PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SENSES IN THERAPY

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Working with the client's feelings towards loved ones

Working with the client and

his affection problems

- this is working with a little one, a child in need of love.

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SENSES

In therapeutic work with clients, one has to deal with varying degrees of awareness, identification and expression of their feelings. In this article, we will focus only on the content and quality of those feelings that characterize the features of the client's relationship with people who are significant to him, as well as on the features of the therapeutic process with such feelings. It is these feelings that tend to underlie clients' psychological problems.

Most often, in therapy, clients can observe manifestations of the following types of feelings in relation to people who are significant to them: primary feelings, secondary feelings and a demonstrated lack of feelings.

Primary feelings. These are feelings of rejection, fear, loneliness … Behind them it is very easy to see needs, primary feelings, as a rule, express them directly. Most often, the following needs are behind such feelings: for unconditional love, acceptance, affection … The presentation by the client at the beginning of therapy of primary feelings is quite rare, it indicates his good contact with his Self. Most often this happens in a state of life crises, depression.

Secondary feelings. This is anger, anger, rage, irritation, resentment … These feelings arise when it is impossible to present the primary feelings to loved ones. This is most often due to fear (rejection) or shame (rejection). Secondary feelings, such as anger or resentment, overshadow the primary feelings that speak of the emotional needs of attachment.

Lack of feelings or emotional anesthesia. The client in this case declares that he has no feelings for close people (father, mother), they are strangers to him, and he no longer needs them. This focus of therapy is rarely a request and most often appears in the course of therapy for other requests.

ATTACHMENT INJURY

The above typology of feelings is closely related to the stages of development of trauma, proposed by J. Bowlby. J. Bowlby, observing the behavior of children in response to separation from their mother, identified the following stages in the development of feelings in them:

Fear and panic - the first feelings that cover the child when parting with the mother. The child is crying, screaming in the hope of returning the mother;

Anger and rage - protest against abandonment, the child does not accept the situation and continues to actively seek the return of the mother;

Despair and apathy - the child comes to terms with the situation of inability to return the mother, falls into depression, physically numb and emotionally frozen.

As a result of this kind of traumatic interaction, the child develops either an increased "stickiness" to the parental figure (if he has not yet lost hope of getting her attention and love - fixation at the second stage according to Bowlby), or cold withdrawal (in the event that such a hope was lost for him - fixation at the third stage). It is during the third stage that the most serious problems arise in children. If the attachment behavior of seeking and maintaining contact with the attachment figure fails, the child develops feelings of anger, clinging, depression, and despair, culminating in emotional alienation from the attachment figure.

Moreover, it is not so much the physical presence of the object of attachment that is important, but also his emotional involvement in the relationship. The attachment object may be physically present but emotionally absent. Attachment trauma can occur not only because of the physical absence of the object of attachment, but also because of its psychological alienation. If the attachment figure is perceived as emotionally unavailable, then, as in the situation of its physical absence, separation anxiety and distress sets in. This is a very important point, we will come back to it later.

In both cases, the child grows up in a deficit of unconditional love and parental acceptance, the need for attachment turns out to be chronically unsatisfied due to frustration. Having matured, this is no longer a child, entering into an adult partnership, continues to search for a good mother (an object of affection) in the hope of psychologically satiating himself with unconditional love and acceptance from his partner, creating complementary marriages for this. (See our earlier article on this site, "Child-parent relationships in a complementary marriage"). His Self is deficient (G. Amon's term), incapable of self-acceptance, self-respect, self-support, such a person will be with low unstable self-esteem, extremely dependent on the opinions of other people, inclined to create codependent relationships.

In therapy, one can meet clients who are fixed at different levels of attachment disorder. The most difficult situation is by far the one when the therapist is confronted with the emotional "insensibility" of the client. You can meet different types of emotional numbness - from complete anesthesia to alexithymia of varying degrees. All alexithymics, as a rule, are traumatic. The reason for this insensibility, as mentioned earlier, is mental trauma - the trauma of relationships with loved ones or attachment injury.

As you know, injuries are acute and chronic. Attachment injuries are usually chronic. Faced in therapy with the client's insensitivity to a loved one and quite rightly assuming trauma in the relationship, the therapist, most often unsuccessfully, tries to look for cases in his anamnesis that confirm this. However, the client often cannot remember vivid episodes of rejection by significant persons. If you ask him to remember the warm, pleasant moments of the relationship, it turns out that there are none either.

What then is there? And there is a neutral, to the point of indifference, attitude towards the client-child, although at the same time, parents often flawlessly fulfill their functional parental duties. The child is not treated as a small person with his unique emotional experiences, but as a function. They can be attentive to his physical, material needs, such a child can grow up in full material prosperity: shod, dressed, fed, etc. The area of spiritual and mental contact with the child is absent. Or parents can be so absorbed in their lives that they completely forget about him, leaving him to himself. Such parents, as a rule, are often "excited" in their parenting functions, remember that they are parents when something happens to the child (for example, he gets sick). Client M. recalls that her mother “appeared” in her life when she was ill - then she “left the Internet” and began to actively perform all the necessary medical procedures. It is not surprising that this client developed a painful way of existence - it was through her illness that she managed to somehow "return" her mother.

The child in the above situation is in a state of chronic emotional rejection. Chronic emotional rejection is the inability of the parental figure (object of attachment) to unconditionally accept their child. In this case, the attachment figure, as noted above, can be physically present and functionally perform its duties.

The reasons for the inability of parents to unconditionally love and accept their child are not a matter of ethics and morality for the therapist, but are related to their psychological problems. They (problems) can be caused both by their life situation (for example, the child's mother is in a situation of psychological crisis), and related to the peculiarities of their personality structure (for example, parents with a narcissistic or schizoid characterology).

In some cases, the reasons for parental insensitivity may go beyond their personal life history, and be transmitted to them through intergenerational connections. For example, the mother of one of the parents was herself in a state of mental trauma and, due to her emotional anesthesia, could not be sensitive to her child and give him enough acceptance and love for him. In any case, the mother is unable to respond emotionally and, therefore, is unable to satisfy the child's need for affection and, at best, is physically and functionally present in his life. The above situation can be corrected by the presence of an emotionally warm father, or another close figure, but, unfortunately, this is not always the case in life.

In adulthood, an attempt to fill the deficit in love and affection is carried out, as a rule, not directly - through parents, but in a substituted way - through partners. It is with them that the scenarios of codependent behavior are played out, in which the secondary feelings intended for the parents come to the fore.

With their parents, such clients often behave in a counter-dependent way, playing out a scenario of no feelings. And only after getting into therapy and going through the stage of discussing the client's codependent relationship with a partner, it is possible to reach an emotionally detached, distant attitude towards his parents.

Client N. behaves with her partner in a typically codependent way - she controls, takes offense, blames for insufficient attention, becomes jealous … In her contact with her partner, the whole set of "secondary" feelings is manifested - irritation, resentment, anger … According to the client, he was never emotionally close to her, the mother was always more busy with herself. The client has long come to terms with such an attitude towards her and no longer expects and does not want anything from her parents. At the same time, she directs all her flow of unfulfilled need for love and affection to her partner.

THERAPEUTIC REFLECTION

Most often, clients with the above attachment problems ask for a codependent relationship with a partner.

Therapeutic work with such clients is work with the trauma of rejection. In the course of therapy, the client develops a process of immersion in the trauma of rejection that is present at an early stage of his development, which we call actualized crisis … This is a purposeful, controlled therapeutic actualization of an earlier not experienced trauma in order to re-experience it in the therapeutic process.

The therapy process here has several successive stages. It usually begins with a discussion of the real crisis of relations with a partner, which is usually the client's request. Here, the client in therapy actively presents secondary feelings (anger, resentment, jealousy, etc.) in relation to his partner. The therapeutic task at this stage is to switch the client to the area of primary feelings (fear of rejection, rejection). This is not an easy task, as the client will have a strong resistance to being aware of and accepting the primary feelings-needs behind the secondary feelings (in acceptance, unconditional love). Resistance is sustained, as noted above, by intense feelings of fear and shame.

The next stage in therapy will be the awareness and acceptance of the fact that primary feelings-needs are displaced from the primary object and directed to another object. This primary object is the parent figure with whom the attachment relationship was broken. The therapeutic task of this stage of therapy will be the sequential passage of the stages of sensitivity to the object with disturbed attachment from the stage of absence of feelings through the stage of secondary feelings and, finally, to the primary feelings-needs. The therapist unfolds the emotional process from emotional anesthesia and secondary emotions that perform a protective function, to primary feelings that speak of needs for intimacy-attachment and fears of not getting what you want.

Working with a client and his attachment problems is working with a small child in need of love. The most appropriate model of therapy here is the mother-child model, in which the therapist has a lot to contain and give to his client. If we imagine that in moments of experiencing primary emotions (fear, pain of loss, feeling of our own uselessness and abandonment) we are in contact with the child's and vulnerable part of the client's “I”, then it will be easier to understand and accept him. This is a work "here-and-now", at a close distance, requiring empathic attunement to the current state of the client.

Working with emotions in a detached position is ineffective. Empathic involvement is the main tool for the therapist to deal with the problems under consideration. Empathy is the ability to imagine yourself in the place of another person, to understand what it is like for him, to experience empathy and express it in contact.

Empathy, non-judgmental and unconditional acceptance, and therapist's congruence (Rogers triad) help build a safe and trusting therapeutic relationship - a relationship of emotional closeness that the client has been lacking in his life. As a result, a person who seeks a therapist feels understood and accepted. Such a therapeutic relationship is the optimal nourishing, supportive and developmental environment for the client's personal growth process. Here, analogies are possible with a secure attachment, which is a safe haven that protects from life's stresses, and a reliable base from which to take risks and explore the surrounding and inner world. Even the strongest and most rejected feelings can be experienced and assimilated in intimacy, no matter how difficult and painful it may seem.

When interacting, people with attachment problems find it difficult to be in therapeutic contact. Due to their hypertrophied sensitivity to rejection, they are also unable to hold on to real contact and often start to react. In a situation that they “read” as rejection, they develop strong secondary feelings - resentment, rage, anger, pain - and prevent them from staying in contact. The interaction partner is a secondary object onto which feelings are projected, addressed to the primary rejecting objects.

Client N. applied for therapy with problems in relationships with men. In the course of therapy, it turned out that these relationships in her life always unfold according to a similar scenario: after a successful first stage in the relationship, the client begins to have more and more claims to the chosen one, irritation, jealousy, reproaches, resentment, control. Behind these actions and secondary feelings in the process of analysis, a strong fear of abandonment, rejection, uselessness, loneliness is revealed. The client in a real relationship, not realizing these feelings, tries to put more and more pressure on her companion. It is not surprising that her men consistently "run away" from these relationships.

This is the point in the relationship that can be realized in therapy and break the usual pattern of interaction, break out of the usual stereotypical pathological ways of contact.

The number one task for such clients is to try to stay in contact, not letting go of responding and talking to the partner (using self-statements) about their feelings-needs. It is very difficult also for the reason that in this situation the fear of rejection is actualized. Although the leading feeling is often resentment, which “does not allow” to speak openly about their feelings (pain, fear).

This therapy may not always be successful. Such therapy, as mentioned above, makes great demands on the personality of the therapist, on his maturity, elaboration, and on his personal resources. If the therapist himself is vulnerable in terms of attachment, he will not be able to work with clients with similar problems, since he cannot do anything. give to such a client.

For nonresidents, consultation and supervision from the author of the article via the Internet is possible.

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