ANXIOUS COUPLES AND COUNTER-TRANSFERENCE by Paul J. Hannig, Ph.D., MFCC Freud (1924) wrote that anxiety or dread can develop into tremendous intensity and as a consequence can cause the maddest precautions. When treating anxious couples in marital therapy, this intensity often reaches such levels and affects the therapist. He then reacts to that anxiety based on many different motivations, one of which may be counter-transference. Anxiety interferes with marital functioning and its intensity may even be the cause of marital conflict and dissolution. If anxiety is such a powerful and d estructive force in marriages, how can a therapist deal with his own anxiety, when the fighting-intense couple spills their anxiety over into the therapist's safe system? Pearl and Lawrence suffered from marital disharmony and th ey sought marital therapy. During their sessions their communications would always lead to a place of misunderstanding, transference and projection. As their therapist made interpretations, the couple would seem to make progress and yet in every ever y session they would find a way to become enmeshed and regress. re gress. They would take two steps forward and one back. It was as if the y were magnetically drawn to regress, fight and create excessive anxiety. Their therapist found himself trying to resolve each little issue as it came up, only to have the th e couple draw him down into their messy fusion. As he became more aggressive and directive in the sessions, he realized that he was having emotional reactions to this couple. Before each session he would take herbal stress relievers to keep himself calm and non-reactive. But the couple would find new ways wa ys to raise anxiety levels. He. knew that he was counter-transferring when he noticed his own raised anxiety levels following one of the sessions. He felt that it was time to explore these reactions and to see how his past might be affecting a ffecting this situation. We shall call the therapist “Pablo” and these are a summary of Pablo's words words during his own session: "I feel all alone. I'm back watching m y father and mother fight in the hallways h allways of our apartment. They are pulling on each other and they break a banister rail. I'm observing and anticipating that my father is going to leave the house and never come back. It will be the end of their marriage and the end of my family. My father will be gone and I will be left behind. They can't resolve their differences and I'll be the on e to suffer. In my early relationships with women, I see myself re-enacting my parent's marriage. We pull on each other and it becomes b ecomes physical just like my mom and dad. They never let me see what was going on in their marriage. I wasn't aware that something was wrong. I was the l ast to find out and then it was too late to do anything. I wished I could have fixed their marriage, but I couldn't. It was hot up to me. It was up to them.” “My mother was a nervous woman and my dad reacted to it, just like this couple in front of me. I'm seeing my parents all over again and I'm trying to figure out what's really reall y going on. I idolized my father. I worshipped him and I needed him there, in the house as my father and my mother's husband. When I see Pearl Pea rl and Lawrence fighting, I'm thrown back into b eing a helpless little boy whose trying to save the family and get at the truth. I bring that with me into the session and I'm not sure that these people want to be saved. She (Pearl) just does not want to be blamed or held responsible for everybody else's reactions. She wants to be free of that responsibility. That's
it! I'm not responsible! That's what Pearl is saying and I'm not responsible for saving this or any other relationship. In all my failed relationships, I've been trying to sa y, "I'm not responsible. I didn't do it. It's not my fault. I'm innocent. P lease stay mommy and daddy. I've been carrying the cross, the burden too long. I've been weighted down with the curse of their marriage to long. It’s time to let go and be at peace with myself." At the end of the session, Pablo knew what to do in his next session with Pearl and Lawrence. He was going to be more empathic and in tune with Pearl's highly repressed feelings. He understood them and he would encourage her to express her need to not be held responsible for her family's dilemma. He could now give her permission to be free of the burden of guilt and responsibility that she had been carrying for her family's misfortune. ANXIETY, SYMBOLISM AND PROJECTION
Marriage counseling requires language. Somebody has to talk and someone has to listen. Language itself conveys a message and in disturbed relationships. Language conveys something symbolic, a substitute for something that is not apparent or ever known. The individual who is communicating the message feels the reality of that message, b ut they may be out of touch with its source. That's the stuff and its process of projection: a projected message feels real to the sender and it is. To the receiver, the message sent is not fully received beca use there is no place for it to fit. Something has been displaced, substituted and projected. The past has overtaken the present and one can hardly differentiate or separate the past from the present. Anxiety is the result. Messages sent from the sender feel real to that person and the ego insists on defending that perception even though there is a gross distortion of time. What ensues is a battle for present reality. Anxiety prohibits the clear perception of reality. So what is the resolution? Each individual who is party to an anxious interchange needs to find within themselves the origins of personal truth. This requires the necessity for recognizing that all or most messages contain an unknown or unconscious message. The limbic system has its own take on something that the neocortex may be unaware of. Therapy is the business of integrating and making conscious that which is unconscious. As such, a clear perception of reality results without being burdened with the past. Paul J. Hannig, Ph.D., MFCC, CCMHC, NCC * www.nvo.com/psych_help *
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