Empowerment Through Responsibility
Kier is currently a serving prisoner engaged in weekly counselling sessions with Forensic Therapies. Here he writes candidly about his search to find a suitable therapist and his courageous journey towards taking responsibility in the face of overwhelming difficulties.
It does not matter whether you are male or female; black or white; heterosexual, bisexual or gay; prisoner or prison officer; old or young. It is a fact that a growing number of people, in one form or another, seem to have a feature in common, whether open or guarded – counselling. And just as there are many different types of people who are now making use of counselling, the reasons behind their motivation to get counselling are just as varied. For example, it could be due to depression arising from any number of issues such as drug addiction, bullying, relationship problems, sexual or physical abuse or offending behaviour. Or it could simply be that someone is just fed up with certain situations or aspects of their lives and wants to talk about it. Ultimately I think the most overwhelming reason for counselling is to make a change.
“I began to talk and finally believed that someone could help me, did understand, did listen and did hear.”
My own reason for deciding to seek out the help of a counsellor initially arose from the fact that in March 2007 I was diagnosed with cancer. It was the prison doctor who made the initial suggestion that I might find it helpful to speak to someone about how I felt about my diagnosis, as she knew I had no contact with my family and that any friends I had were all the way up in Manchester.
For me the cancer diagnosis reared the ugly head on a number of issues, the main one being that many members of my own family over the years had died of cancer. This had left an awful fear of death ingrained upon my subconscious, which I needed to talk through with someone who could help me to rationalise it in a safe and controlled manner.
“I cannot express strongly enough how important it is to have Forensic Therapies available for everyone.”
Whilst I was waiting for the counselling sessions to be set up, I admit that I began to feel very apprehensive about the whole thing. I had in fact tried counselling on a couple of other occasions in the past, concerning other issues I had, but those experiences had left me feeling somewhat ambivalent about the whole process. For example, the first counsellor I came across turned out to be a first year counselling student, and this made me feel, rightly or wrongly, that I was dealing with someone who wasn’t experienced enough, which led me to not being comfortable enough to be as forthcoming about my problems as I would have liked to be. My second attempt, about two years later, was something more of a disaster – the counsellor would regularly break down crying whenever I talked about something sad or distressing. This meant that I found myself constantly checking myself before speaking, which meant that I wasn’t being true to myself; therefore I felt that my needs were being completely sidelined.
“I absolutely believe there should be many more counsellors in all prisons.”
This time round, however, it is a completely different story, and for me personally, it is not only a refreshing change, but a completely new experience when it comes to counselling. This is because Forensic Therapies is a specialist agency with very high standards and expectations of their counsellors. The counsellor I see once a week not only leaves me feeling comfortable and makes me speak confidently, but he has helped me to see things that I have not seen before. As I said, my initial reason for going through this process was to deal with the issues surrounding my cancer; I am doing that, but it has also turned into something so much more, and I am able to explore other areas of my life which for so long had been untouched, other than within the confines of my own mind.
Remember, when you are in counselling, it is you who are in charge, and set the agenda with some input from the counsellor. If you don’t feel comfortable with your counsellor you can do something about it. This is where I went wrong in the past and just ended up abandoning the sessions. It does not have to be that way for you. If, for whatever reason, you don’t feel comfortable with your counsellor you can talk it through with them. The most important thing is that you get the kind of service from your sessions that you deserve.
“I know it is the most important service that can be offered and without doubt saved my life and will save that of many others.”
If I could give any advice to anyone who was thinking of using counselling, it would be to go with a goal in your mind. I think that the main goal would be to ‘make a change’. Sure, we can’t change the things that have happened to us in the past, but we can change the ways in which we think about these experiences, and ways in which we let these experiences influence our lives. Therefore counselling can help us take back some of the control in our lives and our futures.