5.1.2. Case Example: Empathic Attunement: Nick
Nick is an unemployed chef who came to therapy to deal with depression brought on by losing his job. In session 3, he described what his work was like for him at its best and what he missed about it. As the therapist listened, he let himself be carried away into a different world, almost like a virtual reality:
C10: It was festive, you know, that's, yeah, that [pause] tickles me inside, right now. [Enjoying himself, the therapist imagines a tickling, tingling sensation in his stomach]
T10: To think about how much fun that was for you.
C11: It was, yeah, that's what it's supposed to be all about. [Pause] The whole thing, that's what it all... [Pause]. [Remembering the feeling of his own similar successes, the therapist imagines a rising sense of excitement and fun, along with a sense of feet-planted-firmly on the ground “rightness”]
T11: What life's all about, right? (C: Yeah.) What you want in life. For it to be that kind of fun.
C12: Yeah. I can work twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours, I don't care,
but I got my fulfillment out of it.
(T: Mm-hmm.) You know, I
could walk out in the dining room and hold my head up [pause] and know- [Therapist
“runs a movie in his head”: He pictures the client striding out of the kitchen,
head held high, and imagines the sense of straightness and elevation,
accompanied by a sense of pride and happiness]
T12: "Look what I did. I fed all these people. These fifty people.”
C13: Yeah, and they're all sitting there, and they're having, you know, you can hear the roar, you can hear the noise (T: Mm-hmm) in the dining room. Everybody's having a good time, and you know that you were successful at what you did. You know you provided a place for them to come and get good food and good drink and a good time. And I didn't have to go to the table to get a pat on the back, or anything like that. [Therapist feels excited and proud for the client as he imagines the loud buzz of many conversations filling his ears as he enters the dining room; then the comfortable sense the client has in the certainty and fulfillment that he is responsible for this; followed by a feeling of quiet self-sufficiency that needs no external praise.]
This example illustrates the intense level which empathic attunement can reach at times, and shows how the therapist’s spoken responses capture only a tiny fraction of his or her empathic understanding of the client’s experience.
Materials designed to
accompany the book Learning Emotion-Focused Therapy: The
Process-Experiential Approach to Change from APA Books.
©2003 Robert Elliott, Jeanne Watson, Rhonda Goldman, and Leslie Greenberg
http://www.process-experiential.org/learning