Clients‟ experience of counselling within a narrative framework



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Beauty and the Beast ( PDFDrive )

7.3.1.Wriggling Fish 
The following poem condenses the story of Wriggling Fish yet also highlights the opposition that 
led to movement. There is a wish not to explain the poem too much for to me it appears self 
explanatory but for this study none of the poems can be left only as performance pieces (Holman 
Jones 2005), although they do stand on their own. There is a need to demonstrate the presence or 
absence of the constructs as well as including the participants‟ feedback to demonstrate 
relevance to the study.
WRIGGLING FISH 
It took a long time 
To discover where I was - 
Lost in no-man‟s land 
Repeating the games of generations. 
A fish out of water 
Floundering around 
Being everybody else‟s fish 
But not my own. 
I loathed the cold counsellor 
I disagreed with colleagues 
I squirmed with resistance. 
Rigid with neck pain 
Trapped even by my body 
Wriggling was all that was left. 
But being so firmly hooked 
Made seeing where I was unavoidable. 
Searching for release 
Brought my hated selves into focus; 
The worst mother 


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The angry child 
The rejected adult 
Fought until 
Bruised and battered 
Gut wrenching tears 
Let feeling speak. 
With no energy left 
I shot down my barriers 
And within a tight circle of purity 
I saw my golden nan ascending 
Into me. 
The roots of ancestors 
Bubbled up the gift of integration 
So that even the black plastic bags
Of death and hate 
Could be undone. 
Restrictions had kept me wriggling all my life 
But this awful process 
Lifted the stone from across my throat 
And opened a clean, white, blank page 
To give me the freedom to speak myself 
To become myself 
To swim off into the future 
Grounded in the water of my own rebirth. 
At the start of her counselling Wriggling Fish experienced the boundaries as being very tight and 
the counsellor as cold, yet she seemed to feel caught by her and stayed with the relationship even 
though it felt restrictive. In being caught she was perhaps stuck, hooked, uncontained-unfree and 
unable to move emotionally, or like Beauty she was being a good girl doing what was expected 
of her. But it is from this uncontained-unfree place that she is able to look around. Here she can 
see where she is and begin the process of changing herself, by letting herself off the hook - to 
free herself. She agreed with the construct uncontained-unfree when she felt stuck and wrote: 
“Although I don‟t like this construct - it was how I was feeling - it was extremely 
powerful - It brings to mind two opponents in a boxing ring - sizing each other up 
before the fight”(WF). 


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The constructs seemed to make sense to Wriggling Fish in that they fitted with her feelings at the 
time. Initially she thought that they did not fit but after taking the time to weigh them against the 
criteria of the constructs she felt that they all fitted.
The counselling seemed to enable Wriggling Fish to see that she was caught in cycles of 
previously learned behaviour. Realizing her need to change she both fights against change and 
fights for it, demonstrating the opposition/polarity within her. The tension created by opposing 
desires seems to enable emotional movement. Over two weeks she feels huge anger towards the 
counsellor and feels rebuffed for asking if the counsellor has a cold. However this enables her to 
express her anger (be the Beast and a new self rather than denying her angry self) and following 
this the relationship begins to change. It seems that she both fought against containment by the 
counsellor and also fought against containing so much angry emotion. She agreed with the 
construct fighting containment-freedom and wrote: 
“It had not been appropriate for „a good girl‟ to show anger before - and I liked to be 
liked - and anger would stop this - I felt I wasn‟t „liked‟ by the counsellor - so doing 
anger didn‟t matter so much. However, it was very hard to express - but once started 
it felt an immense relief” (WF).
This expression of anger enables a shift in the counselling relationship. Wriggling Fish felt that 
the counsellor stayed with the anger and she began to feel safe with her which moved her into the 
construct of desiring containment-freedom. This seems to demonstrate how the tension enabled 
movement. Feeling safe enabled her to risk exploring more of her selves and she describes 
feeling safe as essential for her counselling process to be effective.
Feeling where she is in what she describes as no man‟s land seems to create the desire to shift 
internally. Her sense of wriggling and floundering suggested the construct of being 


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overcontained-overfree, bound by the opinions of „generations‟, and also by the counselling 
course she was attending. Like Beauty she does not feel free enough to be herself. She is 
confused and no longer sure about becoming a counsellor. There is a sense of her being out of 
control, in turmoil, and this seems to affect her body as she gets a stiff neck and has trouble 
moving. But the embodied pain in her neck seems to enable her to think about what is happening 
to her and brings her emotional anguish into consciousness through writing in the journal.
Death was very much part of Wriggling Fish‟s journal, including the deaths of friends in her 
external life. However there was a death that was hard to recognize. I did not know what the 
„black plastic bags‟ were, or what they represented when writing the analysis. However I sensed 
the enormity of feeling around them, a kind of horror and suggested the construct towards 
containment-freedom. It seemed that she was beginning to contain her own feelings even though 
I was not certain what this was about. Wriggling Fish confirmed the importance of this entry as 
she was referring to giving away her late husband‟s clothes after his funeral. There was a real 
sense of her having the freedom to contain her own emotions. This also confirms the way the 
participants were asked to write the journal for an immense amount of feeling was put into a few 
words. There was also a sense of appreciation in the participant that I had understood the 
enormity of feeling hidden in the work. 
The process of movement is slow as she moves back and forth between wanting to change, 
fearing change and therefore not wanting to change. Yet the very aspects that seemed to hold her 
back also released her for it is her „nan‟, one of the „ancestors‟, who enables movement. This 
internalised part of herself begins the process of her seeing herself differently. She is ascending 


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as opposed to being hooked. She appears to be fed by her internal objects (Harris Williams 
1997), her selves. Rather than keeping her caught as she was at the start of the journal, by 
repeating the games of generations, now the roots of ancestors enable integration of different 
selves. Through reflexive writing she begins her process of transformation. This fits with Jung‟s 
(1969) suggestion of inner polarities working together. The part of her that was initially hooked 
was beginning to work with the part that was ascending as opposed to fighting against each 
other. 
She is able to look at selves that she hated and in the process of accepting them she appears to let 
them change demonstrating the unity of Beauty and the Beast. It seems a painful process to let go 
of herself, whether as a wriggling fish or as a hated mother. Although these selves may always 
be part of her, they no longer control her and she seems able to change her attitude towards them. 
The loss of the power of such selves that were known is like a death, a letting go of a part of the 
self, and risking being different in the sense of moving forwards, rather than remaining as she 
had always been. This „awful‟ counselling process was painful but enabled her to find a freer self 
who has a voice of her own as opposed to voices of previous generations. Writing out her 
anguish in metaphors enables her to find meaning in her history and use other selves, like nan to 
enable change. 
This new found freedom seemed to enable Wriggling Fish to give honest feedback. Although she 
felt that the categories fitted, she did not always feel that the analysis was correct and she wrote 
comments on what it felt like when it was wrong: 
“I felt as though my counsellor was being supported and I felt hurt and left out…..but 


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when I felt that it had been interpreted correctly - it gave me a warm glow of being 
understood”(WF). 
She did agree with the majority of the analysis but understanding what it was like for her when 
the analysis felt wrong feels important, reminding me of the sensitivity of the experiences being 
analysed. This perhaps demonstrates the importance of the length of time the journals were 
recorded over as this gave the opportunity for me to get to know the participants within the 
context of their journals and to analyse the narratives from more than one perspective.
For Wriggling Fish the least helpful part of the research was the time needed to undertake the 
feedback but she also thought this may have been influenced by the fact that she was looking 
back at what had been a very painful time for her. The most helpful aspect was being able to see 
how her boundaries had changed: 
“from a feeling that I wriggled within the confines of too strong a boundary - to 
feeling them too loose and not safe - to eventually it becoming a „good fit‟- safe, 
comfortable and workable. It feels as if I was going through painful growing years of 
rebellious teenage to now a feeling of growing up” (WF). 
Another of the participants felt that she was also growing up through her counselling so this is 
perhaps a common theme along with personal learning and searching for themselves. 
The main impact of taking part in the research for Wriggling Fish was the reflexivity that 
keeping the journal gave her between weekly counselling sessions. She found this helped the 
work on herself continue during each week and felt this may have moved her more quickly than 
if she had not being doing it. The impact of reading the analysis has stayed with her and brought 
up a feeling of protection for her journal.


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On whether the notions of containment-freedom as a polarity has stayed with her in any way she 
wrote: 
“I still find it hard to get my head around - but as I read the different constructs - I 
could see what reluctant clients are battling with and in fact how as a counsellor, it 
can sometimes feel like a battle for me too …. So I found that really helpful”(WF). 
It is interesting that the research appears to have influenced her counselling practice. She also 
said that the original talk I gave at her training establishment had stayed with her in that she had 
not expected so many variations in the understanding of one word - containment. This helped her 
to realize how easy it is not to be understood as the client because the meaning of a word can be 
so different for any two people. 
She liked the way she was asked to keep the journal, particularly the short phrase on each line as: 
“It made me condense my feelings and experience, usually very difficult for me, - it 
felt punchier - more to the point - concentrated - but as I needed to be a good girl 
then - I noticed that I wanted to fill in most of the page - or could it be that I try to fill 
life and not leave too many spaces”(WF). 
This feedback demonstrates that the way the journals were written had the desired effect both for 
the participant and for the research. But what I really appreciate is that even as she writes the 
feedback Wriggling Fish is still working on herself as she wonders about why she had to fill 
almost every page and she is open enough to have more than one perspective of this. It also 
suggests that part of her was being the „good girl‟ Beauty doing what she imagined was expected 
of her. 
In response to the poem Wriggling Fish wrote: 
“It feels very strange to read about counselling that happened in what seems like 
another world now …it somehow swirls with what I experience now …like mixing a 
pot of paint….I have just read the poem through once and thought how talented you 


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are to put together the essence of all those sessions - it appealed to me and showed 
me what a difficult journey it had been - sitting each week in that chair….but it also 
reflected the „happy ending‟ and a wonderful sense of freedom to me -which totally 
ties in for me, the swimming across the world to start up a whole new life - as the 
hook came out ….but….I had to smile because I still occasionally feel the „stone 
across the throat …more self to be created soon….!! It is all strange though - I had a 
very happy childhood - felt totally loved and cared for …….so if I felt 
wriggly….how much would I have squirmed if childhood had held a different 
story..??” (WF).
It feels important that the poem contained what Wriggling Fish saw as the essence of the journal. 
For her this seemed like a good fit but it also enabled her to see the continuation of her own 
story. I like the fact that she feels her freedom so strongly for it seems the Beast really gave her 
power to change her life which the „good girl‟ might not have managed without him. 

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