Case History of Counselling
And Therapy Sessions ~ Sarah.
Sarah is a bright middle-aged woman who sought counselling to assist difficulties she was experiencing with over spending and balancing the family budget. Her carefree attitude and apparent taste for expensive items, caused many problems to surface in relationship with her husband who was concerned this was affecting the family's financial security.
Moving further into Sarah's difficulties, it was ascertained that Sarah came from an impoverished childhood and struggled to secure her own personal identity or needs within the boundaries of strict parental controls & financial limitations. She often experienced feelings of being 'unworthy' of receiving 'the good things in life' and this often made her feel she wasn't good enough or that others were 'better' in some way than she was.
The pressures of self preservation, coupled with her fathers need to run the household with a stern, abusive and overbearing attitude, forced Sarah to move out of the family home at an early age in an effort to try and establish a more independent & less restrictive lifestyle.
Intervention
The difficulty that Sarah faces at this present time is to assimilate her feelings of restriction and limitation experienced by her at an early age. Her work towards integration, focuses upon her current spend-thrift behaviour and how this is potentially compensating for a lack of self worth and independence.
At the same time, we investigate how her husband is portrayed as imposing these restrictions, which lead to heated arguments and relationship breakdown.
To establish self-responsibility and secure resources for personal growth, Sarah needs to explore these feelings of being compelled to overspend to feel a sense of self worth, self-gratification and personal identity and how this behaviour is affecting those around her.
Outcome.
The work with Sarah moves towards removing a need to grasp from the outside world to feel her sense of self, to securing an understanding that her behaviour is a relentless source of pain, frustration and conflict. Exploring Sarah's issues, we arrive at a point where Sarah has counter balanced her behaviour by broadening her awareness and understanding that her drive to compensate her feelings of restrictions by spending is detrimental to a secure & happy family environment and not worth the risk of loosing. The trade-off to spend has been replaced by an understanding that her family may be put at risk financially and that indirectly her children may suffer the same consequences as Sarah did as a child.
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