"I think I Need Help" - Letters by Caleb Pt. 4

To the people who got me into counseling:

Ethan 

Maddy 

Halsey 

Evan 

Jessie

Counseling is hard. Getting to counseling is harder. Going to counseling requires an admittance that you cannot handle your trauma on your own. It is humbling.

Nobody likes admitting that they can’t handle their trauma without help. I certainly didn’t like admitting it. However, I quickly learned that going to counseling was truly what I needed.

My decision to get help didn’t come lightly. As I have detailed before, my parents had told me they were against me getting counseling. I had thought about seeing a counselor, but those thoughts had been hammered away by the time I moved out of my parents’ house. That was one very difficult hurdle to overcome. My mind was filled with stigma both towards counseling and towards myself. I thought I was simply too weak to handle being anxious. I thought I was too weak to simply handle being sad.

I had no idea at the time that I had a trauma disorder, two anxiety disorders, and clinical depression. I thought everybody was as anxious as me, as sad as me, and as broken as me. To go to see a counselor, and later a trauma therapist, would mean to admit that I had innate issues that a minority of people in the world struggle with. Of course, this mindset could not last forever.

Around spring break of my freshman year of college, my close friends blessed me by convincing me to go to counseling. Though it was a blessing, it was not appreciated at the time. I was not prepared to admit the mental illnesses that I had. I’d ignored how my nightmares were getting both worse and more frequent. I ignored how, no matter what I did with my time, I was often unable to feel basic emotion. I was numb. I was blind to both my own suffering and to the ego that kept me from getting help. I built up walls around my emotions, both conscious and unconscious.

When I went to counseling, the trumpets began to play and my walls began to fall. I am not perfectly healed, but friends I must tell you that the walls fell down in the face of God’s mercy. Getting help was the hardest decision I have ever made.

Of course, I did not get there alone. I had people who started taking down the walls, long before I accepted that I needed it. It started early in high school, when my friend Ethan told me that I needed counseling. He told me that even if I was not ready for counseling, I should be open to going in the future.

In college, the process continued. Maddy told me that it was okay for me to not be okay. Halsey tried day in and day out to make me see the good of getting help. Evan told me that my pain was not forever. Jessie related to me and assured me that it was okay to be broken.

God worked through the people I had surrounded myself with. Due to both God’s grace and the resolve of my friends, it happened. During spring break, I was sitting with Halsey and finally muttered “I think I need help.”

My friends walked me to the school counselor’s office. I wasn’t mentally ready for trauma therapy, so I made an appointment at the school.

I was blind, and now I see.