From Tracy Jones, with thanks
A client contacted me for help with moving on after a relationship had ended. She seemed desperate when I saw her and told me that she couldn’t see any future for herself without her ex partner. During the meta questioning it became apparent that she had become very reliant upon him for her every day living. She felt unable to go out on her own and avoided going anywhere but the local shops within the immediate area. She also disclosed that she had been drinking to help her deal with the strong negative emotions she was experiencing. She told me that drinking had been a problem for a long time and was part of the reason the relationship had ended as she was unable to control her alcohol intake when going out with her partner, then she would become short tempered and sometimes violent when she had consumed alcohol.
She seemed so desperate to move on from the relationship, telling me that she wanted to erase all memory of him from her mind as it was too painful to think about him at all, a painful reminder of what she had lost. I immediately told her that she may feel like that now but she didn’t really want to erase the memories as that was still a part of her life and had helped to make her who she was. Immediately I realised that I had lost rapport with her as I had failed to meet the client where they are. I knew that I had attempted to tell her how she should feel and straight away she began to defend herself telling me that she really did want to forget she had ever met him, even the good memories, she was desperate to remove. Thankfully, I managed to regain rapport through agreement with her that I could see how difficult this was for her and that I could understand the reasons why she felt she wanted to forget him altogether.
I worked on looking to the future, reassuring her that I could help her to become independent again by using hypnosis to help her overcome her anxieties. The work in the first session was based upon allowing her to see that she had a future without her ex partner and all the positive things in her life in the present.
In our second meeting, she told me that she’d had a good couple of days to begin with but things had gone downhill again and she had been using alcohol excessively in order to help her to cope. I decided that I would work on some practical ways to help her to go out, such as attending playgroups with her daughter and grandchild and arranging a shopping trip with her other daughter as I was concerned she was spending the majority of her time at home with her elderly mother, which was re-enforcing her anxiety issues. During the trance work, I again focussed upon moving forward and she told me after that she had decided she would redecorate her room and would ask her daughter to accompany her to visit the library as she enjoyed reading.
I also felt that we needed to address the drinking habit. I felt less than confident in this area, I’m not sure why! I decided to use a control panel intervention, increasing her strength resource as that is what she felt was needed in order to stop drinking alcohol.
We scheduled a third session and she emailed me before telling me that she didn’t feel that she needed to see me again as the relationship had been reconciled. I felt disappointed and slightly worried for her as it had been apparent that the relationship was volatile and she had been unhappy despite declaring deep love for him. I had been looking forward to helping her to move forward with her life independently as a more confident and happier person. I felt despondent, though realised and accepted that this was her decision and I had done my best in helping her, though I still had nagging doubts wondering if I’d really done enough and if a more experienced therapist could have helped her more.
A few months after our sessions, a mutual friend told me that she had seen my client, who told her that I had helped her immensely. She explained that she had not had any alcohol at all since our meetings and felt calmer and more in control. From this experience I have learned that even when from my perspective the therapy has failed to be effective, the client may have enjoyed benefits which I didn’t recognise or even know about as I had not had opportunity for a follow up appointment. This was a problem with my own thinking patterns as I had automatically assumed that I had not been effective in this instance without knowing the facts! I now realise that even if I don’t recognise the benefits of the therapy, the client may have a completely different experience of the therapy. Likewise, the from the client’s perspective, if they felt that the therapy hadn’t been effective, it’s likely that there will have been some benefit, even if the client doesn’t recognise it
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