Clients‟ experience of counselling within a narrative framework

5.5.5 Fighting containment-freedom
Fighting and avoiding containment-freedom seems to be both a fight to change and not to 
change. To give up familiar and known ways of being the self for an unknown, different and 
individual way of being, tends to cause battles.  
 
This is a place that could be described as not knowing where or how to be, as the fear of losing 
familiar ways of being, encroaches on the desire to be dependent on the counsellor. The part of 
the client which needs care chooses to come for counselling, but the independent part of the 
client is threatened by the possibility of becoming reliant on the counsellor. Fighting or avoiding 
containment seems to be a necessary aspect of the process of movement. It is rather like the bad 
tempered baby who needs the reassurance of mother‟s presence, even as he tries to hit her. If 
containment has not been experienced, except for example as an unknown absence then perhaps 
the avoidance of containment is a fight against the unknown. The containment offered by the 
counsellor may also feel intrusive (Stern 1985) as if the counsellor is breaking through the 
client‟s defences. Fighting the containment of the counsellor may be part of the process of 
experiencing containment which develops the awareness of the self (Carstairs 1992) that enables 
the client to move towards separation from others as opposed to merger with others.
The freedom to be an individual, separate from others (as opposed to merged), is an isolating, 
and frightening way to be when first experienced. Just the separateness of the counsellor may 
highlight a sense of this aloneness for the client. The counsellor may seem distant, deaf or 

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emotionally absent to the client because of the counsellor‟s capacity to be separate. Freedom 
may be experienced as loss or emptiness inside, in that to think one‟s own thoughts without 
relying on previously learned beliefs or attitudes may feel very isolating. Fighting or avoiding 
freedom can be the intense reaction to the fear of being different from others, but the movement 
created by that fear has a volatile intensity which may enable growth. As with the other 
categories, fighting and avoiding containment-freedom is a necessary part of the client‟s journey. 
The fight may be passive and/or aggressive, but if a client wishes to change, then this upheaval 
of movement may provide the friction necessary to engender that new life. 
Examples of this category appear to be expressed in the journals as a desire to end the 
counselling, being late for sessions or an inability to be dependent on the counsellor. It may also 
be present in words that express opposition and anger that may feel impossible to express. In the 
pilot study a section of one entry seems to show this category clearly: 
Extract 12. Entry from a pilot study journal to show fighting containment-freedom 
Line 1.
Feel “nothing” towards 
Line 2.
her. Want her to 
Line 3.
be a “non entity” 
Line 4.
Do not want to
Line 5.
connect with her. 
Line 6.
Don‟t care what 
Line 7.
she thinks of 
Line 8.
me - I don‟t want 
Line 9.
to know. 
Line 10.
Don‟t want to know 
Line 11.
what I think of 
Line 12.
her. Don‟t want to 
Line 13.
“love” her because 
Line 14.
its not forever. 

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The participant seems to demonstrate her distrust towards the counsellor by feeling nothing (line 
1) towards her and wanting her to be a non entity (line 3). It is as if she cannot face the 
possibility of feeling love (line 13) towards the counsellor, for if she did she might feel 
dependent on her. It seems there is a fight to stay as she is, distrusting the counsellor but also a 
fight to love her. There seems to be a fear of love because it would not be forever (line 14). This 
suggests that the client has lost someone she loves and dare not love again. It is as if she 
regresses to an earlier time where she has suffered loss and she feels young and vulnerable in a 
place where she appears to have lost her balance. Her thoughts towards the counsellor may be 
seen as exaggerated as if there is no room for the other side of her feelings, no room for the poles 
of opposition. According to Jung (1969) it is the working together of the inner polarities that: 
“makes possible the balanced regularity of these processes which without
this inner polarity would become one sided and unreasonable. We are
therefore justified in regarding all extravagant and exaggerated behaviour
as a loss of balance because the co-ordinating effect of the opposite
impulse is obviously lacking” (32-33). 
The opposing feelings of the participant‟s desire to love seem to be hidden in lines 10 - 12 for 
she does not want to know what she thinks of the counsellor as if she is defending herself against 
her own feelings. In this sense there is a fight to stay the same and be independent and a fight to 
change by risking „love‟, and becoming dependent on the counsellor. It is as if the tension 
between these opposing desires leads to „a loss of balance‟ that the participant consciously 
experiences in the session. 

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