I'm Not Crazy

That's right - the counselor said it, so it must be true. I'm not crazy. In fact, I'm so sane that he actually scheduled an appointment to come to my office next week and share his feelings.

Okay, that last part is a lie.

It was an interesting experience to be "on the couch." It made me happy that there actually was a couch, and I was on it. I didn't lay down though. I thought he used a great analogy to describe the nature of pain and disappointment in each of our lives. According to him, nobody reaches maturity in adulthood with all themselves in tact. That is to say, you might be a fully functioning mature adult in intellect and physical stature, but there are some parts of your emotional life that haven't quite made it yet. The reason these parts of a person lag behind is because they were never forced to mature. Pain is one mechanism that brings these parts of the self out of latency and pulls them up, and even past, their natural developmental stage.

Think of it like this, he said. When you go skiing, you use muscles you didn't even know you had. And they get sore because skiing is the only time you actually use them. In the same way, processing things like leukemia force you to use emotional and spiritual muscles you didn't even know you had. And they get sore. This process of the full self catching up to maturity often needs some help "on the couch."

He asked me what I wanted out of our meetings. Tough question because I don't exactly know. I said that at one point, I thought of myself as reasonably self-aware, that I knew myself and was able to articulate my emotions and understand why I felt that way. That has become confused over the last year and a half. So maybe some help better understanding me.

I think that's a good thing, for I return to the words of John Calvin in the first volume of his institutes: "Nearly all wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists in two parts: The knowledge of God and of ourselves. But, while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern."