A Critical Analysis Of Shelley's Early Familial Relationships

From Bowlby’s perspective, Maria’s current anxiety could be linked to her early familial relationships, which left her feeling helpless to connect with others. Still, Maria resisted the idea of seeing herself as a victim of relationships. The following process excerpt demonstrates this stance:

T: It sounds like as if you’re trying to understand why this is happening to you.
M: I can’t want to bring myself in front of anyone, I don’t (pause) the way you say it there, I feel like I’m somehow a victim, I don’t want to construct myself out to be like some kind of victim, I don’t feel like I’m being victimized anyway. I just feel like it’s the reality. So, (pause) I think that if I felt like, if I felt like I was being victimized, I could be
In the first few weeks of counseling, Maria became stable on a regimen of basic stance in making conversation without being anxious. Her anxiousness, nearly daily at the start of a counseling, became absent by the end of the individual treatment. Maria’s confidence seems to be
Instead, she laughed uncomfortably as a habit, wanted to disagree with the counselor but unwilling to do this directly. However, as counseling process progressed, Maria improved in her ability to express feelings towards the counselor. The counselor encouraged her open expression of emotions in the moment, but she still struggled to feel that it was safe enough in the relationship to do so. Here the goal of counseling in attachment terms was to provide her an environment that fosters attunement, and is secure enough “to cope with relevant protest” (Holmes, p. 49). The therapeutic goals were to provide a space where Maria felt being understood and heard, and also to provide a relationship in which Maria’s appropriate and ‘‘relevant protests’’ could be voiced. In the context of such conditions, Maria’s attachment strategies could become more secure and her internal working model might begin to