I have always suspected...

that crying did actually relieve stress - but it is apparently a verifiable, scientific fact.  And I could use a good cry right about now.  Seriously.  I don't know when I have felt so overwhelmed and so ill-equipped to deal with everything.  I am frantically trying to catch up on all of the work I let slide during tax season, my house is a disaster area and I am emotionally drained listening to people who seem to feel comfortable revealing their deepest, darkest secrets to me.  I tell you - that therapy chair has got to go.  People feel better when they leave here - having dumped all of their troubles on me, but consequently I feel like crap.  I honestly don't know how mental health counselors and psychotherapists do their jobs - or if they burn out after a few years of listening to other people's problems.  Maybe they just cry a lot.  Or change the subject.  I'm not looking to open a psychotherapy practice and unfortunately, I don't know a nice way to tell people that I don't want to hear their tales of woe.  Really - is there a nice way?  I have suggested professional counseling to the person who is currently spending a considerable amount of time in the chair, but that suggestion has not been acted upon as of yet.  I know that the main goal of therapy is to help the client work out his own issues, but I can't sit here and do the nod and repeat-the-client's-thought-in-different-words thing.  Sorry, Dr. Rogers.  I can listen sympathetically up to a point and then I end up doling out good, sound Lucy VanPelt-style advice.  And dang it, if you sit in my therapy chair and ask for my opinion on your situation and advice on how to deal with it, then you dang well ought to take said advice seriously - or at least give it some consideration.  And therein lies the problem; the tale of woe continues and the what-should-I-do question is reworded - hoping for the answer the occupant of the chair wants to hear - but I'm wise to that ploy.  I am not going to listen to the whole megillah only to give someone permission to continue the same destructive behavior.  And so I repeat the same advice: do the right thing, sh-t or get off the pot, as my grandmother would say.  Of course, no one is really going to listen to me - people just want to put in the chair time so they feel better.
As for me, I think I'll just have a good cry.