Roles and role plays in life

When you are playing multiple roles in life, as you usually are, the tasks that you need to fulfil for each of the roles seem to overlap at times. I am a counsellor by profession, and this role seems to sometimes pervade the roles that i play of a wife, a mother, a friend, a daughter... and so many other parts. It is so easy to demarcate the roles in other professions; but when it comes to being a counsellor, you are dealing with the fragile human mind, and emotions of a vulnerable human being. It becomes impossible at times to draw the lines as to when you stop being a counsellor and don the garb of a mother or a wife!

I have this strange issue of continuing being treated as a counsellor, even when i am not playing the role of one! Let me explain... I had gone on a trip with a family friend, and during the entire journey in the car, i was given the case of the man’s niece who was having a serious problem in her life. Her behaviour had turned bizarre and she had subsequently become moody and withdrawn, and also seemed to hate men in her life. This gentleman wanted to know how i could help this child...long-distance, second-hand counselling i call it!

Now the point is, i do not mind discussing people’s problems and giving my so-called expert advice. (though counselling is anything but giving advice but that is another story, and people seem to press a play button the moment they know i am a counsellor!) My contention is, if i continue being a counsellor 24x7, when do i be myself? The person who can be allowed to give vent to her feelings, her moods, even her tantrums at times, or just relax and enjoy life’s small pleasures? When can i be a mother to my children, an uncritical wife to my husband, without reading meaning to each and every sentence they speak or view every action of theirs in a psychological perspective? The irony is, even when i do try to do so, the opinion is that i am speaking from my experience as a counsellor, and not as a role that i am supposed to be in at that time!

There is also another angle to this whole thing. Other than my interpersonal relations being viewed only from the standpoint of me being a counsellor, even my normal, human emotions would be denied, deriding them as ‘not being professional’! Do you continue to be professional in all spheres of your life, all the time, and experience ‘professional’ feelings? When i give in to a natural emotion and consequently snap at somebody because the question warranted maybe just a flippant retort, i am immediately labelled the ‘counsellor’! And with this label comes the one of being ‘professional’, so i should be able to handle relations deftly, be just right, say just the right things and do the right things! The load sometimes becomes so heavy that there have been days when i have withdrawn completely, cancelled all appointments, cut off all communication, and hibernated, and only then managed to get in touch with my inner self, which would have been very confused, and maybe manifested as a personality issue! I guess this is the vagary of being in this profession, where unlike any other vocation, you are handling feelings, which never cease to exist... so consequently, one will not be able to see a counsellor as an individual who also is as human as the client she is handling. The only difference would be that she maybe has the tool to reason out a situation, by means of the numerous theories and therapies that she has knowledge of, and then realise and discount people’s reactions!

Not that it really helps to handle the omnipresent feelings though!