Betty Ashworth This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. Summer 1989_V1N3

   www.cwwp.org/historical_forums - [Cached]

   Published on: 7/1/1989   Last Visited: 12/26/2003

   Counselling women with 'feminist therapy' rather than traditional approaches was the topic at a seminar presented here recently by Betty Ashworth, clinical social worker with the Calgary Family Service Bureau.
   
   The feminist approach is centred in a process of sharing experiences among women. Sharing provides a sense of relief for women, explains Ashworth, because knowing other women struggle with the same issues and have the same pain is therapeutic.
   
   In Ashworth's presentation titled, The Empty Self: A Case Study of Woman Who Identifies No Sense of Herself, she profiled Sharon, a 43 year-old patient who sees herself as being nothing in terms of personhood.
   
   "I had a hard time identifying with nothingness," said Ashworth, who has treated many women who say they feel empty, but never a woman who felt like a non-person. The difference, explains Ashworth, is that in a situation where women feel empty, there is at least a concept of having a vessel to fill.
   ...
   For the first five months of therapy with Sharon, Ashworth made no progress because Sharon gave responses which she thought the therapist wanted to hear, simply because, as Ashworth explains, that is the way Sharon had functioned for all of her 43 years.
   
   "Sharon mimicked me, puppeted me, in a sense," Ashworth said, adding, that initially Ashworth did not realize that Sharon had not understood anything that had been said to her. This is because Sharon was programmed to give the correct response to external questions without internalizing the experiences she was living.
   
   Ashworth is quick to explain that Sharon is an intelligent, well-groomed woman who holds a degree in business and has worked in a responsible position for most of her life. However, she has been participating in a 'life-way' over which she has had no conscious control.
   
   "Women have ways to buy into the (white male) system and devalue themselves," said Ashworth.
   ...
   "She has a death wish," said Ashworth, "and she'll often go for over a week without eating at all."
   
   Successful treatment of Sharon meant backing up and starting all over again once the 'game' Sharon had been playing was recognized by Ashworth.
   
   "That was the breaking point in her therapy," explains Ashworth, and the recognition of the game-playing played a vital role in Sharon's acceptance of her feelings of nothingness.
   
   Another important aspect of the feminist therapy approach is the recognition that women carry with them a lot of guilt, Ashworth said, 'guilt for being wrong about things, for not doing things right, for not being masculine or aggressive enough. Sharon speaks of guilt in symbolic terms. She speaks of being the first-born, of having to please her father. She doesn't recognize that as guilt and accept it as a burden."
   
   "She seems to want to develop a sense of trust that I can know and accept her with her sense of nothingness," said Ashworth.
   
   The feminist approach to therapy is slowly working for Sharon and the recognition that women have a whole different set of problems to face than men is a crucial element in her success.