In the beginning of my freshman year at Mizzou, I knew I needed help. I never left my dorm room and the times I did, the experience wasn’t positive. I was nervous every time I made plans to go somewhere, and cried every time I came back from those plans. I didn’t want to go out during “Sylly Week,” go to class, meet my friends for coffee, or go to informational meetings — basically everything I could’ve been doing besides sitting in my room. The idea of “free,” on-campus, professional help interested me, so I made my first appointment for the MU Counseling Center.
The walk to the Counseling Center already had my nerves up, it was 20 minutes from my dorm and closer to downtown. Once I sat down with the counselor assigned to me, he let me know that he was in-practice for his Missouri License so our conversation would be recorded for his advisor(s). I touched on multiple subjects during this 60 minute meeting: what I was feeling, why I may have been feeling this way, what high school was like for me, what I had experienced so far up to this point. The counselor suspected I was facing Social Anxiety, resulting from PTSD of an event that happened my high school year (that I will not divulge into in this article). He offered me different structures of treatment and I ultimately decided to continue 1-on-1 meetings with him.
My next meeting came the following week. I was so excited to tackle my problem head on, now that we knew the cause of everything. Once we got to talking, I realized, he hadn’t completely remembered what I told him. He forgot about what happened my senior year and thought I was just being anxious about partying. I understand, therapists often delay tackling the larger issues when beginning treatment, but it was erased from his mind. When I brought it up again, he seemed shocked all over again.
Maybe this was a stupid reason to avoid treatment, maybe I could’ve waited it out. However, my therapist made me feel like this event, that had been so consequential in my life, was forgettable. I felt like I had to go another direction. This is not a judgement of MU Counselling or therapy in general. In fact, there was a lot I could’ve, and should’ve, done differently. I should’ve marked the box in my initial patient form requesting a counselor of the same gender. I should’ve emphasized how impactful and damaging this event had been. I should’ve shown more concern for my future without treatment.
I haven’t returned to counseling yet, but I also feel that I have been doing a better job of understanding myself and letting go of things on my own. My anxiety has taken a different form, rather than Social Anxiety, I simply face Generalized Anxiety Disorder. It is a disorder that takes over my life almost everyday, but I’ve found ways to cope. I’ve also made a promise to myself that I will seek help if I ever feel the way I did during freshman year again. My message is this: Therapy is okay. Therapy is responsible. I wrote this article so you know that it is not your fault if a single therapist doesn’t work out for you. It’s just like dating — it’s not always going to be a perfect match! Not everything and everyone is going to work for you, but you deserve to find what will!