A little over three years ago I sought out counseling to process the grief of my mother living in assisted living who eventually passed away from Alzheimer’s Disease. The sessions were sort of accelerated as I had eight sessions due to the incredible demand of counseling from the congregation of the church I go to. I was asked about a hard period in my life and how that turned out. The next question sort of threw me for a loop.
High school was a particularly hard time in my life as the onset of what turned out to be a chronic illness happened the second month into my high school career. The prognosis at first was grim as I was told I had brain cancer as I had experienced immense headaches because of a “lesion” that was found from an MRI. The good news is the lesion was benign but the reason for it perplexed doctors as a definitive diagnosis could not be made.
What hopefully would have been a more common diagnosis went undiagnosed for years meaning monthly visits to specialty doctors at Duke University. Looking back, what was most difficult was the medication I had to take which was Prednisone, a very potent steroid that over time has detrimental side effects. At first, I was told I just had to take Prednisone a few months. Those months turned into years.
Prednisone can cause symptoms comparable to bipolar disorder, such as mood swings from manic behavior to severe depression. At first, Prednisone felt great. I was on top of the world and could do any and every task no matter how unqualified I was, until the inevitable happens and depression hit.
Another big part of high school was that I missed 90 days of my high school career. This was due to being in the hospital or being sick from a side effect of one of the medications I took. My senior year I was on a low dose of chemotherapy to treat my brain lesions because the Prednisone had done so much damage. Forty-five of those days were from being sick from chemo. 90 days is an entire semester.
The counselor I was talking with was taking everything in and paying close attention. That is why what he said next totally perplexed me. “What if that never happened? If so, would you have liked high school more?” So, I thought about it.
The point of this exercise the counselor was doing with me was changing my perspective on what happened where this exercise would rewrite my past, so to say and to take in the big, overarching experience rather than focusing on the bad.
This exercise is called “reframing” which is visiting a prior difficult experience and mining the good parts that came from it. Reframing is not ignoring the negative parts that happened, but it is also realizing the positive that also happened. It is so easy to get stuck in a dichotomy of something, whether it is an event or period of time as either being “all good” or “all bad” without acknowledging that reality is a mix of the two.
One reason that I was able to reframe this period in my life is because the experience was almost 30 years ago and, in that time, most of hard times sting had settled and I was able to see the good that came out of them. While hard times are completely forgotten, time does bring new perspective as those times may have equipped a person for something else that turned positive in the future.
With all of that said, my high school experience was reframed, and it was largely a positive experience. I ran for class president and won! My gimmick… I was really short then (I still am), so I made my speech standing on a phone book. I got my first car. I got a decent SAT score. Most of all I had a great group of friends and got more serious about my faith in God.
Every one of us has had to deal with a something hard at one time or the other. How have you let that time shape you?
If you are looking for a therapist near you then a Google search is a great way of finding one. I happen to be a therapist in Charlotte, NC but am licensed to counsel anyone in the state of North Carolina. In Google, try looking for “psychotherapist,” “find therapist,” “therapy near me,” or even “counseling charlotte, nc.” If you feel like you have hit a wall you are not able to get past, call me at (704) 458-6298 or email me at jeffhelms@clearerthoughtspllc.com.
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