This is Teeny and I have decided that the Dismissive/Avoidant attachment style fits her best.
Teeny is the child of two
parents that are pre-occupied with their own social lives. Mr. and Mrs. Sanders
had very little time for Teeny and encouraged her to be independent of them
which is why Teeny chose to ignore them. She spent most of her childhood and
teenage years imagining her future in the movie industry playing the many roles
she played out in her life with her parents. Instead of enjoying her teenage
years, she desired to grow up faster and begin her life far away from her
family and her home in Shelby, Indiana. Teeny had a close knit friend group,
but none of them truly knew what was happening in Teeny’s home. Her closest
relationship was with Samantha, but even they both held each other at a
distance that made it very difficult to rely on each other. Presently, she
speaks to her friends a few times a year, but keeps them at a distance with the
excuse of her busy movie-making schedule
For Teeny, her strength and reliance on herself is what
she is proud of. She made it as a movie star all by herself and had no
assistance from anybody. Teeny has won
many Academy Awards, starred in over 100 movies, and continues to outshine in
the movie industry. Although Teeny is very successful, she has not had much
success in the love department. After three failed marriages, Teeny has decided
to enter into therapy from the encouragement of her new romantic partner in
order to try and make one relationship last in her life.
Clinical
Approach for Teeny
With the background Teeny has provided for her therapist,
the therapist has decided that she represents the dismissive attachment style.
One of the major indicators for this was Teeny’s expectations for her parents.
As Teeny mentioned, she found her parents unavailable in almost all categories
in her life, but especially emotionally in her life (Siegel, 2012, p. 101). Because
of this Teeny learned not to seek others and learned how to manage her own
feelings without anyone else’s help (Costello, 2013, p. 81). This attitude is
present when she discusses her career success and how well she has done in the
industry on her own. Self-sufficiency is what pushes her in life, but has also
been the reason her relationships have failed over the years (Sable, 2004, p.
62).
While Teeny is self-sufficient in most of her
relationships, she still desires the love and comfort of a relationship. Her
marriages failed because of her need for protection. She let the men in her
life get close enough to provide some protection for her, but held them far
enough away so that she would not have to feel the pain of rejection if they
decided to end the marriage (Holmes, 2001, p. 10). The proximity controlling of
her relationships was to protect Teeny, but actually resulted in Teeny being
hurt anyways.
One area Teeny’s therapist wants to work is emotional
proximity. Because of Teeny’s parents not providing a secure base for her
growing up, she keeps encountering this same problem with her romantic
partners. The therapist would like to spend time helping Teeny create a secure
base with her partner in hopes that it would allow her to connect more
emotionally with her partner (Holmes, 2001, p. 17). In order to help Teeny
create a secure base with her partner, the therapist wants Teeny to create a
secure base with her. The therapist believes Teeny needs to practice creating
the secure base with her first in order for Teeny to be able to see what a
secure base looks like and the effort that is required to create one (Howard
& Schwartz, 2002, p. 464). After
creating this secure base, the therapist would like to integrate emotionally
focused couple therapy (EFT) into the sessions. EFT has a goal of
reconstructing the interactions between partners into more accessible and
responsive encounters along with creating a space of comfort and care (Johnson,
Makinen, & Millikin, 2001, p. 147). Teeny has spent year’s not allowing
people to see how she truly feels. She takes her feelings and places them into
the character roles in her movies. Instead of placing all her emotions into her
character roles, the therapist wants Teeny to start to name her needs and
feelings with her partner.
The
hope is that practicing this in the therapeutic environment will help Teeny to
grow into the practice of allowing more intimate encounters with her partner
and allow herself to learn how to rely on not only herself, but someone else as
well. While Teeny will practice this first with her therapist, the goal is to
eventually invite her partner into the therapeutic session and help them facilitate
this therapy together.
While these are two steps into helping Teeny work towards
a secure attachment, there is more work that will be asked of her in later
sessions. Teeny has also mentioned a desire to re-connect with her friendships
from childhood and has asked the therapist to work with her on mending those
relationships. She also has a desire to speak the truth of her childhood to her
parents and create a space for them to mend the hurt that has been felt
together. There is much hope for Teeny in her search for a secure attachment
with those she pursues a relationship with in life and the therapist is looking
forward to see how she evolves in each session.
Any questions?
No comments:
Post a Comment