19/05/2026
🙏
🌿The counselling Chair - The Courage to Sit Down
I always notice them before they notice me.
The door opens carefully, almost apologetically, and there is usually a pause before they step inside. I have learned that pause means many things. Fear. Doubt. Exhaustion. Sometimes all three at once.
I sit quietly in the corner of the counselling room, softened by years of holding people who thought they had to hold themselves together.
The first session is often the hardest.
People think they arrive here to talk, but really, they arrive here to survive being seen.
I watch them glance around the room pretending not to. The bookshelf. The window. The box of tissues they hope they will not need. Then eventually, me.
Sometimes they stare at me like I am a test they may fail.
I wish I could tell them immediately:
You do not have to earn a seat here.
Still, they approach cautiously. Many sit right on my edge, bodies leaning forward as if ready to flee at the first uncomfortable feeling. Their hands twist together. Their knees bounce. Their breathing stays high in their chest.
I hold them anyway.
I do not mind the trembling.
I do not mind the silence.
I do not mind the tears people try so hard to hide.
I have held grief heavier than words.
I have held anger with nowhere safe to go.
I have held people who spent so many years becoming what everyone else needed that they no longer recognised themselves underneath.
And almost every first session begins the same way.
“I don’t know where to start.”
Humans say this as though beginnings should arrive polished and organised. But pain is rarely tidy. Trauma does not line itself up neatly for conversation.
Sometimes stories arrive in fragments.
Sometimes through nervous laughter.
Sometimes through complete silence.
That is alright with me.
I am only a chair, after all, but I have learned something humans often forget:
people unfold when they feel safe enough, not when they are forced.
So I stay steady beneath them while they test the room one truth at a time.
A difficult childhood mentioned casually.
A heartbreak disguised as a joke.
A sentence stopped halfway because saying it aloud suddenly makes it real.
I feel the weight shift in their body whenever something honest finally leaves their mouth.
Not lighter exactly.
But less alone.
And then, near the end of the session, something almost invisible happens.
Their spine softens against me for the first time.
Just slightly.
As though some part of them has stopped preparing for danger.
That moment matters more than they know.
But then the session ends, and I feel the familiar tightening return. They stand too quickly. They apologise for crying. Or for talking too much. Or for not talking enough.
Humans apologise so often for being human.
As they walk toward the door, I can almost hear the doubt catching up to them.
“That was awkward.”
“I sounded ridiculous.”
“They probably think I’m a mess.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t come back.”
Oh, I wish I could speak then.
Because if I could, I would tell them this:
Please come back.
Come back even if you are uncertain.
Come back even if you spent the whole journey home criticising yourself.
Come back even if vulnerability feels unbearable today.
I do not need you healed to welcome you here.
I only need you willing to return.
Because I have seen what happens when people do.
Week after week, the body that once perched nervously on my edge begins settling deeper into me. Breaths lengthen. Silences become less frightening. Laughter arrives without apology.
People often believe therapy gives them answers.
But from where I sit, I think it is something gentler than that.
I think people slowly remember that the answers were never truly gone. Buried perhaps beneath shame, fear, survival, or grief — but still there.
And little by little, when someone listens without judgement, they begin hearing themselves again.
So I wait patiently between sessions.
For the ones who nearly cancelled.
For the ones convinced they are too damaged.
For the ones carrying invisible wars inside ordinary-looking bodies.
I will be here when they return.
Steady.
Quiet.
Unafraid of their pain.
Ready to hold them until they learn how to hold themselves.
