What is she trying to say?

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I guess that you all have heard of helplines. I don't express myself very well verbally (especially over the phone), so I opted for a e-mail counseling service. To be honest, I'm puzzled by the counselor's reply. I can't tell whether...
A: She sincerely wants to help me.
B: She is just evading my questions.
Let me copy and paste her reply here... I'm sorry, but I feel uncomfortable revealing my original e-mail to her here.

Dear "icyfire4w5",
It must be painful for you recalling these memories of being bullied. Finding yourself the target of bullying from teachers and friends in school can be very traumatic, and you are very confused about why they are treating you this way.
You mentioned having gone to see counsellors before but you feel that their responses are hurtful at times. Despite trying to talk to them, you aren't sure what your problem really is. "icyfire4w5", what kind of changes would you like to see if possible?
You sound very alone and troubled. If it helps to talk to someone about what you are going through, do call our 24-hour hotline (****-*** ****) or write to me.
Take care
"Counselor"

I especially don't understand the bolded portions. I mean, can't the counselor tell that I don't want to be bullied anymore? That's the reason why I wrote in to her.

How many emails has she sent before this one? Just if it's early days, this may be a sort of 'template' style of email to help them tailor their service. You've mentioned that other councellors have 'hurt' you so she may be trying to work out how to avoid doing the same thing.

Did you specifically tell her that? Otherwise she might not be able to tell immediately. Give as much detail about the bullying as you can and she may be able to advise.

What do you want out of your discussion with her? As an online councellor, she won't have much power to stop bullies in person, but she might be able to advise on who else to contact (teachers, parents etc.) or how you can learn to stand up to them.

Hmm, I assume that this email counseling service is run by various counselors who share the same unisex pseudonym. I did make use of this service months ago because of some other issues. Back then, I did explain to the counselor how other counselors had hurt me. ("Hurt" is too strong a word, but I can't think of any other word now.) The counselor then wrote back saying that "You do have many questions that you wished to talk. What is the most pressing issue for you from the list you gave?" (To be honest, I was kinda disappointed cos I thought that she would give one or two lines of advice for each question that I posed. I posed twelve questions.) I didn't reply to that e-mail cos all my questions then were equally important to me. So now, I'm approaching these counselors a second time. I did give lots of details about the bullying, but I didn't tell the counselor that I want to learn how to stand up to bullies, so yup, I'll go add that part in. Thanks.

you're welcome

Hi, this is a follow-up post. The best word to describe me now is "puzzled". If any of you have similar experiences with counselors before, kindly share with me how counselors expect us to answer such a question.

I emailed the counselor, "Please advise me on how I should behave so that I won't be bullied anymore. Thank you."

She replied, "You don't want to be bullied anymore and not sure how you should behave. Ignoring the bullies is not an easy thing to do. If you have to make one change in yourself what would it be? Think about it and let's talk about this, ok?"


I mean, huh, what's going on? What is the one change that I should make so that people won't bully me anymore? I honestly don't know. If I know which aspect of my personality has made me so vulnerable to bullying, I won't even need to consult any counselor.

The counceler's responses seem a bit generic, but I suspect what they are trying to get you to do is to work out the solution for yourself. Bullying is a complex process and there are no single answer solutions. You need to go through a process of figuring out why people are bullying you and what resources you have or can develop to counteract the bullying.

While the counceler's responses don't seem very useful, if you are willing to follow through on them, you might get more useful advice as you communicate back and forth.

My point here is that when you ask "what is the one change I could make so that people won't bully me anymore?" you are asking an impractical question. All the answers that could be given to that question would not be useful. One single change is "be confident and fit in socially". Clearly that is not a useful answer. But if you are willing to dig deeper into the issues, you might find a lot of little answers that solve tiny bits of the problem.

counseling takes time and a willingness to work with the counselor. Asking for a single answer that will solve all your problems will not get you what you need. The solution will not happen overnight, but if you start working now, you will find your way to a solution sooner.