101 stories from the therapy room

(A non-clinical approach to psychotherapy and counselling)

A 44 year old male client was going through difficulty in his decade old marriage.  Through ten years of his marriage he had carried along without rocking the boat, as the relationship was very important for him. It had now reached a situation where his wife had thrown him out of their home and was unwilling to go for a divorce  This meant that he was literally on the streets. Unable to bear separation from his young  daughter,   he was distraught and did not know how to deal with his predicament. His apathy deepened during this period even more. 

In the therapy session we suggested we do a process to elicit what the client is projecting on to the current situation, hoping intuition will help me gain some insight into setting a reasonable contract to work towards. In some processes that I facilitate, I make use of figurines and images to evoke creativity and help clients make a connection between the unconscious and cognitive sides of their minds which may in turn lead to breakthroughs for the client.

I asked this client to choose a few figurines to represent his current situation.  He chose a bald old man to represent himself and two young girls on either side. I was intrigued and asked him why he chose an old man to represent himself  when he was just 44 years old. He did not have an answer to it, so we stayed with the image for a while. I shared my thoughts – the old person represents his long conflict with his wife and the perception that “time is running out”.

The phrase “time is running out” hit him hard.  He said every day, every moment when he isn’t able to contact his daughter feels wasted. He reflected that he had remained passive for 10 years in an abusive relationship with no future and he had been blind to it for so long and now it felt like time was running out . Perhaps this metaphor of time running out was urging him to take some action. He said that he was going to work on repairing his marriage once more, this time with a timeline and if it doesn’t work out, he will reach out to a lawyer who can guide him with the process of legal separation. This gave him a sense of direction and hope that he could take some action steps. 

Therapist reflection: When we began the session, we did not know which direction to go. Asking the client to organize his current situation using the figurines gave us the anchoring statement “time is running out”. I was now wondering why the client had been passive for so long without taking any action – but time was running out in the therapist room too. Stay tuned to next week’s article to find out whether I was able to satisfy my curiosity.