Hacker News Reader

Comment by bad_user | Hacker News Reader

One thing you have to realize is that a counselor/doctor is not your friend, but someone that helps you solve your problems with professional advice (level of competency varies of course).

Getting over any recurrent destructive mood is much like a war. First you need to go to war, then you need strategies, you need to work on it and there's going to be pain involved, with multiple battles won and lost.

Going to counseling is one way to do it, another would be medication, or support groups or just good friends that care. Either way you have to deal with it and it isn't warm and cozy.

View on HN

One thing you have to realize is that a counselor/doctor is not your friend

For a person dealing with trust issues, this sort of realization shatters any chance of progress, at least in my personal experience.

I can't feel safe if I think I could say the wrong word and have the cops drag me off for questioning. That's why I never got anywhere with counseling. For a person with trust issues, it's extremely important that you feel safe in counseling since you're making yourself extremely vulnerable by exposing yourself to them.

I've since dealt with a lot of my issues on my own. I haven't hurt myself intentionally in over two years, and that was an anomaly. It had been over two years since I had last hurt myself at that point.

The point is that these aren't easy problems, and there are no easy solutions.

If you are still afraid of crossing some sort of invisible line where your doctor/counselor is required to report you, then I would suggest that you research that a bit so that you know where that line is yourself. Then you can evaluate whether or not you think that you'll be able to fully open up without worrying about crossing that line. It may be worth the time/effort that you put into the research.

And fortunately counselors and doctors are humans as well, and you can find ones that will care personally about you. In this case "friend" is a loaded term, because of course it is true that you are paying for professional services, but on the other hand, friendship is not exactly a well-defined term, and there are some pretty tenuous and abusive reasons underlying a lot of real friendships.

I've had a couple really good counselors, and the sense of trust and genuine caring is actually better than with most friends. Part of it is that there are no social dynamics to worry about within a group of friends, and another is that this person is a professional who has a much greater chance of having the tools and experience to deal with what are very difficult and private issues.

Now my issues were not with trust, so I'm not trying to say that trust is easy. All I'm saying is that there are counselors out there who are worthy of your trust.

One thing you have to realize is that a counselor/doctor is not your friend, but someone that helps you solve your problems with professional advice

Depending on the situation, it can take a patient a lot of time to even begin to have this thought.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com