Clients‟ experience of counselling within a narrative framework

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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CHAPTER SEVEN 
EMBODIED FINDINGS 
7.1 Introduction
This chapter explains the process that led to the idea of the findings poems. Each of the findings 
poems is presented and followed by links to the categories within the theoretical construct. The 
participants respond to the categories and comment on their feelings when experiencing some of 
them as they connect with them. The findings poems bring the stories of the journal narratives 
into short performance pieces. They attempt to integrate the opposition I experienced in the 
journals so that the theme of the study is inherent in them. The participants also respond to the 
poems. The symbols, words and phrases used by the participants in their journals influenced the 
construction of the poems. Their symbols are transported from their journals into these poems. 
Hayes (2004) states that the symbol “circumvents rational thought, and is therefore uncensored 
by moral and cultural dictates” (19). This implies the power of the symbol that may enable the 
person to free themselves from family and social rules of familiar expression. However my 
concern is that in transporting the participants‟ symbols I may either add to or deny the power 
that they ascribe to them. The change in the power of these symbols may be seen in some of the 
responses of the participants to these findings poems.
7.1 The process that led to the findings poems
The analysis of the journals intended to uncover stories hidden in the participants‟ journals. It 
also looked to discover whether containment, freedom and the polarity between these concepts 
existed in the client‟s internal world, as expressed in the journal texts. Having completed the 

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analyses I was searching for a way to both tell the stories and demonstrate the findings when 
tragedy impacted on my life and brought the work to a standstill. My response to the tragedy was 
to turn to writing poetry to help me through grief. This eventually enabled a return to the work as 
it seemed possible to write up each journal and its analysis as a poem. It seems important to be 
aware that this came about through my grief. My senses were heightened, my feelings close to 
the surface, whereby I felt as if I was overwhelmed. Yet this way of being enabled an entry into 
the work that may not have been possible otherwise. I cannot deny that my state of mind does 
not impact upon the work. Balancing this personal subjectivity so as not to lose objectivity in 
relation to the journal data feels crucial to the work. Etherington states: 
“Researchers and supervisors need to understand that subjectivity is not an end in 
itself and that heurism invites us to filter our participants‟ experiences through our 
own, not to supplant their experiences with our own” (2004; 125). 
By putting the construct and categories aside while writing the poems the inherent opposition in 
the work seemed to filter the participants‟ experiences through my experiences of writing and 
grief. Grief enabled me to see that death was an always present part of the work, from the 
preconception in response to trauma, and in the many different deaths that were part of the 
changes in my internal world. There were the actual deaths and losses in the participants‟ 
external lives and the internal deaths and losses of parts of themselves and these became clearer 
through my experiences. Perhaps, as one of my supervisors suggested I have been writing about 
death from the start of this process. This appears to be demonstrated in the following poem, 
written as I struggled to continue with the writing up process: 

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Truth is Beauty. 
I see beauty 
reflected back. 
Death has left 
its truthful 
unwanted mark 
in the face 
of my selves 
again.
It haunts each moment 
and yet enhances it. 
The truth 
of living to die 
while dying to live 
turns this work 
into anguish 
into beauty 
where each 
searched for word 
stalks my soul 
in the hope of meeting 
of making sense. 
To deny the impact of such life experiences on the process of this research might ethically 
undermine the location of my voice. The truth and beauty of the process would remain unknown. 
This “interpersonal responsibility” (Mieth 1997; 93) maintains my moral obligation (Denzin and 
Lincoln 2005;1118) to the participants, to myself and to the potential audience of the work. 
There is a sense of relief in owning the part that death plays in this research more fully. In 
discussing her fictional writing Mantel states that “the good thing about being a writer is that you 
take your bad experiences and make them pay” (2005; 3).Perhaps the good thing about being a 
researcher is that I can use such bad experiences to locate my voice as truthfully as possible. 

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7.3 Findings Poems 
Each of the poems is written using many of the participants‟ own words and phrases interlinked 
with my words. They remain the participants‟ stories but they now also become part of the 
research story. They are titled with the names given to the participants‟ journals.