Clients‟ experience of counselling within a narrative framework

7.3.2. Who Am I? 
Who Am I, wrote with powerful images that stayed with me after reading her journal. She felt 
very alone hardly alive as if part of her was not really living or not able to live fully. She may be 
seen as Beauty because so much of her feels unavailable as if she lives a life that others expect of 
her.
WHO AM I? 
A frozen child 
Trapped in painful, unreal perfection 
Pleasing others. 
Lost in a lonely ice-age 
Where there is
No sound 
No hope 
No help 
No others 
For I am stuck in my disconnected head 
By 
Old 

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Cold 
Memories. 
Who am I? 
An abortion 
That never happened. 
A negative thought
Confused by unknown beginnings 
Where choice was the stolen possibility 
Of future longings 
And power was the enemy of this sabotaged world 
Where opposition did not exist. 
Who am I? 
A self without form 
For this „I‟ has no being. 
Doing, is a resistant sadness 
Where change 
Is never conceived 
But obscured in the myth 
Of each expectant Should. 
Cracks of hope are bound by action 
Imprisoning my voice in the negative foetus 
Of a victim‟s curse. 
Who am I? 
In the talking hour 
Defences start defrosting 
As thawing tears uncover glimpses 
Of unborn selves, 
While anger crashes through the icebergs of misconception. 
She warms me 
I risk dependence. 
I begin to be 
And even this writer‟s understanding may be criticized 
For power becomes a friend 
And opposition feeds the tension 
Of new life 
As I free my own creation 
For I am heard 
Raised from the depths of an arctic death 
I am alive. 

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This participant asked herself „who am I?‟ several times in her journal and there was a strong 
sense of her wanting to find out who she really was as if she was stuck in her past, in the shock 
of something that had happened to her. She seems to demonstrate the construct of uncontained-
unfree very clearly for she describes herself as „a frozen child‟. This powerful image of Jung‟s 
“stoppage of libido” (1969:33) suggests there is no movement, for the frozen child is unable to 
move. Who Am I agrees with the construct of uncontained-unfree and in response to the analysis 
writes: 
“worked hard in the session - doing the counsellor part! Perhaps this was a way of 
avoiding? Not knowing how? It was terrifying, the memory still creates tension in 
my stomach”(WAI ). 
She still seems to experience something of trauma in this response, in her physical feelings, but 
this shows movement in that she is no longer frozen. It suggests that in finding her own metaphor 
for her anguish that she alters her frozen space (Flint 2004) and begins to move emotionally. In 
her feedback, she describes what she felt was happening when I put another entry into this 
category: 
“Learning to trust inner voice/self. Experimenting with not having to be and not 
being like some others. Beginning to enjoy being self but still frozen but with some 
idea about choices”(WAI). 
This demonstrates that the uncontained-unfree place enables her to look around and feel where 
she is, for not only is she aware of enjoying being herself but is able to see possible choices as if 
she is discovering the Beast of internal freedom. 
Who Am I, felt stuck in the past, as if she was contained by her memories. Living by pleasing 
others like Beauty seemed to keep her in an overcontained-overfree internal world. Here she was 
disconnected from herself, and full of old cold memories, as if she replayed the memories over 

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and over in her head. In her responses to the analysis when I had suggested that there was a fear 
of losing this known way of being she agreed and added: “even though this way of being was 
exhausting and stressful and totally unfulfilling” (WAI). She seems to find meaning through this 
process as she comes to understand herself more. This relates to my sense of not knowing who I 
was following trauma (chapter 1) and writing seems to help her to explore the unknown just as it 
helped me. 
Knowing that her mother considered having an abortion seems to stop her from living fully. 
There was a strong sense of anguish in her words as if she was howling out grief in her writing. 
She was unable to find out more about where she came from because she knew nothing of her 
father. This perhaps sabotaged her ability to learn more and felt a powerful part of her need to 
know who she was. Control in this way feels external and suggested again the construct of 
overcontained-overfree, where power is external and the prerogative of others. This perhaps 
confirms Payne‟s (2006) suggestion of someone living a „canonical‟ narrative in that she was 
trying to fit into a ready-made stereotypical narrative in order to be the same as others, creating: 
“a source of distress and loss of identity when our lives fail to correspond to them” (21). In this 
sense it appears hard for Who Am I to have a different identity to others and confirm her 
individuality as if she cannot exist unless she is the same as others. 
She had a longing „to be‟ rather than always being caught up in doing, particularly for others, as 
if this doing gave her an identity, again like Beauty. This busy activity seemed a denial of 
opposition which she begins to discover during the counselling. Although she says that she did 
not knowingly think about the theme of the study while she was writing, some unconscious 

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knowledge of it seems to appear in her journal for she clearly looks at opposing feelings. She 
desires to take care of herself in one entry but is unable to say no when asked to help another, 
which would not aid caring for herself. She agrees with my analysis of this section writing “very 
true”. She also agrees with the construct of fighting containment-freedom, and writes: “did not 
realize this at the time, but it was exactly what happened” (WAI). With hindsight and the 
analysis, she seems to recognize that she was fighting with herself. Her fight to change and to 
know herself seemed empowered by her metaphors which again suggest that the way she was 
asked to write the journal may have helped condense her thoughts and feelings and create a 
melancholic stance as if she was writing poetry. 
She became aware of her defences and uses them in the journal to keep the small foetus part of 
herself safe. Being aware of her defences enabled her to question herself and begin to desire and 
move towards containment-freedom. She appeared aware of changing. Her desire to change felt 
powerful and seemed to enable shifts in her internal world as she became dependant on the 
counsellor and started to trust the process of counselling. She seems to make this clear in a 
response to the construct of desire for containment-freedom: 
“Yes. Also some desire not to be over reliant on the counsellor. Lean on her, dump, 
be challenged but be separate” (WAI). 
Her awareness of counselling theory seems to help in her desire to be separate, but this could 
also be a defence against being reliant on others. What feels important is that she agreed with the 
construct and even has opposition in her response in that she wanted to be reliant but not over 
reliant on the counsellor. 
As she progressed through the journal there appeared to be moments of movement as she seems 

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to gain energy, perhaps by the opposition evoked in her. These shifts categorized with the 
construct towards containment-freedom were felt and responded to by the participant. Again the 
need to be separate is commented on after I felt she was finding more power and taking hold of 
the freedom to be herself as if she was discovering the confidence of the Beast: “letting me be 
separate and different was a huge struggle-very powerful”(WAI). 
Next to the same construct later in the analysis, I comment that she is owning her feelings and 
attempting to be herself separate from others, she writes: 
“Also to be myself not a role - mother - wife etc - to enjoy and experience life, 
perhaps from a different perspective”(WAI). 
She seems to agree with the construct and adds to how she was feeling at the time as if the 
analysis helps her to continue with her internal processing. 
Who Am I, stated that the journal became important to her and that she enjoyed writing it, which 
confirms my sense of the journals becoming personal documents that were not only written for 
the study. I was also aware that she would criticize her poem if she felt I had misunderstood 
anything, for she was becoming her own creation, with her own voice, as if Beauty and the Beast 
were uniting within her. There was a strong image in her journal of her being raised from the 
dead as if this is how she was feeling - born again into her own selves. This may describe the 
hatching process that Mahler, Pine and Bergman (1975) use to describe the process of 
individuation.
This participant did not answer the separate questions but wrote comments on the analysis text. It 
comes across clearly that she enjoyed reading the analysis and felt the journal was mostly 

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correctly interpreted. Where I did appear to make a wrong interpretation of her experience she 
did not seem to feel upset that I had not understood. Overall she was very pleased with the 
accuracy of the interpretations. On the process of keeping the journal she wrote: 
“I would like to think that whilst in writing the journal many entries seemed to be 
feelings without always much thought process. They eventually meant a great deal to 
me and the changes I made in life situations” (WAI).
This demonstrates how the journal came to be a personal account for her and shows the impact it 
appeared to have had in her life in that it added meaning.
She could hardly believe on reading the analysis just how much progress she made over that 
period of time. She appeared to want me to know how important the counsellor/client 
relationship was to her, that it was a positive experience and that she continued to work on the 
themes in the journal after her counselling finished.
On her first reading of the poem, Who Am I was critical as I felt she might be: 
“I think I was initially surprised by the content of the poem as I found it quite harsh. 
We are possibly looking at things from a different point of view and as I have moved 
on from my writing at the time, perhaps that is why it feels that way”(WAI). 
She simply underlined the lines of the poem that she felt were harsh and responded again several 
weeks later: 
“I have been delaying my reply as my previous response called the poem harsh and I 
have been trying to see things differently. The word abortion feels „sensationalistic‟ 
and I wonder if it was necessary to include. Over time I have accepted this as your 
interpretation and whilst parts of it feel as if they focus on the negative to a great 
extent, overall I see how you have interpreted the change that I felt occurred” (WAI). 
It feels as if it was very difficult for Who Am I to see words that she used transformed by the 

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findings poem. The word abortion was in her journal but moving it into another context it seems 
„sensationalistic‟ to her. Yet to me it feels full of anguish and the howling of her soul which is 
why I chose it. This perhaps is the risk of this method of writing up findings. Her story has 
become part of the story of the research. What felt important to include because of the embodied 
emotion created within me seems inappropriate to her. Perhaps the word abortion took on more 
power in my use of it than she gave it in her journal. Although she does see that I interpreted the 
change that she felt occurred what feels more important is that she has the strength of voice to 
respond to the poem. She does not just accept it but shares her opinion with her own voice.