Not all forms of counseling involve a particular disorder or mental illness. And things do not always fit into a neat little category. Many times, they may overlap.
The same concept applies in degrees of intensity of a problem. Some issues are cleared up rather quickly when one correctly understands what the issues really are. Understanding the problem correctly, leads to finding the right solution.
The severity of a problem depends on how long it has been going on, how severely it disrupts your daily life, how much it dominates your feelings and thoughts, and how damaging you feel it could become if you do not seek outside help.
What one person considers a crisis, another person sees as an inconvenience. What ruins one's whole day for some people, only ruins another person's hour. Because we are all different, we react differently to the same problem. We use different coping skills.
Some of us turn to alcohol, or drugs, while others turn to nicotine and food addictions. Depending on the environments that we grew up in, and the role models that we had, and our inborn temperament traits, we all react differently to life's difficulties.
So while we can control some things in our own lives, like how we choose to react to bad things, others are beyond our control, especially other people. It can take a life time for some people to learn and to accept that they cannot control or change another person to become what they want them to become. And this is why there are so many problems in our lives.
Just think how hard it must be for God to watch us make the wrong choices and not try to control our choices when he already knows what the consequences will be when we make the wrong choice. If He, who knows all, can abstain from trying to force us to do the right thing, then we should be able to abstain from forcing someone else to do what we know is the right thing.
We must allow people to learn from the mistakes they make. That is how they grow. And when we take over and try to 'save" them from the consequences of their own decisions, they never learn from their mistakes. Not only do they keep repeating them, they even blame us for the outcomes.
So we have to learn to " Let Go" of people, events, and circumstances, and do our own thing, making the right choices in life, and allow others to make their own choices as well. It is truly sad to watch someone that you love, "self-destruct" right before your eyes. However, you could talk until you are "blue in the face" to try to change something they are getting ready to do, or they are doing, but UNLESS THEY WANT TO MAKE THAT CHANGE THEMSELVES, you are helpless.
The definition of "insanity" is doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same results. It is a waste of your energy and time.
True, Godly love for another, is to "step back," and after you have made your suggestions, once, to allow them to make their own choices and suffer the consequences. Only then do you release them to the possibility of real growth and real change.
Patricia Jones, M.A.
Pastoral Counselor
