In a couple of weeks I have an interview for a counselling placement. I’m super scared that I just wrote that, because now, if the nice man who invited me sees my face, hears my voice and decides I’m not good enough to volunteer myself for his charity, I’ll feel pretty shitty. And I might have to tell someone I failed.
This charity is a bereavement service, and the placement is part of my advanced diploma (hence why I’m doing it for free). I’d be spending my time with people who’d lost loved ones and needed someone to talk to.
My biggest concern about this interview, is not that he’ll ask me what approach I use, or what the strengths and weakness of a CBT over psychodynamic paradigm are…I know that stuff (yey me!). My biggest concern is that he’ll ask me if I have personal experience of loss i.e. do I want to help others who’ve gone through something I have felt (albeit in an individual way).
You see, I suppose I’ve been pretty lucky so far…says she, actually finding a piece of wood to touch…in that I’ve lost two people I know about – my ‘Pa when I was five or six and my Dad’s best friend when I was eleven or twelve. I don’t really remember either all that well, other than other people were upset and I wasn’t really.
I actually remember running upstairs to my bedroom and crying because I wasn’t upset about my ‘Pa dying. I thought that made me a horrible person.
Truth is, I’ve always had a very philosophical approach to death and loss. Call me stupid, but I’ve always kinda believed in reincarnation and life following it’s own path. I guess I always just figured that what was meant to happen would happen and our souls would meet again at some point when the time was right. I’ve never really thought of people as truly gone.
With ex-boyfriends it’s a little different, some I hoped against hope I’d never see again, and some I hoped would one day become friends…when the time was right. Either way, I always followed this ideology that things happen for a reason, even if I didn’t know what the reason was.
Now I’m going to put something out there, and it might seem a bit idealistic, but whatever, most people think I’m a bit weird anyway.
If no-one actually knows for sure what happens when we die, why not just make up a story for yourself – a version of reality that provides you comfort in your time of need? No-one can prove it either way, so why not choose to believe something that makes you feel better, instead of worse?
Some people believe in Heaven and Hell, Reincarnation etc and others believe you simply become worm food. If you could choose, which would you think?
When that nice man asks me how I will be able to relate to people when I may not have felt the deep sense of loss that some people feel, perhaps I’ll say that since everyone experiences loss differently, I could never feel the same way they do anyway, but perhaps I might be able to listen, and help them make sense of what’s happened, and allow them to find their own way to peace, in their own time.