Erronous Mind… December 3, 2010

From the little experience I have, psychological counselling is a total failure! I’ll site two examples.

First, when I was in high school, as board exam hulked over the shoulders, and I was gradually cracking with the pressure of keeping with the mountain of expectations, notwithstanding the gallons of tears that rolled down my cheek in the bizarre hours of light & dark in which I tried to counsel myself, I decided to visit our school’s professional counsellor to hear what she had for me. But, in her chamber, believe me, it didn’t help me much apart from clearing my blocked nose out of loosing another gallon of water and mucous from my eyes and nose. What she did was to try to boost my confidence in myself. She tried wooing me by reminding me of my qualities, how good I was, and even to my utter disbelief, how pretty I was (hadn’t thought in my wildest dream that someone could revive from depression by listening to the reverberation of her beauty, when the reason is something much more evocative). The problem here was, I already knew myself, and I only needed someone to tell me how to prove my worth to the others who are waiting wide eyed for me to make them proud. This, she failed at, establishing my distrust towards counselling.

Maybe she tried her best, but my mind was oversaturated with presumptions regarding myself and how I was supposed to be. For this, I think, the average middle class Bengali mentality has to bear its ounce of blame too. And, our parents, being a very integral part of the society fall prey to its various notions of guidance, which, to their oblivion, result in turning our ships topsy-turvy instead of assuring us a smooth sail. Most of us grow up with “don’t go there”, “you’re a kid”, “and if you get the highest I’ll give you a new dress”, “Result’s out? What’s the highest? How much did B get?”, “You won’t understand”, “You’ll understand when you’ll be a parent”, “Stop arguing!”; and those eyes the size of soccer balls, voices more amplified than the microphones during vote campaigns, and the palms straightened, looming over us and drawing near with every split second looking thousand times magnified even from a feet apart …seems like we’re born and brought up in a horror movie! And then when any of us exceed expectations (read top our exams [as Bengalis seem to be worried about only one thing which is this]), our parents go out of the way to say “AMAR chele/ AMAR meye” (“MY boy/girl”) with misty eyes, lips in the shape of a croissant moon with teeth glittering like diamonds, while all our backbreaking efforts-our night outs with books in hand, all the mosquito bites we took in, all our sacrifices of favourite things-books, movies, hobbies, passions, and all our endeavours to stand straight instead of the inhumane demands, fall unnoticed into the great big dark abyss of disapproval , since soon we hear our parents being praised with “TUMI sarthok” (“YOU are successful”). But WE want to be appreciated! We want to be befriended, listened to and understood. Yes definitely we want to be expected from (otherwise we feel worthless), but within our stress limit. We don’t want to buckle under pressure and stand with wobbling knees while trying hard to stay firm in the face. Are we so hard to identify with? The problem is again mental setup and pseudo notions. Our parents have all our best interests at heart…I surely give a nod to it, and I love my parents a lot…but it’s about time they try to drop their prejudices and look at us with a different light altogether. If we are good at dance, we want to get staged. If we are good at acting, we want the proper backup. If we are passionate about martial art, we want to hear “go answer your call” instead of being grounded with piles of academic books by the time we reach high school. The issue here is not “no studies”, its “not only studies and marks”. And, one more request- “no comparisons”. There’s a lot more to life than the printed black letters on our yearly report card.

But I was speaking of counselling. Here I’ll sight another example.

The other day, there was a parents’ counselling session arranged at my sister’s school (and my ex-school). Ma was telling me just a while ago about what Ms. Saloni Priya (the visiting counsellor) put forward to the parents. There was a specific point where she asked the parents to stop demanding marks from their wards and instead suggested them to pay more attention to the quality of education they acquire. Also, she advised them against comparing their children with others. At this I asked Ma, “So you finally understood it?”, and she said “About what?” I said, “About this marks and comparison thing. That the 1^st question you ask me after my semester report comes out shouldn’t be ‘How much did Mr G get?’” To this she said, “All these counselling sessions are for parents of the less meritorious who find it hard to tackle their children under pressure. Why will I compromise with my girl getting less marks when I know she can perform better?”, and with it the retaliation was such that I had to hold my cell phone at a feet’s length to save my ear drums! Again, counselling proved to be a complete failure! Sigh!

“I’m tired of being what you want me to be.

Feeling so faithless, lost under the surface,

Don’t know what you’re expecting of me;

Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes…”

That’s what’s playing on my roomie’s laptop. And it fits so smugly with my mood.

Psychologists and counsellors should do a better job. I’m biased, I agree. But is there any need of counselling if there exist healthy mentalities and relationships all over? Shouldn’t every individual try to understand another soul a little more than what they do now? And shouldn’t they try to comprehend where is it that they are going wrong? I, at my age, am done with being worried about other peoples’ expectations. By this age we have our own expectations to match. But I’m worried about the little kiddos, who, with every passing day and increasing throttling competitions, are having their innocence snatched. Creativity and talent is being endangered.

And, we certainly cannot wait for aliens to come and fix it.