Clients‟ experience of counselling within a narrative framework
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Howling In the bottomless depths of an old phase where light and dark entwine like foetal twins the surging yawn of hell gathers into being against the brilliant eclipse of deforming harmony. 29 And in this Hades of the heart the virgin‟s voice vanishes for she only finds power to affirm life through the dragon‟s blackest utterance of blood drained decay. Searching for her stolen tongue she plumbs the veins of bullish night scattering her shrill silence round the jaws of witching time where the spiralling fire of her presence fills the firmament with coded tidings. And her inaudible accent echoes so profoundly in the black hole of creation‟s heaving core that it crescents in a labyrinth of enigmatic messages where the two edged omen of all arguing adversaries is wantonly embraced. Now, in the drawn and quartered howls of anguish hanging in a new moon‟s wake the chalice of life, drinks death‟s tears anew in every breaking day and with a frown, rejoices. Internalising opposition enabled and produced the above poem. Such opposition is visible in the participants‟ narratives as the way they were asked to write the journals seems to enable them to discover defended and hidden aspects of themselves. They find their own altered legacies from their pasts, in that they come to make sense of and find new meaning/understanding of past events/traumas. This is demonstrated in the findings poems in chapter 7 where their stories are displayed in poetry that attempts to capture their emotional movement over the period of the journal keeping. Their use of metaphors and symbols both hide and reveal aspects of themselves which are uncovered in the analysis of their narratives and in their feedback. The idea for the poetic type of writing that created their journal narratives came from my experiences as I felt the 30 link between poetry and counselling. My inner voice was sure this would encourage the kind of writing that would mirror and enhance their experience of counselling. However the reality of the narratives that emerged far outweighed my expectations. 1.5.1 Aims and objectives The legacy of my experiences is perhaps also held within this study. I was challenged by my new-found voice to discover whether the concepts of containment and freedom exist as an aspect of emotional movement within the internal world of the client in a counselling relationship. The first objective to achieve this aim is to take account of the many voices which became evident during the process of the research. These include my voice, the voices of the participants, as well as the more hidden voices of my supervisors. All these voices attempt to discover whether the concepts of containment and freedom exist within the internal world of the client. If the concepts do exist it feels appropriate to discover how they are experienced by the client. But the research also enables the voices of the participants to grow and change. Just as my poetry created new voices within me, so their writing adds to their ability to hear and find a new confidence in themselves. The second objective is to remain open to whatever presents itself during the process of the inquiry, so that every opportunity is taken to investigate the concepts from different perspectives. This may be seen in the analysis of the participants‟ narratives where more than one perspective enables a greater depth of understanding to be discovered. Different perspectives may also be seen in the participants‟ feedback on the analysis and the findings poems. The participants were able to realize that their initial responses were not necessarily their only reaction to the work. Remaining open also enables the study to progress and change as the participants give up their 31 anonymity and voice their desire to continue with the study. The study is also influenced by my remaining open to my own emotions as life experiences impact on the way I work and interact with the research. The third objective is to examine the relationship between poetry and counselling as the form of the participants‟ narratives was inspired by poetry. It seems apposite to look at how writing in the way they were asked to write for the study influenced what they actually wrote. It appears possible that the embodied selves (Hunt and Sampson 2006) through which the participants write are present in their narratives. I found that writing poetry enabled me to embody unconscious thoughts and feelings which only became apparent when I looked back at the finished work as in the above poem. When I wrote the poem I was in a world of words but had no idea that I was also expressing a new understanding about my journey through trauma. In the same way participants discovered more about their thoughts and feelings when they had the opportunity to read the analysis and look back at their own writing. Lastly, exploring the relationship between the client‟s experience of counselling and established theory may add to counsellors‟ understanding of the client‟s experience in relation to that theory. My experience as a client encouraged interest in the process of counselling and improved my ability as a counsellor. Examining the process of the participants‟ narratives provides interesting data that appears to show theory in action as well as giving the client‟s perspective on that theory. To have a view of the client‟s internal processing while in counselling, from the client‟s perspective provides valuable insights into a journey that tends to be shrouded in mystery and theory. The client‟s perspective, through the way the participants write their journals, is opened 32 up in a way that maintains the privacy of their counselling sessions yet displays processes that have been difficult to view through other methods. 1.6 The voice of the present in action The intention to form this research resulted from a personal process which left me with the desire to use my creative voice within the research arena. The hope to engage myself was as crucial as the hope to engage others, both in the research process itself and in the potential reader. Initially I had no sense of how much using my personal process would influence the work. Only with hindsight do I see how I became a participatory researcher because I positioned myself, my voice within the research. As Bishop suggests, the positioning of the researcher is: “part of participation. The researcher cannot “position” himself or herself or “empower” the other. Instead, through entering a participatory mode of consciousness, the individual agent of the “I” of the researcher is released in order to enter a consciousness larger than the self.” (2005;120) In this way I entered the consciousness of the whole study in that I worked to place myself in the worlds of the participants‟ data and in all the writing processes. The work places itself as much within the poetic and artistic realms as it does in the world of counselling theory. For this reason it feels appropriate to „locate‟ (Martin 2006) my voice in the first person. The intersubjective conversations within the work, between me and myself, between me and the theoretical and poetic components and between me and the participants demands 33 such a subjective stance. Woven alongside my voice, are also the voices of the participants whose stories create the data for this study. Together we give birth to questions, answers and possibilities that arise from this research (throughout this research „voices‟ and „selves‟ are used interchangeably to refer to different aspects of each individual involved in the work). As I questioned how the process of therapy enabled emotional movement in the internal world of the client I realized that my experiences had impacted on the way I work as a counsellor. I seemed more able to tolerate the heights and depths of opposition with clients. One client, who had been in counselling with me for several years, wrote about the freedom she gained from the counselling process and brought the following poem at the end of the counselling relationship. It was like a gift to me and she gave permission for it to be used here: Flying to Freedom Broken, wounded, hurt. Unable to bear more pain. Need to weep and howl Journey of the soul. Journey to the heart of me Begun, not ended. Loved, held, nurtured, healed, Strengthened, uplifted, restored. Alive once again 34 Return to the world. Bring with me a newer self. Gradually emerge. Stretch and spread my wings. Set off for unknown future. Flying to freedom. She had not known that I was doing research connected with freedom so it was interesting to see from her perspective that some kind of internal freedom was felt to be an intrinsic part of her journey. She expressed her need to „howl‟ at the start of her journey which reflects the importance of what feels to be a primitive emotional response that she had been unable to access prior to counselling. It seems that in the process of my holding her wounds and hurts, as the counsellor I enabled her to undertake the journey „to the heart‟ of herself. She also appears to have discovered „a newer self‟ as if she began to find more selves (Etherington 2001) inside herself. With more of herself available she could end the counselling and fly towards an unknown future and freedom. When she started counselling she had felt trapped and unable to change. The tension created externally by others in her life, and internally by aspects of herself filled this journey with opposition. Together we stayed with that opposition until she was able to tolerate it and make decisions for herself rather than doing what she felt she ought to do or what others expected of her – like Beauty. Her poem seems to show what a crucial journey it was for her, as well as demonstrating the growth of her own voice. Yet we each had an impact on the other for not only did I as the counsellor provide a relationship which influenced her life, she also influenced me. She taught me the importance of valuing her particular experiences of faith in difficult circumstances. In this way she added to my personal experience. 35 Both my personal experience as a client and counsellor are the stimulus for this study. Perhaps because of the reactions of some peers to the research I initially had concerns about using personal experience as the pre-conception for research. However my desire to explore, coupled with a new found security, enabled me to continue with the process. In the current professional context with a move towards evidence-based practice (Barkham and Barker 2003) backed up by quantitative research I wanted to demonstrate the relevance of qualitative research. There was a desire to create a subjective and reflexive space where clients, as opposed to counsellors, might highlight the internal process of the counselling experience. I also felt that this would be of interest to other counsellors as process is an integral part of our work, and demonstrating it, exploring it from the point of view of the client may add to counsellors‟ understanding of that process. 1.7. Conclusion I have attempted to show how a journey through trauma highlighted reflexivity as a process of investigating myself. Containment, freedom, opposition and emotional movement emerged through the responses of shock, anguish, a murderous self and howling and the search for meaning. These responses were both contained and released in a narrative of poetry and prose. The discovery of the rich colours of experience hidden in the aftermath of the violence of murder, were found through a reflexive way of being that taught me to live life as inquiry (Marshall 2004). In turn these colours of experience changed the way I live and work, and led the way to research. Reflexivity and poetic writing helped provide tools that could be used to investigate the experience of the client through a multi-layered narrative. If my passion for this work is to provide “resonance with the reader” (Trahar 2002;196) then it seems important for 36 that audience to have some sense of the reflexive experience that gave birth to such fervour. Knowing, being consciously aware of the original ground of the research may have its drawbacks. The desire to protect what are felt to be highly personal experiences of the research processes may cause aspects of the work to be protected from further investigation if they are not kept in awareness through reflexivity. The slippery ground (Charmaz and Mitchell 1997) of the uncertainty which risks feeling that the conception of research is crucial to such reflexive work may send me crashing into criticism. But the process of reflexive practice (Rennie 1998; Lees 2001; Etherington 2004) suggests that personal growth and subjective research may interact upon each other, holding the learning process within the dynamic worlds of opposition and attraction. If the creativity of reflexive narrative research (Douglas 1985; Hertz 1997) is to be understood and developed then the more experience that is shared about how such awareness comes into being, the better we may be able to apprehend the benefits of reflexive practice. |