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We have set out some examples of ‘stories of change’ with therapy. Most are based on themes mixed together from several real clients over the years so are not single ‘real’ people (to protect client confidentiality). We have included an authentic personal testimony as well however from a client who was keen to share their experience with others. We hope the accounts help to give a more concrete idea of what therapy can be about.
Pamela, a 56-year old self-employed mum worked in a catering business she had started 10 years ago with a friend. She had two children, both of whom had now left home. Her husband, Paul, worked in a senior position at a technology firm. As Pamela put it, 'on paper' it appeared she was a successful business woman with a thriving family, but she felt deep down that she wasn’t 'good enough'. She described being worried constantly that she was going to fail, which she said made her feel stressed and miserable.
I met with Pamela for 1 assessment session, after which we agreed to embark on a course of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) for low self-esteem. By the end of the assessment, the information I had learnt from Pamela had enabled me to draw out a diagram representing a vicious circle of thoughts, feelings and actions we both agreed Pamela was stuck in. We focused also, and particuarly in Pamela’s case, on a series of ‘life rules’ she seemed to have developed which were making things very difficult for her. For example, it seemed that Pamela had, almost unconsciously, tried to compensate for her thoughts about being ‘not good enough’ by making sure she worked harder than anyone else, both at her business and at her personal relationships.
There was the implication for Pamela that ‘if I try harder to be more perfect than other people, then I might be able to make up for being not good enough’. This ‘rule’, however, actually caused Pamela no end of problems. It is actually impossible to be perfect, and certainly not in several areas of your life at the same time. Pamela would, for example, work late into the night trying to get the plans for a forthcoming event she was catering for right. This made her very tired, and as a result paradoxically more likely to make mistakes. It also meant Pamela was exhausted the next day, and more likely to snap at her husband. When Pamela did make a mistake, or when she did lose her temper, she became very angry with herself for being so ‘useless’, which brought all her thoughts about being ‘not good enough’ back up to the surface. Pamela would respond by resolving to ‘work harder’ the next day, and so the vicious circle continued.
Pamela found the assessment itself very enlightening. She told me she had not realised she was, in her words, ‘my own worst enemy’. She felt relieved because she could see that there was something she might actually be able to do to change how she felt, although she did admit to being apprehensive about whether or not she would be able to change.
I saw Pamela for a total of 9 sessions. Following some more exploration around the difficulty, we began by encouraging Pamela to start ‘breaking’ her life rules in order that she might be able to let them go, or at least to make them less extreme. Pamela understandably found this difficult at first, after all the ‘rules’ had been developed for a good reason; they protected her from having to feel that she wasn’t good enough. Pamela was frightened that she would fail if she wasn’t trying to be perfect, so we set up a series of ‘experiments’ she could try in between sessions to help build her confidence. The experiments started off gently, and became more challenging once Pamela’s confidence began to grow. One example was that Pamela worked on saying ‘no’ to members of her family more effectively.
Previously she would spend hours on the telephone to her children helping them with various ups and downs. She would take calls at any time of day, meaning other aspects of her life and business would suffer, and for as long as her children wanted to talk, sometimes for hours taking up entire evenings. Pamela was very reluctant to manage these calls differently because she worried that doing so would make her a ‘bad mother’. The first time she experimented in this area, she told her daughter, who rang in the middle of one of Pamela’s planning sessions with her business partner, that she would have to call her back in an hour but that she would only have 30 minutes to chat because she had a hair appointment. Not only was Pamela’s daughter accepting of this, they had a helpful, more focused, conversation when Pamela rang back, after which her daughter thanked her for supporting her to make a decision. Pamela was extremely surprised at this outcome.
However, it, and the results of the many other experiments we designed, began to genuinely improve her confidence. By the end of therapy Pamela told me she had realised that she couldn’t have been the failure she used to believe she was because, once she became more relaxed about how she lived her life, things began to work more not less successfully. With her ‘rules’ less extreme, Pamela also felt less stressed and more in control of all the things she had to juggle. Like other clients, she took away a blueprint of the therapy to refer to in future. Pamela told me she had stuck the now positive, rather than vicious, circle we drew out in the inside flap of her diary in order to remind her how much things had changed for the better.
Note: I did not spend time with Pamela discussing her earlier life experiences in any detail because, although relevant, doing so was not necessary in her case in order to bring about the positive changes Pamela wanted to achieve. However, work on early life experiences can often be very helpful, if not necessary, in some cases of low self-esteem. Where this is the case, I will discuss with you as the client the benefits of including such work in therapy.
Mark, a 33 year-old was suffering from OCD. He worked locally as an IT consultant and enjoyed spending time with his wife Amy and their two young children. For several months Mark had noticed his desire to have a clean house, and to be clean himself, had got out of hand. He would wash his hands up to 120 times a day, and was unable to go to bed at night unless all the rooms in the house had been vacuumed, the loos had been bleached and all the door handles had been disinfected.
Mark had a total of ten sessions with me, the first of which was a detailed assessment. At the end of the assessment, Mark and I drew out a formulation diagram which explained how Mark’s thoughts about cleanliness for his family were causing him intense anxiety, leading to the cleaning behaviours (or ‘compulsions’) he described. Mark realised that by performing all his cleaning tasks, although he felt reassured in the short term, they prevented him from trusting that no harm would come to anyone in his family if he returned to the way he and Amy used to keep their house clean before OCD took over.
Mark embarked on nine sessions of CBT for OCD during which he learnt about OCD and how it manifested in him.
We used this understanding to work through a series of behavioural experiments during which Mark was supported to reduce his cleaning activities while he was at home in between his sessions. Mark learnt how to manage the anxiety he experienced at these times, and developed the skills to challenge the obsessive thoughts about cleanliness and germs in a different way. By the end of the therapy Mark felt he had reached his goal of ‘not worrying any more about cleaning and germs than my brother does’. He took away a blueprint of the sessions which summarised the skills he had learnt. Mark thought this would be useful to refer to in the months to come.
Alex, a student had just had his 16th birthday when he and his parents came to see me for assessment. Alex’ parents rightly felt that Alex would benefit from some Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), and did not want him to be on a waiting list, particularly as they knew he was in the middle of his final year of GCSEs. Antidepressant medication is not recommended as a first line of treatment for young people unless taken concurrently with psychological therapy (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, 2005).
I spoke with Alex and his parents, both together and separately, over an extended 90-minute assessment session. Alex had no history of low mood. He was a popular boy, with a good network of friends. He did well enough at school and enjoyed playing sport. Alex was a member of a local tennis club and played in a football league with a junior team. Alex’ parents wondered whether the low mood had started following a broken leg he sustained the previous term, which prevented him from playing sport for several months. Alex agreed with this idea, but he added that he also felt very worried about his future. He was anxious about his upcoming GCSEs and said that, unlike his peers at school, he had no idea what he wanted to do in terms of a career. I learnt also that Alex’ grandfather, with whom he was very close, had died the previous Christmas.
At the end of the assessment I drew a diagram detailing the last year or so of Alex’ life. The death of his grandfather had come as a shock to Alex and he had found himself trying to deal with a lot of difficult questions, such as what the purpose of one’s life should be. Not too long after the family suffered this loss, Alex broke his leg playing football. He spent several months recovering, during which time he was not spending his weekends playing sport or seeing his sport-related friends. Alex became increasingly withdrawn. It was, as Alex put it later on, a ‘double whammy’: he lost the sense of purpose and self-esteem that he now realised he gained from his sport, but also had a lot of time on his hands to ruminate difficult life questions. The diagram showed how Alex had now become stuck in a vicious circle of negative thoughts, which made him feel low, despondent and unmotivated, leading to a change in his typical behaviours: Alex no longer went out, he stopped focusing on school work, and he distanced himself from his friends. This new way of acting naturally did not help Alex to think more positively about anything, and so the vicious circle continued.
Alex said he felt like he was understood, and that the diagram helped him to make sense of what he described as the ‘mess in my head’. Alex’ parents found the assessment helpful because they had been able to have a frank discussion with their son, and learn about his perspective instead of hypothesising themselves and feeling powerless to help him. We agreed to start a course of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) to reverse this vicious circle. I saw Alex for a total of 12 sessions, initially on a weekly basis, but then fortnightly as he felt he was making such good progress.
Some of the elements of the therapy included:
All our appointments were conducted with just Alex and myself. However, at the end of many of the sessions, Alex and I would decide to invite either one or both of his parents (depending on who had accompanied him to the clinic) in for the last 10 minutes. We agreed what we would share and why it might be helpful to do so. Alex admitted he was nervous about doing this initially, but after a few weeks he told me that he felt it made a big difference to his parents’ level of understanding. This in turn made it easier for him to be at home and to ask for back up from his parents if he needed it. Alex’ parents were very pleased to be involved as it meant they could do something to help him, and, as Alex’ mother put it one day ‘at least I don’t put my foot in it anymore’! The whole family reported they felt closer to one another and were able, finally, to regain a shared sense of humour.
By the end of the therapy, Alex had returned to playing football although he had decided to stop tennis for the time being so he had fewer pressures placed on his time. He found it much easier to strike a balance between study and other aspects of his now growing social life, and less worried about his future. Alex told me he felt ‘like myself’ again. Although he admitted there were times (e.g. when something went wrong at school) when he noticed negative thoughts arising, Alex now felt able to stop any ensuing vicious circles in their tracks. He took away a blueprint of all the work we had covered together which he said he might refer to at these times in order to get an ‘extra boost’. Alex said he felt in control of his life and looked forward to a positive, if not totally defined future.
Laura had recently returned home from a 3-year economics degree at university. She lived with her parents and was a graduate trainee with a leading firm of accountants. Laura had suffered from anorexia nervosa for two years between the ages of 15-17. She received treatment and recovered to the extent her weight returned to within the normal range. Laura was an intelligent young woman with a strong academic record.
David, aged 62, came to see us because he felt quite hopeless about his life and his future following a sudden stroke. David had made what his doctors described as a ‘good’ physical recovery, but he had been left with a number of impairments.
When Gary came to see us he was 45 years old, well qualified, hardworking, intelligent, and yet he was struggling to keep down a job. He had been discharged from several positions for 'not fitting in' or for 'not being a team player'. Gary had also been criticised at work regarding his 'manner'.
After struggling for 5 years with anxiety and vomit phobia, the anxiety spiralling dangerously into all aspects of my life and not receiving the right help, I contacted Leathes Psychology. After a thorough assessment and reassuring and caring process from the very first email sent, I was offered Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT).
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