Recognising Attachments in the Counselling Process

A while ago I crossed paths with an old friend I’ll call Dan I hadn’t seen since we were about eighteen. He was delivering goods to a shop as I was passing. I didn’t recognise him at first as he was wearing glasses and had gone bald, like his dad had before him. He didn’t recognise me either, as I’d put weight on and gone a little grey, but we were soon chatting.

As we grew up we had become close friends, sharing in adventures, saving the world from alien invasion, going on camping expeditions, and of course inevitably noticing and chasing girls for the first time together.

Dan had an older brother John, who would occasionally join us on our escapades but John was different from Dan. John wanted to be everybody’s favourite. He was good looking and witty. Whenever he was with us and our circle of friends Dan became withdrawn as John would insult and degrade him to feel better about himself.

John was also one of those people who constantly lied. He could tell you his uncle invented the leopard with a straight face and be oblivious to whether or not he was believed. He often claimed to have beaten up many people in the area we grew up in, myself included. As he got older he claimed to have had sex with every girl he looked at, and their mums.

At home their mum and dad seemed to worship John. Dan always had to let John have whatever he was playing with, and he wasn’t to fight with or argue with his brother.  I remember he got a slap across the head from his mum for reacting badly to being called a wart by John, who then laughed at him for getting slapped. John got all the best toys and fashion whereas Dan had the things John had broken, no longer wanted or fitted him anymore. He would often tease Dan in front of his friends for having his hand me downs.

A few times I mentioned how awful I thought it was that John behaved the way he did and Dan had to just take it. Dan would answer with a story about how amazing John was. A story about someone he’d gotten into a fight with and had won, a story about some girl he had sex with. A story about some amazing triumph he had accomplished. It was a story he would tell with a smile, but be looking at the ground.

We lost touch when we were about eighteen as I moved away from home and he followed John and joined the army. So here we were, many years later. I asked how he was, he told me he was involved with a girl called Suzie he had dated when he was sixteen. A girl I remembered, a nice girl and was pleased they were together. He then told me John had left the army as an officer and now owned his own successful business and was living somewhere in Europe married to a model. There was the same smile and looking at the ground.

I never saw Dan again after that but about a year later I bumped into Suzie and we chatted for a few moments about things. I mentioned I’d seen Dan and that they he’d said they were together. She told me they’d since broken up. She told me John had never made it through the basic training and quit the army. She told me he had been in prison at one point but wasn’t sure why as she hadn’t been told. She said Dan’s whole life had revolved around creating a fantasy world where John was amazing and she couldn’t take it anymore. They had been to relationship counselling but Dan wanted to end it when the counsellor asked where John fitted into his relationship with Suzie.

When I think of attachments and our place in the world I think of Dan and his role in the family. The scapegoat, the dogsbody, the nothing. He had learned in order to be valued or at the very least not hated he had to accept he had to always be less than John. If he didn’t he was punished. When someone like Suzie offered him love and regard for himself he wasn’t sure what to do with it and kept bringing John into the mix to soak up some of that love and regard, and he would settle for any leftovers. When I asked about him and his life he answered briefly before telling me about John.

In counselling it can be important to recognise attachments and how we learn how to form and maintain relationships. John almost always lied. Dan lied for him. It can help us make sense of where the client is and how they are experiencing the therapeutic relationship as their story unfolds. The core conditions that Carl Rogers believed to be essential in counselling from the therapist of empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard, can help encourage a relationship in a process where someone like Dan can eventually feel safe to think in terms of ‘I’, rather than, ‘John’.

#attachments #attachmenttheory

Tags: anxiety, attachment, relationship counselling