When sleepiness enters the therapy session

Like Sleeping Beauty awakened by the kiss of a prince, the therapeutic process can be seen as a process of awakening or making conscious what has been unconscious.

Which makes the topic of sleepiness in therapy sessions interesting. I sometimes find myself feeling unexpectedly tired in a therapy session. I may even suppress a yawn.

When this happens I usually feel a little embarrassed and may try and hide my sleepiness from the client. After all, who wants to see a therapist who seems like they’re about to nod off?

But I’ve discovered, over many years, that sleepiness is often an indicator that something else is going on in the session at an unconscious level.

First of all, I’ll ask myself if there’s any external reason for me feeling like this, such as having had a bad night’s sleep. Usually this is not the case.

Having eliminated other possibilities I can then turn my attention to what is happening with this particular client and what is going on in the session.

I’ve sometimes tried to hide my sleepiness from the client but have found that the nature of therapy is that each person is continually picking up subtle and non-verbal information from the other. Hiding a yawn or dropping eyelids is almost impossible.

What I’ve discovered is that when sleepiness arrives it signifies that something is being repressed or “squashed” in the session. It is usually a powerful emotion such as anger. 

I think the reason for the sleepiness is that if we are unconsciously repressing a strong emotion such as anger it has an effect on the energy in the room. I sometimes think of this as being like holding a beach ball under the water – the effort required in holding the ball under the water is a drain on the rest of the body.

In the same way if a powerful emotion like anger is being “held under the water” it has an effect on the energy in the room and that can translate into me feeling sleepy.

This can also happen in the individual’s own life – disowned anger can lead to a kind of energy-sapping depression.

When I acknowledge my sleepiness and begin a conversation with the client about what might be going on, often the sleepiness disappears. Naming what is going on has an effect on the energy in the session.

We can then explore whether the client may have other, less conscious or less “acceptable” feelings about the topic they are discussing. We don’t need to somehow resolve the issue but instead we enquire into what may be happening. 

Having that discussion can open up new perspectives about the client’s experience and relationship with his or her emotions.

Image Creative Commons license, courtesy of Tomas https://www.flickr.com/photos/tma/2438467223

For more information visit http://www.patrickmccurrycounselling.co.uk

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‘The green-eyed monster’ – dealing with jealousy

‘Jealousy is the green-eyed monster that doth mock the meat it feeds upon.’

From William Shakespeare’s Othello

While writing this blog on jealousy I looked up ‘jealousy quotes’ on the internet and almost all were negative – the main message is that jealousy is something aweful, something to be judged and condemned, something to feel shame over.

That coincides with my experience with clients, where typically a client will feel some embarrasment at disclosing jealousy about a partner.

I’m using jealousy to descrive the unpleasant feeling that someone, or something, will take away someone we love. So, a child may feel jealous if their sibling is getting more attention from mum. Or you may feel jealous that your partner seems over friendly to their work colleague. 

‘Jealousy’ by Edvard Munch

You may even feel jealous about the attention your partner gives to their social media account or mobile phone.

Of course, jealousy in its extreme form can be an awful experience for both the jealous person and their partner. It can lead to controlling behaviour and destroy relationships. 

Jealousy as a teacher

But rather than always being a negative emotion I think there’s another side to jealousy. From a soul perspective, where everything has a place, jealousy can be there to teach us something about ourselves or our relationship. It can be pointing to something in our lives that needs attention.

First of all, jealousy may be signalling that our relationship needs attention. Perhaps we have been taking our partner for granted and so he or she, unconsciously, begins to show a lot of interest in someone or something else. 

Our jealousy shows that we care. It represents our passion. If we can use the feeling as a starting point for a discussion about the state of the relationship then something good can emerge. 

It can also be asking us to look at whether there are sufficient boundaries in our relationship. By communicating my jealousy I’m also beginning a conversation about  what kind of boundaries I would like. By being willing to have an uncomfortable conversation about jealousy and boundaries I am also communicating that I value the other person and our relationship.

Jealousy can also point to something within ourselves that needs attention. 

For example, it can show us qualities within ourselves that we may have suppressed. If I am afraid my partner is attracted to someone who seems more confident, or more entertaining than me, that can be a sign that I am suppressing the part of myself that is confident or entertaining.

In other words, the jealousy can be an invitation to look at myself and the parts of myself that I may have disowned. Many of us have disowned our passionate or wilder parts, in order to fit in, but that suppression comes at a cost.

Projection

In all kinds of relational issues we can find ourselves projecting things onto the other other person. With jealousy, the obvious possible projection is that it is not our partner who is unhappy with the relationship but us. 

We may be dissatisfied with our partner but reluctant to admit that to ourselves, or not wanting to have an uncomfortable discussion. So what happens is that unacknowledged dissatisfaction is projected onto them, so that suddenly they are the person who we fear will leave us.

The jealousy can actually create huge problems in the relationship, so that they do want to leave us, thus confirming our original fear.

Another form of projection in jealousy is when something from our past is being re-created. This is often a triangle from the past, such as having a sibling who seemed to receive more attention from mum or dad than we did.

Those old feelings can re-emerge in adult relationships so that, what may seem a minor issue, becomes almost unbearable because it ignites the intensely painful feelings from childhood. Unless we are aware of what is going on we can find ourselves dominated by the jealousy without ever realising quite why.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, https://tinyurl.com/6awu25fw

For more information visit http://www.patrickmccurrycounselling.co.uk

Why being ‘caring’ isn’t always a good thing

“Rescuing [in therapy] is often not much more than a way of rescuing oneself from an unbearable experience.”

Patti Owens*

You’d think, as a therapist, I’d be a big fan of caring for other people. And I am. Caring about the welfare of others is an essential quality in a therapist, not to mention for nurses, doctors, social workers and others.

Caring for others is an undervalued quality in our culture, which places greater value on material success, independence and individualism.

But there is also potentially a shadow to being caring, which is when we use caring for others as a way to feel good about ourselves or control others. I’m using ‘shadow’ in the Jungian sense, which means the part of ourselves that we hide, repress or deny because it contradicts how we would like to see ourselves.

This shadow side of caring is sometimes understood as embodying the rescuer archetype. A good way of understanding this is the drama triangle, a psychological model that describes relationships in which we may find ourselves occupying the rescuer, victim or persecutor role.

If we are in the rescuer role it’s very difficult to be present with someone else in pain without needing to try and fix the problem. 

This is because the rescuer has often not come to terms with his or her own pain. They may have suppressed their own wounding and instead regard themselves as mature and competent and in a good position to help or advise others. 

But the caring of the rescuer is not just coming from a place of care, but rather from a superior position. It is also controlling in that it needs the vulnerable person to behave in a certain way and to feel grateful for the rescuer’s caring.

People are sometimes attracted to become therapists, nurses and social workers because they are themselves wounded but the way they cope with this wounding is by projecting it onto other people and ‘helping’ them.

The therapist with a rescuer complex can find it difficult to simply be present for a client who is in pain. They can seek to resolve the problem by giving advice or they may collude with the client by agreeing that everyone else is to blame. They may also find it hard to hold boundaries in the therapy because to do so may feel ‘unkind’.

In its extreme form being too caring can lead to codependent relationships, in which the ‘caring’ partner enables the alcoholism, addiction or dysfunctional behaviour of the other person. I explored this in a previous post. In this situation the caring partner may complain about the other’s behaviour but is still, at a deeper level, invested in the behaviour continuing.

Image creative commons licence, courtesy of http://www.procpr.com, https://tinyurl.com/522mvhhj

For more information visit www.patrickmccurrycounselling.co.uk

Why conflict-avoidant couples are heading for trouble

“Every relationship needs an argument every now and then. Just to prove that it is strong enough to survive. Long-term relationships, the ones that matter, are all about weathering the peaks and the valleys.” -Melchor Lim

It used to be thought that couple therapy should focus on increasing harmony between the partners, but these days there’s a growing recognition that being able to have healthy conflict is really important.

Of course, some couples fight a lot and that can corrode the relationship if partners end up feeling attacked or disrespected. But in many relationships there is a fear of allowing too much conflict and that, in its own way, can be equally corrosive as when there is a high level of conflict.

There’s a great interview here with author Ian Leslie,  discussing his recent book Conflicted* . The interview begins by looking at conflict in rock bands, such as the Beatles, but it you’re mostly interested in the couple relationship stuff you could begin from about the 20 minute mark.

Leslie says there used to be an assumption that arguments should be avoided. But it’s actually the couples who are willing to argue about something that is important to them that tend to be happier: “[For those couples] it can get quite heated and it can get quite passionate and it’s not always super pleasant, but it’s seen as part of the rhythm of the relationship and it doesn’t signal some terrible flaw.”

In 2008 New Zealand academic Nickola Overall, began filming couples discussing a problem in their relationship. The study,  cited in Conflicted, returned to the same couples a year later and found that those couples who were more willing to argue had made most progress with the problem.

For many couples, however, they can find themselves repeatedly arguing about the same thing without ever resolving it. This is where couple therapy can help because the therapist can introduce a different perspective and help them see the issue in a new way.

Another key point  is that it’s not just being willing to argue that is important but how a couple argues.

If we’re angry and we’re just out to shame or insult our partner that’s going to end badly. Equally unhealthy is a kind of constant, low level bickering that saps the joy out of any relationship.

I think it’s about us being willing to show we’re annoyed about something that’s important to us and to allow things to get heated. It’s about allowing in passion. We may sometimes say the ‘wrong’ thing in these arguments or feel uncomfortable because we’ve got angry, but that’s ok.

By expressing our frustration, or even our anger, we have allowed our partner to see what’s really important to us. In a strange way, by allowing ourselves to be in confllict we are also communicating to them that they, and the relationship, are important.

• Leslie, Ian. (2021), Conflicted, Faber & Faber, London.

For more information visit www.patrickmccurrycounselling.co.uk