On Counseling and Chaos and Calming Storms

Not many people know that I have a master’s degree in Guidance and Counseling. Mainly because I’ve never used it, at least not professionally. The only real “counseling” I’ve done outside of friends and family was the twelve-week internship at a middle school which I had to do to close out the program and get my degree.

That experience proved to me that I had no business being a school counselor, bless my heart.

My mentor was a wonderful African-American woman whom I admired and enjoyed; I could have spent hours soaking in her wisdom and never have gotten saturated. A few weeks into the internship, she organized a weekly meeting with a group of boys who were dealing with anger issues, a group that we were supposed to co-lead. She gradually let me take over more of the leadership of the group as time went on – which, of course, was exactly what was needed for my education but unfortunately not at all what was needed for these poor boys’ edification.

Do you remember what I said a while back about God not gifting me with spontaneity? Yeah. Here’s where that matters. I started one of the final meetings of this group with my carefully planned agenda for the hour . . . and watched the conversation spin completely out of my control. And, for the life of me, I had no idea how to fix this. What’s going on?? This wasn’t the plan! Stop – halt – whoa, there . . .

I watched as my mentor skillfully and artfully roped the boys back in, finished the discussion effectively, and sent them back to class. It was amazing, and she was much too gracious in her remarks about my lame performance trying to run things. The next item on my schedule was a teaching session in the library (teaching – that I could handle). So, I spent the next twenty minutes preparing for that session.

By organizing the chairs.

Literally moving chairs around in different formations in the room. You know why? Because I could control those chairs, doggone it. Pick it up – put it down. Not there – over here. Even as I was doing this (again, for twenty full minutes), I found myself an interesting psychological study. I move a chair to this spot, and it stays right there . . . and I feel peace restore my agitated soul.

A while back, my girls and I were discussing Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (a condition we have a personal acquaintance with), and we noted that the variations of the disorder that we know of are all basically attempts to create order out of what feels like a chaotic life. And we made the further observation that this might be the root of most mental and emotional illnesses we suffer from: they are reactions to a world that feels stormy and out of control. We get anxious when we fear the chaos. We get angry at the injustice of the chaos. And we get obsessive and compulsive when we try to contain the chaos.

When I can’t make order of the anarchy in my life, I seek out the order I can make. I write to-do lists. I rehearse conversations. I rearrange the chairs. This is all well and good; these might be wise choices on my part. Yet while I may feel like my behavior is abating the bedlam, it really isn’t. The world remains as chaotic and stormy as ever.

Fortunately, I know someone in the business of calming storms. But more often, he allows the storm to run its course and simply calms me, if I let him. Which is just as good. And it usually doesn’t require moving furniture.