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can we stay on track here please and Tubbies Mummy you really are sabotaging your own thread. As a counselor surely you should be able to deal with all personalities and responses and keep your calm?

You do raise an interesting point in your original post and it is a terrible situation/outcome you talk about - but as another has said your over reaction to a few posts devalues the many good posts you have had here

As a non counselor saying to a counselor, don't be so defensive

Yeh, thanks Nicky, calm down
I agree
x

Read the replies to your thread and just want to say bad happens to all, I have lost 2 people close to me in the past 2 years and they were good people but thats life, not about being good or bad. Cherish the memories And just want to say to people to stay on the thread and not go off in tangents as Dougal does.... I just think he likes to wind people up.

thanks a lot for taking the time to reply, appreciated , so very sorry for your losses ,

Fact:

I've never met a counselor who hasn't needed a few sessions themselves. It just goes with the territory.

There should also should be a' Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ' butten beside"thanks" and "grone"

2 years ago as part of my then job I completed a course on Solution Focused Therapy that basically is focusing on not the problem but getting over it. At first I was a bit sceptical but really it is so true. What has happened has happened and why beat yourself up about it you cant change it. What matters is how you move on and be postive.

He sure does ,I cant stop laughing

I believe that the big bad "bolt from the blue" things (eg. no fault car fatalities, inexplicable fatal diseases, etc.) happen randomly and that, although it is fully human to seek a reason or explanation, or accept that there is a reason, this is not helpful nor comforting to me, in coming to terms with them.

I don't personally believe in a deity, or put my hope into the corrective fairness of an afterlife.

I have a belief in living a life to be at peace with, to be happy with and to be content with - personally (not necessarily in the eyes of others). There is an element of acting to ensure that you will have 'no regrets' in this - but not in a hedonisitic, self-centred way.

Sometimes this requires just dealing with the next day or so, sometimes it's possible to look forward into the future, but whichever of these, it is always critically important to be attending to the here and now as this is the only time where things are happening (!).

It is necessary to look after ourselves (health, well-being and happiness) and similarly those that we care for (children, partners, parents, etc). If life isn't good - and at the worst times there can be almost over-whelming reasons for that - take a small step to make it a little better for yourself or others, then another, then more, and gradually you can overcome the problem. I've been doing this for the past year, and will continue for many, many more.

Finally, I've had people tell me philosophies like "our back is as broad as the load we have to carry", that I personally find shallow, useless and patronising.

Apologies for the treatise, but if you care to read, here are my 2 cents:

I still remember the indignation I felt when I saw "The talented Mr Rippley" - the bad guy going away unpunished! What audacity! But that was a long time ago. Since then most of my "certainties", my "black and whites" have turned to shades of grey.

For one, "bad" and "good" are sometimes tricky to define. Most of us are born with the ability to master the ethical codes that living together in a group requires -- we can empathize, look for reasons/causes for what happens, are eager to cooperate, look for acceptance in a group, etc. But then again we also have learned that some people - teenagers and a small number of adults (e.g. the mentally ill), for example, are not as good as most people at reasoning all the consequences of their actions and are, at least legally, not held fully responsible for them. Teenagers are more likely to act stupidly, especially in a group, some criminals feel no remorse, etc. I believe that people do things we call "good" and "bad" but are not inherently "good" or "bad". I guess we call "good people" those, that have mostly done good things, but given other circumstances, even the "good" might have turned bad - otherwise how would we explain the results from the Milgram experiment, "The third wave" ("Die Welle"/"the Wave" history experiment), and the mass appeal of Nazism itself?

But even if one has trouble defining "good" and "bad" people, one can still ask, why is this happening to ME? Why these poor people? Here I tend to think that our search for meaning and for reason for all that happens (which is probably evolutionary meant to help us keep on living, despite the horrible experiences we've had) goes astray - instead of finding an alternative viewpoint that would help us carry on, we get stuck feeling victimized and cannot find a way out - "why me? how did I deserve this?" sounds like a cry for help to me. There are some people which are not discouraged by tragedy and find it easier to overcome their unhappiness (the wheelchair guy that says he is as happy as he was before the accident) - I can imagine that if you lose a child, but then help a thousand children in some God-(or human)-forsaken corner of the Earth to live better, survive childhood, get an education, etc., you can say that your personal tragedy helped you find your calling in life - to help other children. There are many ways to find meaning in tragedy, and I doubt there is a formula here.

Btw, I am a scientist and as such I do not believe the universe cares one bit for us - in the sense of assigning good or useful experiences to happen to good people and punishing the bad. I do not believe life has any external meaning either, outside of the kindness and care we put into it while we are together - the meaning we build within our families and relationships in general. This lack of meaning does not bother me, and I do not need religion to tell me that I need to follow moral principles. But I am digressing and starting to preach…

Physicists have a more colorful phrase which seem to me to carry some of the meaning of the "Why me?" complaint - "Entropy is a bitch". In general it applies to everything - loosely speaking we use it to describe the state of the world tending towards disorder (aka chaos), unless someone, somewhere does something about it (e.g. "work" against the disorder). It's an actual physical law (well not in that exact form, but…) and applies to the pile-up of dirty dishes at home - I can exclaim "Entropy is a bitch" before I resign to my fate and wash them (or try to get someone else to do it for me). It applies equally well to life-shattering events - nothing personal, but the universe serves you some hardship and it's up to you to find meaning in it, find a way to live with it, a way to overcome it. Here is where family, friends, therapists, etc. come in - to help us find a more useful way of dealing, to share our pain, to tell us it's OK to feel the way we do, etc.

Well,this is a tragic story.I want say that my life wasn´t that great either,don´t wanna get into details,just want to say that it wasn´t easy,it was really really hard,still is,but everytime I asked myself ´´why me´´ and also looking at all the bad people around me that have luck, lots of money and everything and even more makes me loose my mind,literally...so I don´t ask that question anymore...just try to stay positive and fight...because life is a fight...and just hope for the best...and there´s a romanian saying that I belive in(it might not sound that good in english but I hope you´ll get the point):´´Soon the sun will also shine on my street ´´

wow!!! Things are geting serious here. I dont believe in a god but have nothing against they who do. We are like any other living organism errr have a spelt that right? We are created, we live and we die...simple. Anyway that is my last input to this topic. btw Dougal I love you!!

& of course, I'm sure all your clients will be looking forward to having their personal issues discussed on a public internet forum ....

To reassure you here and from your private comments ,my clients and I agreed before posting it would be a useful exploration to see how others felt on this subject and asked if I could facilitate this.

What utter bollocks! You discuss with your clients, when they are in pain, how you would like to go on a forum to discuss the wider issues of their problems with all in sundry so you can can get some feedback..

Heaven help us!!

yeah,that´s true,we´re not imortal...

Thats genuinly not true.
I am sorry if it has come across that way,
Its about having a discussion forum, helping others, one another, attempt to find resoloution when bad things happen to good people and why ?
Also sharing others belief systems and experiences with each other

It's nature.

It just so happens we've evolved advantageous abilities to superimpose emotion.

Aaawww that is a very sad story especially considering the people who have lots of kids and don't take care of them or have kids foolishly like octomom and stuff like that. Yeah bad things do happen to good people, that's one of the hardest things for people to deal with. In her case it was just genetics and genes don't discriminate. Bad things happen to bad people too but most feel like it's karma or them getting back what they deserved or whatever, but it really stands out and seems unfair when bad things happen to good people. I things just happen by chance. A small percentage is bad people getting what they deserve and good things happening to good people is them getting the seeds they sowed, but I think the majority of stuff that happens is just by chance. Nothing more. It's no one's fault, not your fault or anyone's it just happens. It's the kind of world we live in. Good people die and bad people die. That's life and the world we live in. Some people get depressed and wonder why it happened to them or think it's their fault and use up a lot of mental energy trying to find the reason why when the reason why may be just chance. It just happened. Maybe realizing that will help them to stop being depressed or blaming themselves. Doing good and being a good person is not a magic wand that will make only good things happen to you unfortunately, but people should be good because it's the right thing in a corrupt world where life is not fair and where bad things can happen to anyone. No one no matter how good they are is untouched by a corrupt world in some way. With that couple trying to have a kid, it was just corrupt genes, and by chance that they carried those genes. It wasn't God's fault or anything, bad stuff just happens.