She gave me healing

By: Gwenyth Sage

I walked out of her room glowing. For the first time in a long time, I smiled a smile borne out of genuine joy. It was my last time seeing Kristy. I had written spontaneous poetry for friends before and wanted to do the same for her. I asked her for a word as inspiration for the poem. She gave me healing.

Kristy was my counselor, the guardian angel who selflessly held my hand and led me inch by inch out of the eye of the storm, through the turbulence, and onto safe ground. Kristy was tireless in picking up the pieces of the emotional mess that I was, helping me organize and reconfigure the thoughts that plagued and overwhelmed me.

Before Kristy, I was a different person. Mental illness is someone else’s problem, I thought. I was a nursing student after all — I’d know if something was wrong. It is an unfortunate reality that many people, like me, do not seek help until they find themselves in the middle of a mental health crisis. Changes in mood, eating habits, lack of motivation — these are easy to read as a list in a textbook but are difficult to identify in your everyday life especially when they’re commonly attributed to academic stress.

Shifts in mental wellness sneak up on you, inching ever so slowly that you are unwitting to the change. As Elizabeth in Prozac Nation muses, it comes “gradually, then suddenly” and “you wake up one morning, afraid that you’re gonna live.”

I went to the Student Wellness Centre on a whim for a drop-in counseling session to get a second opinion. It was an optional measure in my mind. I recalled from my mental health nursing placement that people were always the last to see when they needed help, so I went in to see what they had to say. My reaction to trauma was to ignore it, suppress it, and try to move on with life. While I wanted to be done with the trauma, it clearly wasn’t done with me. And so, when I told the mental health nurse in my initial appointment, the floodgates opened, and I was made acutely aware of the mental health crisis that I was in the middle of.

The fragility of the equilibrium I had tried to maintain by avoiding the psychological aftermath of trauma was revealed. Everything triggered me, everything hurt, everything was heavy. A response to constant pain is to numb. And for a while, I was numb, robotic; I was a zombie. As opposed to having low mood, which I did experience, more often than not, I had no mood at all. Emotion is an experience integral to the human experience and to lack such a basic part of myself was deeply distressing.

The results were in and I was to begin the most intensive, reflective, and painful chapter of my life with my counselor Kristy. The course of cognitive processing therapy would last ten weeks, and painstakingly, Kristy would break me apart, reset my bones, reassess, and repeat.

Counseling was not easy–the road to happiness never is. She challenged me with questions, understood and validated my concerns, and recalibrated me to be able to live amicably with my painful past. Pain is a part of the process in understanding and coming to terms with sensitive experiences. It is now just a memory, no longer lingering uncomfortably in the forefront of my conscious thought.

Avoidance is not therapy. You can shove it under a rug but you’ll never forget and it won’t go away. If you feel numb, anxious, or that your baseline mood has shifted to a level that is less than comfortable, please do not wait to seek help. In that state, you may be of the belief that you are irredeemable, unsalvageable, out of reach. It’s a lie. Help is available, and you are not alone.

Kristy gave me healing. This is what I gave her:

life was through a reel

   the ins and outs of 
   an assembly line
   revolving door of 
   broken minds

she sprinkled
she sewed 
she shared
  the wisdom bestowed 
  upon her
  by history
  it takes one to know one

empathy is pain
empathy is wisdom
pain is temporary

wisdom is not

To get help, please reach out to MSU services like Peer Support Line, Women & Gender Equality Network, and the Student Wellness Centre. If you are in a crisis, do not hesitate to call COAST, Hamilton’s 24 hour crisis outreach hotline at 905-972-8338. There is help, there is hope.