I am healthy

At my regular weekly counseling session yesterday my counselor declared me HEALTHY! He said I was a completely different person than the one who walked in at the end of February. I had retaken the Discipleship Inventory, God Image Inventory, and SCL-90 psychological profiles and they all determined I was better than average/healthy. Pretty scary, huh? :)

The Discipleship Inventory deals with my personality. I had a dramatic change there - which even surprised the counselor. I asked if that meant I was a 'normal' person again. He said I was 'healthy'; which is better than normal because normal isn't always healthy.

The God Image Inventory determines my view of and relationship with God. Average is 60.4 and I am now at a 64.6 (higher is better). I had previously been at a 56.1 and 56.3.

The SCL-90 is a symptomology checklist that measures psychological symptoms in 9 different areas. I originally only measured as healthy in 1 area, but am now healthy in all areas. They want you to have a Global Severity Index of less than 64. Mine was originally at the max of 81, but is now a very low 47!! So that means my clinical pattern of symptoms is such that I do not qualify as a positive clinical case; therefore, I only need to deal with issues rather than symptoms. In other words, I no longer need treatment for depression, ocd, anxiety, etc. I only need to see the counselor if I have issues I want to deal with. I no longer have regular weekly sessions, but see him only on an as-needed basis.

So what does all this mean? I guess it means that the counseling worked, and I am healthy again. The counselor said he did not diagnose me as having a mental illness in the first place, but merely needing 'adjustment therapy' (I was simply burned out). He said it usually takes about 6 months, and that is about exactly how long it took. Any further counseling is simply to deal with issues that I would like to address - now that I am healthy enough to address them.

It took awhile to hit me, but this feels really good. I actually confronted a problem I had, sought help, got it, and now I am better. I think I will continue to see him for awhile to address a few lingering things I've had on my mind, but it won't have to be every week and, overall... it feels good to be told I'm an emotionally/mentally healthy individual. Especially by someone who can actually make that diagnosis. It's amazing how sometimes things work out just like they're supposed to. It's kind of too bad there were some folks who didn't believe it was possible. But I'm done dwelling on that. Life goes on...