Clients‟ experience of counselling within a narrative framework
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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 184 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). 185 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 186 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 187 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 188 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. 189 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 190 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. Yüklə 1,47 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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