7.1.2. Case Example of General Empathic
Exploration: Rebecca: “So the fear is like a thing”
C1:
You know, I don’t choose to be afraid of driving on the expressway. It chooses to make me scared.
T1:
So you don’t see yourself as choosing that. You feel powerlessness over the fear.
C2:
Fearss, multiple fears, there’s more than one.
T2: OK, so there’s a bunch of fears. So if you- what you would like to be able to do, in your
life, would be to somehow stop yourself being afraid?
C3: That's my major
goal of life. (laughs)
T3: If you could stop
yourself feeling afraid, you would do it?
C4: Mm-hm, in a heart
beat. (laughs) I mean it controls my life, every step
of my life, every action and everything.
T4: So the fear is
like a thing that comes upon you, and takes over [C: nods agreement] or
takes your freedom, imprisons you, is that? [C: nods agreement] And it has a quality of thingness.
C5: Oh yeah.
T5: What does it feel
like, the fear? What kind of thing
is it?
C6: I don't
know. I don't know if I feel like
it's inside me, (T: Mm-hm) or if it's like around me, or if it just sneaks up
on me.
T6: If you were to be
the fear?
C7: I guess it'd be
inside of me.
T7: You'd be inside
Rebecca. [C: nods agreement]
(pause)
C8: For some reason
lately I've felt like there was this central Crime Blob. Like this little black thing in the
middle of me, [client forms "blob" with her hands] and I never felt
that way before.
T8: Mhm. You describe it as a what? A “crime blob”?
C9: Yeah it's the
center of all my fears, and I feel like when I get all those little electrical
impulses, they come from here [clenches hands at her stomach], not from my head.
T9: But what was the
word you used, “crime”?
C10: Yeah, or “attack
blob.” It only deals with like,
being hurt, and being afraid, and being scared, and having to do with the
attack.
T10: Oh I see, it's
"The Crime" blob.
(C: Right.) It's the blob of stuff that comes from
your being victimized. (C:
Right.) The crime that was
commited against you.
C11: Right. I feel
like that's where, like all the hatred is and that's where all the fear is,
that's where all the anxiety is. I
feel like it's not in my head or my heart, I feel like it's this little, black
ball, [clenches her hands at her stomach]
T11: It's in your
gut. Where is it? Can you locate it?
C12: Just like, right
here [pushes top of her stomach].
T12: So it's right in
there.
C13: Yeah I feel like
it's right below my diaphram and (T: Uh-huh) it just has all these like
[outward motions with her hands] (T: Little tendrils.) It can shoot out little spindlees.
T13: It's like this little thing that's
got all these tendrils and it, shoots out stuff.
C14: And it can get real
big at times and like just encompass my whole body and then go back to its
size.
T14: It fills your
body.
C15: But it's always
there.
T15: So we have this
sense of "swollenness," it's like it's "filling you up."
C16: Yeah maybe. (laughs)
T16: Does that fit
right? Is that, true?
C17: Yeah that could
be it, but I mean it's always (T: kind of) there and sometimes it's bigger (T:
and sometimes it's smaller) than other times and sometimes it's not all
encompassing but it just sends out these little fear shooters.
T17: Little bits,
yeah. So, how big's it right now?
C18: Like this big
[makes baseball-sized gesture with her hands] (laughs)
T18: Okay, and as we
talk has it changed or is it the same?
C19: I feel it's got
little tentaclies, but it's just because I'm like thinking of all my fears,
that I'm just like arousing it.
T19: So it's sending
out little tendrils, little tentacles, and doing what?, sort of touching your
heart?
C20: It's like making
me all weird, (T: Mh-hm) all anxed out, you know?
T20: Mm-hm, “all
anxed out”? (C: Mm-hm.) But it's it's really a "thing," right?
C21: Oh yeah, I mean
it's like a living, breathing, little thing.
T21: You know it
reminds me, like in those creepy old science fiction horror things about things
that take possession [C: nods agreement] you know like,
C22: Like body snatchers
T22: Yeah but]
there's this particular one and it's a parasite that gets inside your body (C:
Right) and controls you and (C: and controls, yeah) grows. Does it feel like that? (C: Mm-hm) An
anx parasite thing?
C23: Mm-hm
T23: What would you like
to do with it?
C24: (laughs) Get rid
of it. I don't want it to be
there. I don't want even to have a
small part of it. I mean I
wish I could just like, cut it open and take out the whole thing you know? Or make it just smaller and smaller and
smaller until it's not there anymore.
T24: Mm-hm. Do you talk to it sometimes?
C25: Mhm I never even
realized that's like how I felt, it was.
I mean I really realized in the last couple weeks that that's how I feel
that it is. (T: Mm-hm) I feel like
it's this little thing right in the center of me.
T25: Yeah, yeah,
interesting. It sounds
important.... So it's really this thing that's inside and that sounds
important.
C26: It does. (T: Yeah, yeah.) I think so too cause I never could
really define my fears or where they were, do you know what I mean? (T:
Mm-hm.) Or like were I felt them
coming from. You know they were
just there when they were, and then they'd go away. I feel like they're all in the center of me now.
Note. Transcript
abridged and simplified from Elliott, Slatick & Urman, 2001.
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