Allow yourself to unravel

Finally the door closed with a bang as the last of them came in to find a seat. It was strange to be in the community hall without many people around. It felt cavernous and noise carried, making it seem even bigger than it was. It wasn’t the first time they met there, so each of them knew exactly where to go and what to do.

They sat down stuffing handbags or backpacks under their chairs trying to make themselves compact to fit in the circle as much as possible. The counselor smiled agreeably and, pained, counted the number of empty chairs. Five. Two more than last time. They were slipping through his fingers. He had felt that last time he was not reaching them. He had seen it in their blank stare, felt it in their fidgeting in the chair.

‘Hello everybody! How are we doing?’, the counselor’s voice was not as deep and firm as he would have liked. He took a deep breath while he waited for a reply. They mumbled something in return, but nothing he could hang on to.

‘Does anyone want to share anything that happened this past week?’, more grumbling and mumbling with eyes cast down.

He just could not understand it, they had made the effort to come in, they knew they had an issue to work on, but still they refused to do the work or to engage. He felt his human nature take over his polished counselor persona as frustration rose inside him. How was he supposed to accomplish anything? He felt like grabbing them by the collar and shaking them.

TALK to me!

Silence covered them like a weighted blanket.

That is when it happened. The spark that lit his fuse. With the corner of his eye he saw long, delicate fingers, gently lifting up a sleeve and lighting up a smart watch screen. It only took that split second for him to lose it.

The counselor got up abruptly knocking over his chair with a bang and he started ranting while making uncoordinated movements with his hands.

‘Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?! Whyyyyyyy do you come here? Why do you bother??? If you come here just to leave then don’t come! Come here if you want to do the work, to engage with the others and confront your anxiety, if you don’t want to do that then don’t come, I cannot help you! I … cannot … help … you …’, and with that tears started rolling down his cheeks.

The counselor fell in one of the empty chairs giving up his place and becoming one of the group. They were stunned. Nobody would have expected that from the counselor. He was always so well put together and composed. His humanity surprised them.

They looked at each other in disbelief.

Carrie, a forty something redhead mother of three, put a hand on the counselor’s shoulder and patted him encouragingly.

‘You know’, she started in the softest voice, evidently trained by hours and hours of bedtime story telling, ‘I thought a lot about what you asked last time, to try to identify in all my fears which is the biggest one, and I think I have it. It is losing my children. The thought of it reduces me to tears and I can no longer function. Strangely though, understanding this has in a way lessened all the other fears I have.’ Her soft voice got lost in the large space.

‘I also though about it.’ Talking was a young man, doing well if you were to judge by his clothes. He did not look up to see if anyone was listening, he just went on, on a dreamy tone.

‘I am afraid they will fire me and I will lose my job. I never had this much money in my life and the fear that I will lose it paralyzes me and it robs me of any pleasure I could have. I cannot enjoy anything for fear it will be taken away from me.’ He dropped his head in his hands and sat there rocking gently.

Next to join the conversation was an old man wearing a suit and spotless shoes. He had been overdressed all his life, so now, he did not even notice the side glances that people threw him when he entered a room.

‘I am afraid of dying. I do not want to die. People tell me that I had a good life, that I am in my nineties so that should be enough, but it is not! I do not want to die and I hate it when everybody behaves like it is normal for me to just wait to kick over. What is worse is that sometimes I feel like they are waiting for me to die and that just makes me so sad.’

They could all echo the pain in the others and the counselor listened to them surprised by their openness. He spoke in a warm voice.

‘I am afraid I am not good enough to help you and that because of my inability you will continue to suffer unnecessarily.’

The group went back to mumbling when they were interrupted by a voice they had not heard before. It was the girl with the long fingers that usually just sat hidden in the shadows listening to their sessions.

‘I am here because I do not know fear. I lack that bit in my brain and it makes me bad at evaluating risks and making the right decisions. So I need to learn from you what fear is so I can rationally try to add it to a situation.’

Now that really shocked them, even more than their counselor having a breakdown and starting crying.

‘That is impossible! How can you not feel fear?’, the young man was now looking at her in disbelief.

‘It is not about feeling, I cannot think it, conceive it, my brain does not create fear generating thoughts so I do not feel any fear. It is difficult to explain …’, from her words it was obvious she had tried to answer this before.

‘Oh my God! Mind blown! And how can you live without fear?!’, he was genuinely shocked.

And then something changed in their minds, a new idea dawned on them. You cannot live without fear, it is part of the fabric of human existence.

‘True, fear has a certain adaptive value, it makes Carrie take extra care of her children, it makes you work hard, and you live full days, but if left unchecked it can take control and taint your life.’ The counselor felt he was coming back to himself.

‘It makes me work hard to support you on your journey.’

He put his chair back up and sat down. His mood was bright and he felt light, they all had had a breakthrough, sometimes you just need to allow yourself to unravel to get to the bottom of things.

‘Ok then! Who wants to talk about their week?’

The all quickly put their hands up.

‘Let’s start with you!’