Tony White

I have recently added a few more composite blog postings to my list on my website.

Most recently on the trauma transaction and dual relationships. Of note in the one on dual relationships I discuss the BS therapists sell to their clients about why they can't do personal work in front of them. I also address therapist's own insecurities in the therapeutic relationship so they have to hide behind professional organizations regulations rather than being honest with their clients.

In the trauma transaction I discuss why men as compared to women do not have the same coordinated approach to their health in the community.

There is more coming soon on the home visit counselling and some on grief and bereavement counselling.

BTW the error in placement of post number 44 is being corrected.

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It’s funny how some clients will find their way to do something if the therapist will just let them.

There is an inherent contradiction in any model of helping. Any such model rest upon the patient being compliant to the treatment. If a client does not comply to the treatment then it is a waste of time doing the treatment in the first place. Indeed in the DSM-IV there is a specific diagnostic condition that is used when a patient is not complaint with an important aspect of the treatment of the disorder - Code V15.81 Noncompliance with treatment - is its official title.

Some treatment models try to get around this by saying that the treatment approach and goals are decided on by both the client and the therapist. So it is a consultative approach they argue. But of course then the client just has to comply with that! So in any helping relationship or transference relationship between a helper and helpee there is always a component of compliance to the assumptions and model that the helper happens to employ.

This becomes a significant problem when dealing with the highly compliant client which is where I arrive at a guy who I recently worked with. He had a high Conforming Child ego state. Mind you these types of clients are wonderful to work with because they do and say all the right things. He did precisely that and it would feel good when he came to a session because I know things would go how they are supposed to go which made me feel good and like I was doing a good job. BUT he was highly compliant. He had to comply with the treatment in order to become less compliant - a contradiction. The therapeutic relationship directly contradicts the therapeutic goals.

However he did do some good work and in particular restructured his relationship with his partner to a much healthier form. So I am not discounting what he did BUT in his therapeutic alliance with me he was compliant. And this was always a worry in the back of my mind and had me stumped on how to deal with it. In theory terms he was not being his own Free Child, he was just conforming with what I was suggesting. So he was not being who he was but was just another facsimile of what someone else was telling him to be - in this instance, me.

And of course, as so often is the case with such individuals they complain of precisely that. I don’t know who I am, or I don’t know how to be who I am, or I have no understanding of my Free Child, or words to that effect, which he did complain of.

One of the things he very much liked to do was homework. Some clients like homework and some clients hate homework. Homework is a task that the client does in between the sessions, such as trying out a new behaviour with a spouse, or experiencing some sort of feeling, or not doing the dishes for the week and so forth. He would always ask for his homework task and he even got a special book that he would record what happened with his homework and his reflections over the week on his homework task. Then in the next session he would bring it in and read out what he had written over the week.

He had many homework tasks on various ways of accessing his Free Child or homework tasks on various ways of suppressing his Free Child. He did these vigilantly BUT I still had this nagging thing in the back of the mind that he was doing my Free Child and not his Free Child.

Then before his last session with me he actually rang and stated that something had come up and he had to reschedule, which he did. This got the therapist bells ringing in my head. He had never done that before and he had even stated previously how he would reschedule this and that so he could come to the next appointment time with me.

Then he arrives at the last session (which we had previously agreed was his last) without his homework book. He said that he been very busy that week and had forgotten what the homework was. I stated nothing and just smiled. He then talked again about this author who I had never heard of. He had mentioned this book before and how the writer wrote about the male and female parts of the personality. He felt that he was not enough in touch with his male part and how he used his female energy as a persona. I just smiled and said nothing.

He then proceeded to describe to me how this week he had a number of times expressed this male aspect of himself in various relationships with others. I just smiled and said nothing. He spent the week doing precisely the homework that was agreed upon. But he did not realise it. He had at last found a way to do it his way. I just smiled and said nothing.

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There are many colloquialisms used in the counselling field. For instance there is a thing called ‘Door knob therapy’. That client who has the habit of bringing up very important information just as the therapist is about to turn the door knob on the door to let the client leave at the end of the session. Typically a form of resistance as the client knows that the session will end and thus they don’t have to deal with what they just brought up. Ambivalence - they want to deal with it and they don’t want to deal with it at the same time.

I want to deal with it but it scares me.

Then there is another axiom where the client is said to have tried ‘Geographical therapy’. The person relocates geographically so as to get away from a person (most often mother or father) or a situation, or a job, or they may relocate geographically so as to get near some person or circumstance.

The magical thinking behind doing such a thing is, “If I can just geographically move away from her then my emotional issues will go away and I will feel less disquiet and more emotionally secure”. Although it can work it is rare. The key factor in geographical therapy is timing. If geographically therapy did generally work then there would be very few therapists and an awful lot of travel agents. Of course most people take their emotional angst and pathologies with them when they move.

Geographical therapy is particularly prominent in the area of drug abuse therapy. I worked for 5 years at a drug rehabilitation centre. This organisation had another treatment facility that was called the ‘Farm’. This “Farm”, was a farm and was located about 50 Kms out of the city and drug users could go there to live for months at a time. They would work on the farm which was a drug free environment and thus they were not consistently being tempted to use like they would be if they were in their usual domain. Thus the treatment method of geographical therapy was being applied.

I have my doubts about its effectiveness. Often removal to the farm was a last resort measure done out of desperation. “Nothing else is helping so we might as well try the farm”, was often the thinking behind going there. This also allowed the parents, partners and friends of the user to feel secure for a little while as they knew where the user was and that he was not using. Whilst that is good for them it may not have been so good for the user. Whilst being drug free, and it by and large was, the drug user is being placed in an environment with 20 other drug users who were trying to get off the gear.

Putting a drug user with other drug users is like getting two swines with the flu to kiss each other.

Now we in the counselling field are often banging on about the importance of relationships in the cure of emotional malaise. It is the relationship between the client and some significant other (usually a therapist) that has the most curative powers of all. At the farm the user was placed in a situation where he would establish a whole new set of relationship with others who were also drug addicted. There is something not quite right about that!

However geographical therapy in the treatment of drug abuse does on occasion work. I have a very dear friend of 20 years. A lovely woman and we have met regularly for all this time. She has a son who some years ago became quite a heavy amphetamine user and she would often talk to me about what was happening and really seek my counsel on it a bit. At one point it was decided that he would move from the west coast of Australia, where we were, to the east coast and live with his uncle and aunt. Now for those of you who don’t know Australia the east coast and west coast of Australia are a very long way apart.

Geographical therapy was being employed as this would remove him from the drug scene and his drug using comrades and he would be forced to establish new relationships. So the move was made and it worked a charm! He established himself over there with a job, found himself a girl and is now married with a child. He never sought out the drug scene over on the east coast.

So geographical therapy with drug users can be effective if the timing is right. It is very difficult for drug users to establish a non drug using peer group and geographical therapy can greatly assist with that as long as the user is ready for it. Geographically relocating a user to an environment with a group of drug users who are currently in remission I do not think is a wise move to make. The geographical relocation needs to be to an environment with very few ex users.

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This is to upload a picture a different way.

I want to see if it works

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Kahless says:

"Well Widow Twanky, 

I recommend a washing machine to save your legs!"

(end quote)

Well I am back Kahless.

Not too sure what a twanky is but I am not a widow that's for sure.

I however will say no to the washing machine. My approach to domesticity is minimalist. I don’t like clutter in my home.

I have thought about buying a washing machine and I would have spent more at the laundromat than a machine would cost. However I have made my decision and I stand by it.

They are big items and thus take up space and usually you would get a dryer as well which is also a relatively big item that are also hard to move around. Goodbye space as well! So I don’t have one, also once it is there you have to insure it and eventually it breaks down and then you have to get a guy to fix it. He could not care less and does not turn up when he says he is going to and does a dodgy job anyway.

Also they inevitably leak water underneath the machine and then comes the fungal growths and with fungus comes other things like odours and insects and rodents.

It is far easier just not to have one and also laundromats are very interesting places. You meet all sorts of people there from all walks of life. From the homeless person who wanders in and asks for a few dollars to the lonely desperate guy who has just been told to leave the home as his wife no longer wants him. To the woman who uses about 5 machines all at once each only with a few items in each. Firstly this pisses everyone off as then there are no machines left during the busy times. She can’t put the colours with the whites and she can’t put her underwear with her skirts apparently. Then you have the young back packers who talk some odd language and whilst waiting they canoodle up the back corner.

I also know the guy who owns the place well now., I know all about his wife and how she nags him, who he follows in the football and how his teenage children show him no respect at all which accounts for why he spends so much time in his laundromat.

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