This is in line with control mastery
theory, in which the client presents "tests" to their
therapist, and often reactivates their old wound in an
attempt towards resolution with the therapist around
this deeply loaded issue.
Particularly, it was interesting to have five or six
clients back to back and feel energized or depleted
due to who was coming into the room; such different
responses, feelings and energy from person to
person because the tests were different, even if some
of the core issues, such as omnipotent responsibility,
shame, rejection and worth were the same.
I remember one client in particular who I disliked
setting boundaries with. I noticed that in calling her
when appointments were missed I dreaded having to
be the authoritarian rule-setter and worried about her
response to me for charging for sessions missed.
This is in line with her personal story, in which
she was more of the adult and caregiver in her family.
She had more of a friendship with her caregivers in
which she often had to be too responsible. Similarly,
she mentioned feeling like I could be a friend, even as
she realized it wasn't possible for us to spend time
together like she wanted.
Early in our sessions, she asked if I would buy
tickets to come to a performance she was in. I
examined if this was a test of worth though decided it
was actually a test of boundaries, realizing she would
be relieved if I wasn't able to come. My client audibly
sighed with relief when I told her my decision because
of the boundaries at the core of our dynamic.
My client had actually coached me into getting the
response she wanted and needed. If I had failed the
test I believe it would have been possible to repair;
and she would have given me equal clues as she did
when I passed the test, through nervousness and
other nonverbal behaviors, or perhaps by creating
more distance in our relationship, to coach me that
this was a test of such boundaries. Could her
therapist provide limits where others in her early life
could not?
Tests feel different from the normal therapy
material when clients place them in the room. They
have a charge or an edge. There seems to be an
aliveness about the statement, or almost a
questioning... Are you, my therapist, going to buy this
as I put myself down? Are you going to call
me out on my low self-worth? Will you too reject me,
when I share my stories of being rejected in childhood
and marriage? Will you hurt me if I make myself and
my "worst" layers available to you?
Will the wounds from the past be healed this
time, through the repetition compulsion, and give me
the chance for something better by practicing my
deepest issues on you, my therapist, or will I be
wounded again, and largely have to carry the wound
on my own? These questions and statements are the
core that drives client behaviors in therapy ,"testing",
as it is called in control mastery.
This holds true in working with relationships as
well. Core issues of worth and rejection, for example,
seem to play in harmony (or disharmony) with each
other. I remember one couple in which, if it were
individual therapy, I would've been working with one
partner that it is okay to say no, that she was worthy of
it, after a lifetime of trauma in which "no" hadn't been
an option. This "no" was coming out in every direction
in their interactions and fit in with her partner's core
issue of rejection.
Control mastery is wonderful in that it
acknowledges the therapist's own feelings and
hunches. Counter-transference is thus one of the
best tools a therapist has for knowing the inner
world and subjective experience of clients.
I was able to look at the strength and intensity
behind my counter-transference with this couple and
get information into their dynamic.
I remember one session in which the partner who
was often rejected, expressed gratitude towards me
for a session we had done together. This couple was
one of my favorites to work with because of how
genuine, honest and raw they were.
Yet, I found it hard to take the compliment like the
partner who was learning to say "no". Trust was the
underlying issue. Could anyone be trusted enough to
be allowed into the private, phenomenological world,
enough to prove themselves as "good"?
Worthlessness, hopelessness and fear of
manipulation were all tied in.
The trauma wound was alive. My counter-
transference may have been a response to feeling
the "passive into active" experience of what it was
like to be my client who was a trauma survivor and
hadn't been trusted herself.
At other points in the therapy, I would feel how
aching it must be to be the other partner and to get
rejected. This information was invaluable to me in
working with this couple. It gave me both empathy
and a template to work with them. Tests,
countertransference, and digging deep to the seminal
layers of what is being reenacted drives at the esoteric
in a very real and practical way. I could get to the root
with a pragmatic tool to do the digging.
That is why control mastery works for me.
Everything is simply information which gives me a
solid structure to understand the complex, without
pathologizing. People simply are; their behaviors,
thoughts and emotions are all information in an
attempt to heal and this is what both they and I want
for them.
