Friday 13 July 2012

Client Stories - "Superwoman"


In today’s society, women have taken up the mantle of full time employment, but often without relinquishing much of their traditional, and also full time role in looking after their children and house-keeping. This week’s blog is the story of a type of client with whom I have had many dealings. This is not the story of any one person, but a composite based on many clients with similar issues.

She is used to being the strong one in the relationship, has always worked hard, both at home and in paid employment and has been successful in both.  Other people come to her with their problems and she is happy to take on this role and is good at being there for others. She has good relationships with her partner and family who are supportive. However, over many months, pressure at work has been building progressively and she finds she is struggling to cope.  Despite being desperately tired, her sleep is disrupted with her waking up early and being unable to get back to sleep worrying about work and not feeling rested in the morning.

The final straw came when a colleague had criticised her work.  She burst into tears and withdrew to the toilets. She was not used to crying, let alone in front of others, and even worse, at work, so she went home early, feeling ashamed, confused and overwhelmed.

She contacted me seeking help to “get back to my normal self as this just isn’t me”. In the first session, she told me her story as above and a bit about her background. When talking about the situation at work, she became tearful for which she apologised. When I said that she didn’t need to apologise for expressing her feelings and that it was important for our work together that I heard and acknowledged her feelings, she started to cry but quickly stopped. I wondered with her how she felt about crying. She said that she felt stupid & weak, which she hated. I asked her where she had learnt this, but she didn’t know. I asked her how she would feel if her daughter cried. She recognised that she didn’t think her daughter was stupid or weak when she cried and would comfort her.  I wondered with her about why it was different for her than her daughter. We agreed that we would continue with the sessions in an open ended contract to help her cope with the pressures she faced.

Over the course of several sessions, we explored various aspects of her life in relation to her current situation & feelings.  Having initially talked about how her childhood had been “fine”, as we explored the way the current situation resonated with her past, she began to realise that any tears when she was growing up were “shushed” and she was told not to be so silly.  She had quickly learnt that such expressions of hurt would not be heard or acknowledged in her family, so it was better to “toughen up” and “get on with it” – this isn’t about blaming her parents, but developing a compassionate understanding for her experience as a child. 

Ignoring her difficult emotions had worked well for her until recently when she had become overloaded, so now a new way of dealing with them was needed. She had forgotten that she had needs, having for so long prioritised her family’s needs and those of her employers. She realised that she had not allowed time for herself for ages.

Whilst she understood her need to pay attention to her emotions intellectually, the habit of ignoring them had been learnt unconsciously in childhood and unwittingly reinforced throughout her life. Thus, it took some time for her to start to practice paying attention to, and finding expression for, her emotions in our sessions, through my questions exploring her experience. 

After so long ignoring her needs, she had felt like a passenger in the car of her life, allowing her direction to be chosen by the circumstances of the moment without really being aware of it.  As she began to notice her own wants and needs, she spent progressively more time in the driving seat of her life which enhanced her growing self-confidence. She decided to take some time each week in an activity she had loved earlier in her life but had been phased out whilst focusing on her family.

She discussed her workload with her manager. Whilst the pressure of market forces remained intense, she agreed with her manager a process by which she could feed back to him when her workload was becoming too much.  They could then re-prioritise her workload, identifying what might be delayed or shortcut with the least impact. In the past she had spent time, both in and out of work, worrying about how to manage her workload. The recognition from her manager implied in this process freed her up to be more productive.  Now she was worrying less, her sleep became less disrupted and she felt more rested in the morning. 

She realised that through stress she had become tetchy with the children when they misbehaved. She now felt differently in her relationship with them. She spent more time playing with them and clearly, she and they enjoyed this time together. They behaved more calmly as a result. They still had their moments, but even then she was able to manage their crises without feeling stretched.  Following open discussions with her partner, they decided to regularly spend some time with just the two of them away from the children.  Just the act of deciding together to do this re-established the strength of their relationship and more explicitly expressed loving feelings between them.

Her thoughts now moved towards her future and what she wanted from her career and life in general. She was considering various options including reducing her working hours & specialising in an aspect of her current career. She also started thinking about what they might do once the children had left home.

By this time, she felt she had got what she wanted from the therapy and was ready to leave.  The changes had crept up on her incrementally. So, when reviewing her progress in our work together, as part of the usual work of ending therapy, she found it hard to imagine herself as she had been prior to starting the sessions.  

She recognised that there was potentially yet more we could work with, but felt that what had been achieved was enough for now and would take some time to consolidate these benefits on her own.  She was aware of the warning signs and knew what to do if she started to feel stressed at work. However, she strongly felt that having got back in the driving seat of her life, and with all the supportive mechanisms she had put in place, she was unlikely to let that happen again.

She had valued our relationship, appreciating what she had learnt about herself in the process, and was sad that it was ending. She felt that if she needed to, she would imagine discussing things with me and find her own way forward. 

If you have any questions about this blog or any of the issues raised please feel free to contact me via my website: http://www.garycooktherapy.co.uk

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