Fraud

Sometimes I wonder what I am doing with my life and what I would like to do with it. The truth is, I don’t really know. I think I will always struggle to find a job that I will be happy in. There is always too much anxiety regarding whether I can ever be good enough. I like to think I am good at my day job, and I am told by people I work with I am, but all I can see are all the bits that I’m not good at, all the bits that I question myself over and can’t believe that I could ever do right. And if I did get it wrong, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, things could be put right, but the fact that someone would have to would be enough for all those voices to scream all the louder that I am just not good enough.

When it comes to my counselling work, the voices have even more to grip on to. In my counselling work, I can’t help but wonder whether I am just a fraud. My world often feels all over the place. I often feel like I am not coping with anything. I fail to have the support systems I encourage my clients to try and have in place. I know all this theory, but my life is just all over the place. So how can I really sit there, opposite my clients, and help them walk through their lives, when I am stumbling so clumsily through mine.

I know I have clients that have reported on how much I have helped them, but inside my head I don’t really believe I have been any good. That maybe they would have gotten there anyway with a bit of time and that it had nothing to do with my help. Because how could I possibly do something that would really help someone else. That my belief that I am useless and bad, runs so deep that whatever had happened in their life must have had nothing to do with their conversations with me.

I wonder whether I should ever try and be a counsellor. Is it fair for me to sit opposite people when my head is such a mess and they sit there thinking I have it all together. I feel like a fraud, feel like I am pretending to be an ok human being while they show my all their broken parts. And I wonder what they would think if they could see all my broken parts, whether it would somehow make them feel better that everyone’s life is a bit broken, or would make them run a mile because it would break the illusion. The illusion being that somehow, as a counsellor, I have my life sorted. That I don’t battle every single day with all the intrusive thoughts in my head.

I think I somehow expect counsellors to be super human. To have no problems in life. And if that is my expectation, then it also has to be placed on myself. And the fact that I do have problems means that I must be a fraud.