Johnny Jones’s Panic Attacks, Essay Example

Abstract

This paper presents a brief discussion and evaluation of two counseling approaches used to address the problem of Johnny Jones’s panic attacks. The paper relies on two family therapy approaches –Narrative Family Therapy and Structural Family Therapy. A systemic therapeutic hypothesis for each family therapy approach is presented. The paper proposes therapeutic approaches and techniques to solve the problem of Johnny’s panic attacks.

Keywords: Johnny, panic, family, therapy, structural, narrative.

Part 2 Vignette

The Jones family comes to therapy, because their 18-year-old son Johnny experiences frequent panic attacks. Johnny’s attacks started several weeks before he had to leave home and go to college. Johnny’s elder brother and sister live away from home; his father is constantly busy at work, and his mother had to give up a prospective career of a concert pianist to raise children. Johnny becomes panic, whenever his mother talks about sending him to college. Johnny’s mother Judy had serious family problems and failed to develop good relations with her step-father.Recently, she has grown much closer to Johnny. Everyone in the family recognizes that Johnny must go to college, but he cannot do it, unless his panic feelings are eliminated and his emotional concerns are resolved.

Narrative Family Therapy

Systemic therapeutic hypothesis: Johnny and his family members, including his mother Judy, bring their self-narratives that are unhelpful, unproductive, and problem-saturated. It is possible to assume that there is an unproductive, problem-saturated story of Johnny’s panic feelings/ attacks that does not let him go to college and function fully as an adult.

Therapeutic techniques. The goal of narrative family therapy is to release Johnny from his unproductive story. Most probably, this story is imposed on him by parents and other family members. According to Moon (2005), narrative family therapy is the therapy of liberation, which must help Johnny to become an adult, leave his home and go to college. The therapeutic techniques to be used with the Jones family will include dialogue, listening, and questioning (Moon, 2005). The therapist must act as a facilitator in the development of effective conversations and production of alternative, problem-free narratives. Therapeutic conversations, dialogues, and questioning will serve as the media of information exchange between the therapist and the family. Listening will let the therapist understand the reasons behind Johnny’s panic attacks, as well asthe roleof the dysfunctional family relations in the development of unproductive self-narratives.

Structural Family Therapy

Systemic therapeutic hypothesis: structural family therapy relies on the complex relationships between all family members. Structural family therapy presents a problem as a compound result of the three related processes – the family, the problem, and the change (Colapinto, 1982). It is possible to assume that dysfunctional transactions in the Jones family create and sustain a myth that Johnny cannot go to college because of his fear of separation, while there are other available but unutilized behavioral alternatives.

Therapeutic techniques. Structural family therapy involves a broad range of therapeutic techniques. In case of the Jones family, joining, reframing, and unbalancing will become the principal elements of the structural therapeutic approach. Joining will be used at the initial stage of the therapeutic change. The Jones cannot achieve the desired degree of family restructuralization, unless the counselor enters their family system and establishes a therapeutic relationship with its members (Colapinto, 1982). Joining is the process of developing working relationships between the counselor and all family members. Joining leads to reframing, when the counselor presents a different vision of the problem. Most probably, the problem is not about Johnny and his fears of college. Rather, because Johnny’s mother failed to develop productive relations with her parents, she has become too close withher son and cannot let him go. Reframing is how the counselor feeds in his/ her own vision of the structural family problem. Eventually, it is through unbalancing that the counselor will lead the Jones family to the desired therapeutic outcomes. The counselor will need to teach Johnny to disregard his mother’s concerns and live his life in a manner that meets his objectives and needs. This disequilibrium will be temporary, leading to the creation of the new family homeostasis.

References

Colapinto, J. (1982). Structural family therapy. In A. Home and M. Ohlsen, Family counseling and therapy, Illinois: Peacock.

Moon, G.L. (2005). Narrative family therapy and spiritual direction: Do they fit?. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 24(1), 68-79.