Introduction

The following work is an assignment that is based on a case study of a client receiving counselling since they are experiencing extreme fear. The structure of the work provides a case study scenario which gives the background of the client and their concerns. The sociocultural and family issues affecting the client are also addressed in depth with support from academic materials. The format of the work also provides a description of the counsellor and the techniques they will employ in delivering therapy. The approach that the paper will be drawing upon drawn upon is systemic counselling and psychotherapy.

Case Study

Grace is a 50-year-old white woman who works as a receptionist in the city at a local firm in North West England where she lives with her 19-year-old college going daughter. For the most part of her adult life, she has lived in the city after moving from Portsmouth city where she was born and raised. She grew up in a single-headed family after her father left the family when she was six. At the age of 20, she dropped from college andmoved to North West England,she later went back to school and completed college and landed a job where she currently works

Grace had a difficult life growing up after her father left because she felt much attached to him. As such, for most of her life, she kept a distance from people and avoided any contact that may lead to a close connection. When in her early twenties, she got into a relationship with a young man, seven months later they were engaged and decided to move in together. However, he later left her when she was four months pregnant. Now that her college daughter has started going out, she is now experiencing great fear when she goes out.

During a counselling session, grace said that she feared that the people who are close to her might later abandon her as she has experienced it twice, first with her father and second with the father of her daughter. Since the father of her daughter left her, she said she has always avoided being intimate and this has helped her cope with the situation. However, she said that she could not control developing a bond with her daughter which is now severely affecting her as Grace cannot stand to see her with someone else since she fears that she will be abandoned.

Family and sociocultural issues affecting the client.

The issues affecting the client are perceivable through a family system relationship. As such, systemic counselling and psychotherapycan be used to describe how the issue stems from the family system. The idea advanced by this approach seeks to view individuals as relational beings whose behaviour can only be understood from the perspective of social systems such as family. With this approach, the focus is not merely on the person experiencing problems but instead on the social context that shapes the conduct of the person. The social setting in which the client is rooted, such as family background, present and past relationships is useful during therapy(Barker, 2010).  A systemic approach asserts that psychological issues do not purely arise as a result of someone’s psychological dysfunction (Vossler, 2010). Individual problems are rather due to social systems such as relationships.In the case of this client, the challenges faced by grace are as a result of family relationships. Her first detachment from her father initiated a series of emotional distress relating to abandonment. Therefore, given that she did not recover from the experience and later suffered a similar situation her psychological wellbeing was affected.

Fear of abandonment creates a solid belief that people close to us will leave us(Kivisto, 2014). By being abandoned by important people early in her life, grace feels like she is going to be also abandoned now and therefore she becomes anxious. Her mind understands past experiences of abandonment and thus makes her develop fear when similar situations to which she repressed seems like they want to occur. Her family background is one of the abandonment issues that are entrenched in her mind; additionally, her relationship with the father of her child also indicates an incidence of abandonment in her life. Therefore, her conscious mind is aware of this and tries to prevent similar events from happening.

It is evident that Grace is majorly affected by social systems as she does not describe any problems with her work life. She sees to cope well with work relationships. On the contrary, she has avoided intimate relationships for the better part of her adult life. It clearly shows that her issues spring from social systems as she develops fear when her daughter starts getting engaged with other people.

Some sociocultural issues that affect the client include growing up in a single-headed family in an era where single headed homes were not popular and probably looked down upon. Therefore, the client may have developed low self-esteem considering that she grew up in a less conventional type of family. Additionally, given that she also brought up her daughter alone, she may feel that the cycle is repeating itself and thus fear that her daughter may go through the same ordeal. As such, she acts out by expressing excessive fear of an intimate relationship.

Additionally, now that graceis growing also, she could be concerned that her daughter will get engaged and eventually leave her when she gets in a stable relationship. Considering that she needs someone to keep her company in her old age, she could be fearing that she may be left alone. In case that happens, this will be the same situation where her father left her after forming a bond. It is also similar to the situation where the father of her child left her when she most needed him. So if her daughter were to leave her, it would be a re-enactment of the same situations that have been occurring to her, and they are detrimental to her psychological wellbeing.

Counsellor description

As a counsellor working with grace, I would seek to inquire about her concerns that lead her to develop fear. To gain an understanding of her concerns, I will ask her questions that lead her to explain how she understands herself and the society surrounding her and hence leading to the current state of mind. As described in chapter 9 by Vossler(2010), mental health problems are affected by social constructivism. As such, these problems are not caused by natural factors but are instead a result of socially agreed constructions. The chapter further describes that an interruption of family patterns and rules creates the phenomenon of getting stuck. Once that happens, the unit is unable to acclimatise to the new changes in the family cycle. Similarly, the client must have failed to adapt to the changes that occurred in her family. The questions that I will ask grace are as follows.

When your father left home, did you in any way blame yourself? The question allows one to understand how she perceived the experience either as a victim or the cause of the situation. Another question to ask her is if she ever felt like she was not good enough for someone? In this manner, it may be possible to understand her cause for avoiding intimacy. Maybe she thinks that others will also abandon her like her father and lover. By establishing the cause of avoiding intimacy it will be possible to identify the right treatment for her condition. The other question would be whether she has ever tried to seek counselling services or engage in a recovery process. By determining this truth, it will be easy to decide the type of help she deserves by evaluating previous counselling help and how much they have helped her or not. If she has not sought help before, I would know how to prepare her to go through the recovery process.

To understand how her family system influenced the behaviour she developed it would be essential to ask the client how their whole family perceived their father’s departure. It would be essential to know if the mother spoke to her about it and if her other siblings developed the same type of fear and also how society treated their family afterwards. The constructed societal values have a significant impact on how people react to situations. Also, how families respond to scenarios largely affects the significance they attach to the situation(Conradi et al., 2016). Therefore by learning about her and people close to her life, it becomes easier to understand the perspective of the client and therefore offers them the best guidance.

The expression of fear indicates that one is regulating closeness and keeping a distance between them and others. Traumatic family stations or other devastating relationship events are associated with heightened fear as it is the case with the client. The expression of such fear and anxiety which mainly stems from family relationships must not be seen as mental disorders but should be perceived as an adaptation to abnormal and irrational family systems. Therefore with regards to family health problems, this viewpoint changes the meaning of mental health problems by categorising them in another theoretical and emotional context “fear and anxiety as a solution attempt and survival strategy in problematic family systems” (Vossler, 2010p. 202).

Systemic counselling and psychotherapy will be used in providing counselling to the client. The method means that several approaches will be used to help the client by contributing different shared assumptions and ideas. The models share a common notion that humans can only be perceived as part of social systems since they are relational individuals.

In this case, family therapy is applicable as it is important to involve family members to help Grace gain a different perspective of her situation. Family therapy is an excellent type of counselling relationship as the situation affecting the client is related to family matters. Additionally, by including family, the client can feel more secure and ready to bond with people especially when it is demonstrated that close people understand her emotional issues. The reframing technique will be applied; the approach will help describe emotional behaviour in different viewpoints which is the aim of the therapy sessions. By changing the frame in which clients view their problem then the meaning of their condition changes and subsequently their behaviour and thinking.

Conclusion

Healthy human growth and development necessitates the need for nurturing and care. However, the lack of meeting emotional needs leads to feelings of abandonment which can later develop to become traumatic experiences later in life. As observed in the case study, the client developed a fear of abandonment after closely related people in her life left her.As such, she developed the fear of getting intimate with other people and lives in constant fear that the only close person to her may also leave her. Therapy decisions were based on the factors surrounding the situation of the client. The approach adopted gave considerable concern to the family and sociocultural issues in the client’s life. These aspects are essential to the therapy of the client since they significantly contribute to her current mental state. Socially constructed values lead the client to perceive her life from her current perspective. Therefore, factoring in the social context in therapy is very useful. Additionally, the framing technique allows the client to view her situation from different angles. Particularly the method is effective because it enables the client to see that there are different truths to her conditions and that she can adopt the most appropriate to her situation.

Bibliography

Barker, M. (2010) ‘Sociocultural issues, inBarker, M., Vossler, A. and Langdridge, D. (2010). Understanding Counselling and Psychotherapy. 1st ed. SAGE Publications Ltd.

Conradi, H.J., Boertien, S.D., Cavus, H. and Verschuere, B., 2016. Examining psychopathy from an attachment perspective: The role of fear of rejection and abandonment. The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology, 27(1), pp.92-109.

Kivisto, A.J., 2014. Abandonment and engulfment: A bimodal classification of anxiety in domestic violence perpetrators. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 19(3), pp.200-206.

Vossler, A. (2010) ‘Systemic approaches’, in Barker, M., Vossler, A. and Langdridge, D. (2010). Understanding Counselling and Psychotherapy. 1st ed. SAGE Publications Ltd.

 
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