Counselling, Without the Counsellor
The Power of the Trusty Voice Memo…
I do this thing I’ve decided to call ‘self counselling’.
Basically, I was intent on finding a counsellor last year as I believe you should look after your mental health in a similar way you look after your physical health: prevention, not cure. I was determined to find someone who was both a qualified counsellor (not a career coach), but also someone who understood the mental life of an entrepreneur / freelancer / glorified unemployed person. Needless to say, I was unsuccessful (and way too picky), so I decided that I could counsel myself (yeah, I know that makes me sound totally mental — but I do have a counsellor for a mum, feel confident in my support network, and I simply couldn’t be bothered to keep looking).
I didn’t want to talk into an empty room as it felt like an unaccountable way to air how I was feeling. I know that counselling isn’t always about taking action on the things you speak about, but the beauty of saying it to someone else, is that it kind of makes it real and therefore — at least for me — something you then have to do something to sort, as opposed to hiding it in the back of your brain.
I figured that if I recorded what I was saying, it would be ‘real’ and therefore would basically be like talking to someone else anyway.
And so began my mild obsession with the voice memo app.
Whenever I have a spare 20 minutes — maybe I’m walking somewhere, maybe I’m sitting in my flat alone, maybe something annoying has happened so I’ll do a few loops round the block — I fire up the voice memo app and my headphones, and go on a mission to untangle my thoughts.
Sometimes I’m frantic, sometimes I’m sad, sometimes I’m numb, sometimes I’m beyond happy, sometimes I’m angry…sometimes I start with ‘I don’t really know what I want to talk about’. But I make a point of doing some self counselling every week — sometimes even multiple times the same day.
I’m aware that I’m talking to myself, but at the same time it does feel like I’m speaking to someone else. I always feel the need to explain the situation as if the ‘other person’ needs the context before I go into the feelings.
I say things I wouldn’t say to anyone else. I say things I feel guilty for saying. I say things I then immediately go ‘argh I don’t think I actually feel that strongly’. I say things that make me cry.
I also say things that make me ridiculously happy. I have one called ‘Bottled Up’ which I recorded simply to capture an amazing feeling I had at that moment (you know when people say ‘ah I wish I could bottle this feeling’…) I listen back to it when I’m feeling a bit low, and I let past-Gemma motivate current-Gemma back into action.
I’d recommend giving it a go. It will feel a bit silly to begin with — it feels especially strange finishing up (do you say ‘bye’?!), and there’s a weird silence when you stop recording — but it feels so good to be able to talk freely to yourself. It doesn’t matter if it’s all over the place — most of mine are. You don’t have to listen back — I only listen back on occasion, and there’s loads I’ve never listened to again either to avoid listening to myself in pain, or because some are long and boring to relive.
The beauty is that when things feel too much and my head is spinning with thoughts and worries and anxieties and busyness and whatever else is swimming about — by speaking it out loud and working it through almost like a list, it makes me realise that actually there’s not as much in there as I thought, and that most of the things have tangible, simple solutions. Normally I finish by saying what I’m going to do next, as a result of recording the voice memo — it might be sending an email, or going a run, or making a point to speak to someone about something, or simply turning my phone off.
So yeah, voice memos are awesome, and self counselling is totally a thing you can do regardless of how you feel about your own mental health. It’s so so so important to keep track of what’s going on in your head somehow.
Prevention, rather than cure.
