Clients‟ experience of counselling within a narrative framework

participants‟ feelings.
In response to the finding poem Little Girl wrote: 
“On first reading the poem I felt unable to connect with the words - I have spent the 
last few months writing a book of poetry reflecting on grief and how relationships 
impinge on it, so to see an interpretation of my poetic reflections in someone else‟s 
words seemed presumptuous. However, having read it a second time I can see where 
you are coming from and can relate to what you have written. As a way of presenting 
the whole in a concise way it seems to work” (LG). 

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This was the poem I was most nervous about sending to a participant because Little Girl is a 
talented poet and perhaps I felt presumptuous while writing it. However, she was able to think 
about what the poem was for and see that it fitted the task of representing the whole. 
7.3.5. Turned On 
Turned On felt like a classic Beauty because she felt she existed for the benefit of others. 
However she wanted the freedom to experience her own thoughts, feelings and opinions. Her 
name came from a journal entry when she felt as if she had been turned on, as if previously she 
had been switched off. Although she was not aware of remembering the theme of the study she 
does use the word freedom several times in the sense that she was looking for freedom from the 
control of external and internal others. This again suggests that the theme of the study may have 
been present (even if unconsciously) for the participant at the time of writing.
TURNED ON 
I 
Was not alive 
When this journey started 
For life had been spent 
Saying Yes 
Never No. 
I
Was a complacent mute 
Told what to do 
What not to do 
And blamed others 
For my responsibilities. 
I 
Was rejected 
Not important 
But here to care for others 
Whose voices 

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Ruled my world 
Keeping me in limbo 
Where pain and anger 
Were selfish emotions 
And space to feel 
My own thoughts 
Did not exist. 
I
Was a vulnerable five year old 
Collapsing inside 
At so many new schools 
Which were doorsteps 
Into fearful unknowns
of bad reactions 
Where why 
Was a million questions 
I
wanted my counsellor
To answer. 
I 
Wanted her 
To tell me what to do 
Tell me what‟s normal 
To arrange my future 
To keep me forever
A client 
A child 
Who felt unimportant 
And rejected 
When she forgot
Her keys. 
I
Found raw feelings 
Self worth
Comfort
Just in the room 
Where permission to rest 
Felt given 
Where love 
Met myself 
Where freedom 
Discovered 
I can do what I want! 

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I
Wanted something good 
Something nice 
to happen 
To take away 
The emptiness 
The loss 
The forgotten me 
And all the while 
I was making 
Something happen 
In that room. 
I 
Was led into life 
Turned on 
I put me first 
Said No 
With „to hell what others think‟ 
For I have rights 
To my life 
My thoughts 
My feelings 
Even my confusion 
Excitement and fear. 
I think 
It‟s bloody hard growing up 
But great stuff 
Because I‟m free 
To be me! 
The mute complacent child, who does not feel as if she is alive, demonstrates the uncontained-
unfree construct. At the start of her journey Turned On seemed unable to move, but being so 
silent and stuck seemed to enable her to look around and see where she was. It is as if she saw 
that she was not alive, not switched on. She regularly feared that she was not making progress 
and that she would need a counsellor for life. The opposition and anguish caused by these 
feelings created the tension that enabled her to risk changing. One of her comments after the 
uncontained-unfree construct was used was: “I remember feeling so powerless at this point in 

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life. This is spot on, very true” (TO). It seems that the tension caused by such feelings of 
powerlessness enabled her to stay in counselling and use the energy of opposition to turn herself 
on, or discover the freedom of her Beast.
Having felt unable to say no to the requests from others, she saw the ability not to say yes as a 
growing up process. She came to see herself as someone who had not grown up. Several times 
she wrote that she wanted something to happen as if her world was ruled by external events. This 
demonstrates the overcontained-overfree construct and Turned On was able to relate well to this 
category. She thought her counsellor was trying to control her life by not wanting to work with 
her. The counsellor arrived one week without keys to the building where they met and Turned 
On felt rejected by the counsellor. In her feedback she agreed with the construct and wrote: 
“Really felt I was the problem here and that the counsellor didn‟t want to come for 
my session.” (TO). 
She laughed about this when we met as she recalled how she used to feel and spoke of her 
gratitude to the counsellor and to the analysis of her journal.
Through her life Turned On said yes to everything that external others expected of her and she 
seemed to have internalised this way of being, as if she had no Beast within her to protect her. 
The opposition/anguish created by her desire for freedom from this way of being and her actual 
inability to say no seemed to create the tension that enabled emotional movement. After one 
entry where the construct was fighting containment-freedom because of her wish to say no, and 
her struggle to do so she wrote: 
“This really tells me that I always was Cinderella, not any more I have moved on 
from there” (TO). 

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She records the delight she felt on being able to say no on one occasion (in her journal) and this 
makes her want to do it even more. There is a strong sense of her fighting against herself in order 
to achieve this shift. She agreed with this category each time it appeared in the analysis. With 
hindsight she tries to describe her feelings at the time and writes on the analysis: 
“Going from the old way and moving on to new pastures felt frightening - always felt 
I was getting things wrong - Just wanted to be liked I think so pleased anyone”(TO). 
The analysis helped her to look back and understand how little she received from her mother as a 
child. She was able to express compassion for herself back then and this added to her 
understanding of herself. 
Her fight to stay in counselling was worthwhile as she stayed for several years and learnt a great 
deal from it. What she liked from the analysis is that I appear to have understood that although 
part of her threatened to end the counselling this would not happen. She would stay and make 
something happen for herself. She appeared to be instigating change by desiring the freedom to 
contain her own feelings and opinions. Where the category of desiring containment-freedom 
appears in the analysis she wrote: 
“This seemed like a coming out of a wilderness; felt hungry for freedom, but scared, 
so great fit.”
And “Remember feeling like a small child at this time and scared I wouldn‟t grow” 
(TO). 
She starts to trust her counsellor and realize that life may have more to offer her if she stays with 
the process of wanting to change. 
She felt her counsellor „led her into life‟(TO), as if she had been led out of darkness into light, or 
even out of a kind of death into life. However she made this process happen for herself by 

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continuing with the counselling and not giving up. She had a very strong determination to change 
which suggests that her Beast was waking up. It was as if she had glimpses of freedom, and was 
resolved to get more for herself. This agrees with Tillick‟s (1952) idea that freedom is man‟s 
power of life, for Turned On‟s desire for freedom seems to create a vitality and internationality 
that she had not experienced before. She comments several times on this category as these were 
times when she appeared to feel shifts occurring in herself: 
“Had feelings at this point of a sort of closeness to my counsellor which I should 
have had with mother but didn‟t - If only!”
And “felt very moved by this (the analysis and construct). Started to feel I belonged”
And “it felt as if I was meeting myself for the first time” (TO). 
I felt when I met with Turned On after she had read the analysis, that I was meeting a very 
different person. She was confident, full of life, not at all the unsure person I experienced at the 
start of the study. She felt her counselling and taking part in the research had contributed to the 
changes. Responding to the analysis she wrote: 
“I had a lot of emotions going through the papers and a few tears. I found some of it 
moving and I also felt sad that I didn‟t know very much about me, that‟s why I was 
angry all of my life, it felt as if I was drowning” (TO). 
She looked back to when we first talked about her taking part in the study and felt that she had 
been asked to do so, even though she had shown an interest in taking part: 
“When you first asked me to take part, I was stunned, why were you asking me? I 
don‟t have the intelligence and I was taken back to think I could qualify. It was a 
compliment being needed” (TO). 
It really felt that Turned On had come a long way from the person who thought she did not have 
the intelligence to keep a journal. Even if at the time she agreed to keep the journal to please me, 
the opportunity of taking part gave her something. Apart from feeling the whole process of being 
a participant gave her self esteem and confidence she also said: 
“It explained to me the difference between freedom and containment. I needed to 

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understand freedom because I wanted it. I started to love words, looked them up in 
the dictionary. With my lack of education, being in counselling for four years, being 
there and doing this, starts the grey matter moving” (TO). 
Turned On really felt that taking part had taught her to learn, even though she is in her sixties. It 
was good to hear that she had enrolled on a course and was continuing learning. She noticed in 
the analysis that I never criticised her but would seem to explain what she did, and notice her, the 
real her. She noted that I commented on the lack of adjectives in her work and that she used the 
word stuff a lot rather than actually saying what she meant. She felt I had showed her something 
very important so her new love of words felt very real. 
Responding to the poem Turned On she said: “I could cry, so moving, unbelievable you got me 
right, you certainly have” (TO). It seemed the poem encapsulated just how she was and felt at the 
time of keeping the journal. She felt she had been given a gift in the poem and was delighted. 
Her new sense of life being a journey appeared to have grown from her counselling and taking 
part in the research. She felt the journey through each of these had led her to know herself and 
she seemed proud of the achievement. She also felt the journey of getting to know herself 
continues and that she is enjoying it now.
7.4 Conclusions 
The participants‟ narratives report events in their counselling over time and also: 
“communicates the narrator‟s point of view, including why the narrative 
is worth telling in the first place” (Chase 2005: 656). 
They express their emotions, thoughts and feelings and particularly the opposition which enables 

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transformation demonstrating that their stories are worth telling which also confirms the 
appropriateness of the method for collecting the data. Writing as they were asked both concealed 
and revealed. It concealed what their thoughts were about yet also revealed their emotions and 
process. A good example of this was Wriggling Fish‟s „black plastic bags‟ which hid that she 
was thinking about her husband‟s death yet revealed the enormity of her loss in the feelings that 
emerged from the text. Their journals embody opposition just as my poem „Howling‟ (p.28) 
does. But the opposition is also transformed (Hunt and Sampson 1998) by the symbolism in the 
words and phrases, creating emotional movement. The journals themselves, holding the process 
of each participant‟s journey make it clear that their stories are worth telling. The findings poems 
seem to show the internal movement of the client in counselling demonstrating their individual 
process.