I Don't Want To Worry About My Life! Case From Practice

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

Client M., a 33-year-old woman, married, raising 3 children, looks aloof, indifferent to everything that happens, rather cold. Complains of depression - apathy to everything that happens, a sharp decline in working capacity, the loss of any prospects for the future. About a year ago, their family moved from another country - the homeland of M.

Throughout almost the entire session, M. talked about a series of tragic events that occurred in the last period of her life: from the destruction of family relations to the facts of violence and cruel treatment towards her and a series of deaths of people close to M

It was surprising that M. spoke about all this in a completely even tone and with an indifferent air. Nothing of the story seemed to touch her emotionally. Such a monstrous discrepancy between the content of the story and the process of experiencing made M. feel considerable anxiety in the course of the story.

At some point in the conversation, I found myself in a mixture of horror and pain.

I shared these phenomena with M., which caused her indifferent bewilderment, although after a few minutes M. reported her strong irritation towards me, which arose due to the fact that I was forcing her to experience something that she had long ago refused to experience.

I told her that it was not my value as a psychotherapist to accompany her on the path of blocking the experience and maintaining her depression. Although, if she is satisfied with this state of affairs, then she may not change anything. M. looked confused and said: "I don't want to worry about anything, my life is pretty stable now." I asked if she was saying this for me, or rather to herself, to which she replied that, of course, to herself.

Thus, M. continued to be alone in the presence of another person.

It is difficult to assume that M. sought psychotherapy to insist on her loneliness and depression. Although I am convinced that she has both grounds and the right to do so.

I told her that I respect her right to be alone and asked if she was comfortable in it. M. replied that she was very tired of him.

Then I asked her to repeat the phrase I said a little earlier, “I don’t want to experience anything, my life is now quite stable,” posting them in our contact.

After the very first words uttered by M., she burst into sobs, which lasted quite a long time. When I invited her to cry, if she wants, to me personally, she put her head on my hands and sobbed for about 10 minutes.

For the first time in the past few months, she said, she had the feeling that "someone else is not indifferent to her." The feeling of horror and pain was replaced by pity and tenderness for M., which I told her about. The next few months of M.'s therapy were devoted to restoring the process of her experience of numerous tragic events in her life.

At the moment M. is building a satisfying sexual relationship with a man who takes care of her children and herself. There are plans for the future, which she is successfully implementing.

The illustration presented quite clearly demonstrates several aspects of dialogue psychotherapy.

First, it becomes obvious that the symptomatology is secondary to the natural course of the process of experiencing in therapeutic contact

Secondly, the significance of M.'s own titanic efforts in the process of restoring the experience is quite clearly outlined

Thirdly, the role of the therapist is outlined, which consists in accompanying and maintaining the natural dynamics of experience in contact

And finally, this case illustrates the primacy of one's own dynamics of the process of contact and experience, which sometimes turn out to be much richer than any therapeutic plans and strategies.