Client A was a female school teacher married with 3 young children.
She presented with anxiety and depression.
She explained that she was experiencing issues with sleep, low moods, negative thinking and lack of motivation.
This, she stated, started when unrealistic goals were set at work.
Client A explained that she had never missed deadlines and always tried to be the best she could be both in her career and as a mother and wife. This, for her, was something that she was very proud of and was the foundation of her identity.
However recently she was struggling to meet deadlines and was making mistakes . She claimed this made her doubt her ability to be a teacher and she found herself shouting at her children and arguing with her husband.
This then challenged her beliefs and caused her to question everything about herself.
My approach used person centred counselling, which is giving the right conditions to the client to allow that person to reach their full potential and become their own true self.
Those conditions are:
. Unconditional positive regard – non judgemental
. Congruence – being honest and transparent
. Empathic – seeing their viewpoint as if I was them
We explored together what resources and support were available to her that she could use to work through her issues and rebuild her self-confidence as it had become apparent that her confidence had been affected by recent events at work.
We were able to explore Client A’s thought process as to why she felt she had to be the best at everything she did and why it was so important to her. It also became evident that she needed to be in control of everything and struggled to let other people help her.
This highlighted for her the amount of responsibility and pressure she put on herself unnecessarily. It also allowed her to recognise certain negative behaviours that were actually impacting her marriage.
By giving client A insight in to her own thought processes and behaviours it enabled her to understand her true self rather that the self she thought she should be. It encouraged her to make positive changes in her life which enhanced her marriage, her relationship with her children and her career.
