Clients‟ experience of counselling within a narrative framework

 
 
Construct: towards containment - freedom 
There feels to be a strong shift towards containment - freedom as the client appears to view her 
own defended overcontainment which has previously held her internal world in a prison of other 
people‟s thoughts and feelings that have invaded her since childhood. She appears to see how 
her system of doing things „just in case‟ does not work. The stuckness or uncontained - unfree 
state of the previous entry seems to have enabled her to view herself more clearly.
 
Week 24. 
Line 1.
Co. was good. I left feeling „lighter‟, 
Line 2.
„taller‟ + „empowered to do anything 
Line 3.
well enough‟. 
Line 4.
I am good - is something I need to 
Line 5.
remind myself about.
Line 6.
Listen to my feelings. Be aware of 

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375 
Line 7.
the mind work I do, as it often 
Line 8.
blocks what the feelings are speaking 
Line 9.
to me. 
Line 10.
I am really lucky. 
This entry feels quite different as if the client is aware of a shift within herself. She perceives the 
counsellor as good (line 1) which feels new and she left the session feeling „lighter‟ (line 1). She 
emphasises this by the inverted comas as she does „taller‟ (line 2) and the whole phrase about 
feeling empowered to do anything well enough (lines 2,3). The taller may imply that she has 
grown as if internally she can stand tall and feel the power of her own sense of self which has not 
felt so present before. She goes on to star two statements (line 4,6) as if she is using this new 
found taller self to encourage herself. She also uses the first person, „I‟ five times in this short 
entry which is the most she has used it in one entry through the whole journal, which again 
makes her feel very present. The first starred phrase tells her that she is good (line 4) as if she 
needs to remind (line 5) herself about how she is internally, and suggests that she struggles to 
internalise a sense of self that is fundamentally good. But perhaps because the counsellor is now 
perceived as good (line 1), she is beginning to take in some of that goodness for herself. The 
second starred statement appears to exhort her to listen to her feelings (line 6) as if her feeling 
self has previously been blocked (line 8) by her intellectual self. Yet now she recognizes that her 
feelings have a voice for they speak (line 8) to her which suggests that more of herself is now 
accessible. She ends with another realization that she is really lucky (line 10) as if this is new in 
that she may have known this before but never been able to feel it.