Sheychen, I haven't read this book...could you tell me, what is the author about to say? Why does the author call these "difficulties"? How does the author say they should be treated or handled?

Hugs to you,
SG

I am not in a good place at the moment to think clearly or give really good thought to something but I did type out some more bits from that book and they are pasted below, maybe they will answer your questions. I am sorry I am so anxious about tomorrow and whether it is the end or not and whether it should be the end or not, that my head is feeling quite done in.

This kind of therapy is very delicate and the therapeutic relationship itself is firmly included. As the client is an unloved child in search of a good caregiver, she will try to make the therapist fulfill this role. It is the therapist's task to accept and validate the client's feelings without entering in collusion with the part that she performs in reality trying not to become responsible for her. The therapist needs to believe that the client has inside herself all the necessary potential for change. She must also emphasize, therapeutically, that the client recognize her emotions and confidence in her own perceptions as valid ways of interpreting reality, instead of adopting emotions and opinions from others.
the question of gratifying needs is the most crucial one in this therapy ... small concessions that the therapist begins making almost unconsciously commonly evolve to the point of invalidating the therapeutic setting.
One wonders why even experienced therapists usually respond to the clients' pleas in this way. Probably due to these clients' extreme vulnerability and a certain dose of the all powerful saviour of the world counter transference that all of us have.
p 158


Treating these clients present constant challenge for the therapist. The pain of a childhood lacking in basic care and validation saturates the possible forms of relationships for these clients, making them suspicious, demanding, dissatisfied, angry. Reaching a balance between attitudes of acceptance, support and validation on the one hand, and the placing of structured limits on the other, presents a difficult task for the therapist.
the seductive role of 'saviour' trying to fill the client's enormous needs, or the one of 'blaming the survivor' making the client responsible for the therapy's failure, are constant traps in the way of this task.
the creation of an 'emotional skin' that can help the client to contain and organize her emotions, happens in a creative therapeutic relationship by way of small 'skin grafts' which allow us to give these clients some covering so that they can grow and develop with dignity.
page 172

I guess I have to say that to be true to this book, the emotionally fragile client is only one way that person responds to emotional pain in childhood and the author also explores a very different client therapist scenario which occurs when the client chooses a different option on pain onset, that which she labels rather horribly 'narcissistic' and which plays out very differently in the therapeutic setting. I know I am the former, rather than the latter which is why the above quotes speak to me but not to others. I am only posting from the book the bits that speak to me. I don't know if they are relevant to anyone else.
Sorry, tired out now.

Seychen

quote:

the creation of an 'emotional skin' that can help the client to contain and organize her emotions, happens in a creative therapeutic relationship by way of small 'skin grafts' which allow us to give these clients some covering so that they can grow and develop with dignity.

wow seychen, that's really powerful isn't it? Thank you for sharing that.....I like both the idea of covering AND dignity, especially when we feel so raw and exposed.

starfish