Serving Our Seniors Magazine

IT’S TIME TO TALK As an adult, Stacey experienced an abusive UHODWLRQVKLS DQG VKH ZDV ¿JKWLQJ ZLWK KHU SDUHQWV She was feeling depressed and anxious. Then she realized she wanted a biased opinion. She said, “I needed somebody to be on my side and someone to help me to cause my parents to understand what I was going through.” In other words, “I needed someone who would be there for ME.” Almost everyone knows what it is like to go to a doctor’s appointment, but most don’t understand what it is like to go to a counseling appointment. People think it is an appointment where the person, who is seeking help, goes to an appointment to hear about all of their faults and what they are doing wrong. That is not what happens. Stacey explained, “When you show up to talk to a counselor the experience is, ‘How can we help you?’ ‘What do you need?’ “In my case, I really didn’t know what I needed. I continued to JR WR VHVVLRQV XQWLO , ¿JXUHG LW RXW 7KH WKHUDSLVW LV on your side. I’m not saying that they won’t tell you things that you don’t want to hear, but they helped me ¿QG ZD\V DQG UHVRXUFHV VR , FRXOG JHW EHWWHU ´ I asked Alphonso the same question, “How did you know you needed help?” He had quite a story to share… “I was 50 years old, when I was incarcerated for my fourth time. I was dealing with mental health issues I did not know that I had. For me, my response to everything in my life was ‘normal.’ At that time in my life , no one could have told me that I wasn’t normal.” “I was a person who would never talk about my feelings. I kept my feelings to myself,” he said. By doing so, he believed this kept him from appearing soft. In prison, the unspoken rule is never show any type of sensitivity. “Living in prison only adds to that callousness that I already had,” he said. ³,Q SULVRQ WKH SHRSOH LQ FRQWURO ± FRUUHFWLRQ RI¿FHUV social workers, psychological services -- don’t ask the questions that I always ask when I am helping someone… ‘What happened to you?’ ” Stacey, nodded in agreement and said, “With the divorce of my parents and the death of my brother I ZDV EHLQJ VKXIÀHG WKURXJKRXW WKH IDPLO\ ´ 8QWLO VKH accepted help for her problems, she said, “No one ever asked me, ‘What happened to you?’ As Alphonso sees it, when people experience hurt feelings and unhealthy/harmful thoughts, they can choose to accept they are having these thoughts / IHHOLQJV RU WKH\ FDQ UHMHFW LW ³,I ZH UHMHFW LW ZH ¿JKW against the people who want to help us,” he said. “If we accept it, then we can start asking questions, like, ‘This is the problem I’m experiencing. Can you help me?’” One of the feelings that plagued him was never feeling accepted. He believed his mother didn’t love him and he believed his father didn’t want to be around him. When he went to parties, he would look at people and not feel accepted. He couldn’t enjoy being in the company of others, unless they openly H[SUHVVHG DQ DI¿QLW\ IRU KLP His feelings/thoughts caused him to isolate himself, beat himself up and on one occasion tried to commit suicide. He recalled the day when his mother unexpectedly came to see him in prison. “I don’t know how she found out where I was,” he said. It was there that he DVNHG KLV PRWKHU ± IRU WKH ¿UVW WLPH ² WR IRUJLYH KLP for all that he had done. “I remember that day. She looked at me and said, ‘Son, I forgive you and I love you.’ When she said that, I felt the weight I had been carrying around lifted off of me.” As his eyes welled up with tears and his throat choked up with emotion, he said, “I remember that moment. It was profound.” When he came home from prison for the last time, Alphonso was feeling overwhelmed by being in Sandusky. He believes God inspired him to start looking at himself. Stacey Borsick 17