Personal Space

There has been some very good discussions and blogging about dealing with the Child Ego state in some difficult counselling clients. Graffiti's (Tony White) blogs describes the function of the different parts of Child Ego state very well. He outlines in his blogs the nature of dealing with the difficult aspects of the Rebellious Child, Conforming Child and Free Child. Check it out at http://graffiti99.blogspirit.com/

One of the ways I find dealing with difficult aspects of the Child Ego States in people is through the relational method. This is where the Counsellor becomes a transitional figure for the client over a period of time. There is a good amount of healing work that goes on via the relationship between client and therapist.

The Rebellious Child

One way the rebellious client seems to benefit from this type of counselling is through giving permissions. In other words by letting the client be rebellious in the sessions seems to help in the initial stages of establishing the relationship. In this way the counsellor might represent a transitional figure that the client needs to make his or her adjustments in life. It seems obvious to me that the rebel will always need an authoratative figure to remain in the rebellious position. So hopefully the "permissions" therapy at least side tracks a relational position that seems to go no where.

There are a couple of ways the Rebellious Child employs to maintain their position in life. One way might be where the child part of personality actually seeks out an active authority figure to relate to. Another possibility for the rebellious client is to somehow maintain an authoratative "object" or voice in their own heads. In Transactional Analysis that voice tends to come from the Critical Parent ego state. The child part in the psyche does battle with the authoritative part in the psyche, hence reinforcing rebellious thoughts, feelings and behaviours in the Child Ego State.

Working with a particular teenager who seems to fit the category of "difficult to deal with" clients recently, I realised that our good relational work over a few years required redefining. The young client had achieved some very good progress in some areas, however it seemed as if we had reached a point where even my "permissions" interventions were tending to reinforce his rebellious beliefs in the world. "What to do now? " I asked myself. How do I maintain the good work without going back on the permissions therapy?

Lucky for me there were some external pressures in the life of my client that increased his acting out behaviours and some of those "leaked" out in our sessions. My client does tend to fart a few times in each and every session. He likes my permissions to be himself and I do not challenge his rebellious and free child behaviour often. I think he would fart regardless of our relationship, he does so to get a laugh and connect with me in this way. He exersizes his Free Child by connecting me via farting. If I was to ban his farting then I would be seen as the authorative person putting more restriction on his life and most likely sound like a hypocrit. I would feel like a hypocrit too.

What? No Farting? No Child Stuff?


Over a couple of weeks the young client continued to challenge me by getting very close to me in the waiting room area after the session. In one instance he placed his face an inch away from my face and pouted his lips like he was going to kiss me. Another time he hovered around me at very close range. He was challenging me and it seemed that I had one of two choices to make at this point.

Up close and personal

I could have reacted and told him to piss off or even pushed him away with my hand. I understood the severity of his father's rejection in his life so I felt quite trapped in relation to his testing my personal space boundaries. I nudged him and said "you get too close". The difficulty in testing relationships is that you can run the risk of ending up like this.

I think he understood my boundary but the relational testing process was not over yet. We have recently discussed how our relationship is changing and reflected on him getting too close to me. I believe he wants to get close however he chooses a rebellious way to do that.

It is surprising how therapeutic interventions emerge in counselling sometimes. The next time he farted in my room it was the most terrible smell one can imagine. He was recently ill with a gastro bug and his system really put some disgusting smells in the room. This time I challenged him for getting too close again. I am ok that he farts but not when he wishes to fan the shitty gasses over in my direction. I gave him a nudge and said "you are getting too close" "you put your shit in my face". I guess my tone was firmer this time.

The transference of these inocuous gasses was not unlike a gross indecent invasion of my personal space. Assault by fart perhaps? It seemed like a kind of molesting and his need to gain control or connect with me at the same time. Well, I have heard of displacement issues and I know about projection matters but there comes a time and place to reinforce ones personal boundaries.

So the relationship with my young client may have changed direction now. Hopefully we will find new ground to continue our work. Perhaps we will become stuck again in another way? Instead of pushing him away and rejecting him, instead of being angry and critical of him, a very useful "opportunity" emerged in our relational boundaries. I understood him in different ways and that it was ok to protect my personal space. It also seems as though there are aspects of connecting with his father that he dearly misses. Perhaps as a baby the client remembers his connection with dad by way of his displaced smells and other baby stuff. Its just his way of doing things.

Personal Space

Kenoath