over because they don’t remember what I said? Questions like this are common in a patient’s mind. But then they get to experience the therapist remembering what they said, and then overtime, making connections between different things they said to identify a pattern of behavior. Such as when things don’t go well, you blame yourself, instead of learning from the situation what to do differently and letting go of the past.

So it can be painful at the start of opening up. The therapist’s job is to not go too deeply, too fast, into painful topics. Start slow and advance into more difficult topics at the patient’s comfort level. The therapist needs to help a patient feel comfortable opening up, as well as the patient needs to be giving feedback to the therapist such as, “Yes, this is the topic that I want to talk about,” or “I think this is too painful right now to talk about.“ On the other hand, the patient often is in trouble from not facing issues and finding solutions. They run away from problems. Then, the patient may not want to see the therapist very often. “Maybe our next visit can be in a couple months.” That is letting the disease, such as anxiety, guide the treatment. Unfortunately, this happens.

But in this case, the patient wants to learn solutions to his or her problems! A level of trust is developed with the therapist.

With this kind of trust developing, a patient will feel more comfortable talking about increasingly difficult topics, until finally, a core issue is identified. This might be feeling unworthy of others, unworthy of love or unworthy of acceptance. And then once the topic is realized, it can be worked with, and made better. As I’ve said elsewhere, “Acceptance is the beginning of healing,” because it is true.