The Problems of Role in a Pandemic

I am going to write about the charity that I have been working in for the last 3 and a half years. It is a well-established community counselling service working with adults and, for the last 4 years, with young people age 12+.

It is a psychodynamic organization. Its normative primary task (Lawrence, 1977/1994) is to offer counselling to members of the community. I have chosen to write about this organization as I have just resigned my position as the Clinical Coordinator for the Young People’s part of the organization. Although I was aware of the organization’s tendency when under stress to be ‘off task’, the lockdown brought this more sharply into focus.  I shall pay close attention to this within the paper.

When I joined the organization, it was led by a Clinical Director who held overall responsibility for it. There was also a Clinical Lead who held responsibility for the young people’s service which had a different name and a separate identity. This Clinical Lead was a Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist which helped me feel a sense of belonging and identification with them. I felt part of the organization. I felt valued and contained by the organization.

When the Clinical Lead for the young people’s service left, I felt abandoned and angry, which are familiar feelings to me.I am aware that I have a valency for this type of anxiety if I am in groups where I find myself feeling like the outsider. It allows me to defend against my feelings of dependency.

I quickly found myself struggling to find my place within the organization, I became agitated and argumentative at meetings, with an increasing sense of frustration towards the other members of the Senior Team. I understand that I was functioning, as was the rest of the group, in a Basic Assumption Fight/Flight (Bion, 1961/1989). I became disgruntled and cross about any proposals that were made about the service, but was unable and unwilling to engage in constructive planning for my part of the service.

I now wonder if I was performing a function on behalf of the others in the Senior Team as well as myself (Obholzer and Roberts, 1994). Although I was disgruntled with the organization, I now question how much had also been projected into me by my colleagues. Perhaps it was difficult for them to express their unhappiness and anxieties about certain aspects of the organization, and maybe I was being used to voice those unacknowledged parts of the other group members (Obholzer and Roberts, 1994). 

I was not feeling contained by the organization and there was then a restructuring which led to the young people’s service being amalgamated into the wider organization. This meant that the young people’s service no longer held the separate identity it once had. I experienced mixed feelings about this change, I felt as if I was being brought closer to ‘mother’ and alongside my ‘siblings’, which I felt happy about. I was terrified at the same time, however, because I was worried about a possible merging and loss of my own identity. I have found Glasser’s Core Complex (Glasser, 1979/1995) helpful here.Glasser’s Core Complex postulates that there are early and primitive anxieties in infancy around being separated and yet engulfed by the mother at the same time. In this context the Core Complex it enabled me to understand that I was enacting some very infantile anxieties of emotional abandonment whilst my own fear of engulfment by the group was prevalent.

In order to deal with this unbearable conflict, I began to retreat psychically from the group. This was facilitated by the first lockdown, which meant I was able to be physically distant. This simultaneously created a sense of psychic distance. I remained furious that my pain was not being acknowledged by the Senior Team who I saw as a neglectful parent.

I felt like an outsider and at times under attack from other members of the group. In my mind there was an Oedipal configuration becoming apparent. The organization began to exclude me from meetings with which I was previously involved. As justification, members of the organization stated this as a reason for this precious resource and my limited number of hours. The organization was, I believe, functioning in a Basic Assumption mentality of Fight/Flight, (Bion, 1961/1989), as it did not want to face the reality of the conflict within the Senior Management Team. It seems as if the unconscious motivation of this exclusion by the organization was to deny, through avoidance, painful feelings of abandonment by the previous Clinical Lead for the Young People’s Service as well as an anxiety that this part of the organization might not survive without her.

We could not face our sense of loss together and the lockdown enabled us to engage further in Basic Assumption Fight/Flight; we were either fighting with one another or seeking refuge away from one another.  

It felt as if the organization was stuck in a paranoid-schizoid projective system (Halton, 1994) with a definite sense of envious competition within its different parts.  Referrals were down during the lockdown period and money became the agenda we most discussed in order to defend against our own anxieties that the organization might not survive. There was an external reality in that the organization required funding and fees to continue to operate. We were not able, however, to come together to think about how we could support the organization and its members, and therefore its clients, to survive psychically. This was avoided as we went round in circles discussing funding streams and introducing a time-limited way of working with clients; we were not able to acknowledge our pain and loss. 

I experienced several envious attacks from other members of the organization. For example, on one occasion a member of the Senior Team announced at a meeting that I earned more money than anyone else in the organization. The Clinical Director did not challenge this comment but colluded with it, saying that I did seem to be charging more than anyone else for my clinical work. I felt aggrieved and angry as well as guilty for taking more than perhaps I was entitled to charge.Later I realized that the comments may have been a response to the idea I was over-charging for the adolescent work, and the other group members may have felt this was not good value for a service that offers low-cost counselling to the community. I also wondered about the other members of the Senior Team projecting their feelings of envy into me, as if I were the preferred sibling to them with more value than they had within the organization. I was aware of my own feelings of envy towards my colleagues but could not understand what my envious feelings might have been about. I realized through writing this paper that the envy I was experiencing could have been a projection into me from the other members of the Senior Management Team.

There was also perhaps a spoiling envy (Halton, 1994) at play here as other members of the team felt that I had a ‘special position’ in that I was paid more per hour for my clinical work with clients than they were. This had set something up within the organization which then encouraged a hostile split (Halton 1994) between the different parts of the organization.  It felt to me that the Clinical Director, who should have been acting as a container (Bion, 1967/1984) for my and others’ feelings, was not able to understand and contain these unbearable states which resulted in these projections across the Senior Team.  

There were further attacks. The situation with regards to lockdown and our own fears and anxieties intensified. We feared not only for the organization but our own personal survival in the face of the now rampant pandemic bringing uncertainty about futures. Comments were made by the same member of the group about how School Counsellors do not work in any kind of depth; the organization was aware that I am a School Counsellor in my other role. I now wonder if the uncertainty about our survival as an organization evoked an envious attack. I realized my position as a School Counsellor was viewed as stable and secure, unlike everyone else’s perceived status within the organization.   

‘Individual members of these groups are stereotyped like the characters playing these roles in children’s games and stories.’ (Halton, 1994).

 It felt as if I was being denigrated and stereotyped, along with all School Counsellors and those who work with young people,

Again, my countertransference response was one of anger towards this particular group member, who is a member of the Senior Team. I challenged his comments and I realize now that through projective identification (Klein, 1946) I was relating to the authority figures within the group (the group member is an established member of the Senior Team and one of the Deputy Clinical Leads) in a very adolescent way, much as the client group that I worked with might be responding to their authority figures. I believe that I was acting as a ‘sponge’ (Halton 1994) for the anger within the group. This anger was for our helplessness and inability to offer the same level of service to all clients as we had done prior to the pandemic. This allowed the organization to export something without feeling it within themselves (Halton, 1994).  

‘Emotional disorder interferes with the functioning of an organization, particularly in relation to tasks which require co-operation or collective change.’  (Halton, 1994).

I became disheartened and frustrated with the apparent lack of thinking within the organization, and what I saw as an expectation from the rest of the Senior Team for me to hold the adolescent part of the service without emotional and practical support. Lockdown had altered the way that the service was able to operate. More complicated procedures were put into place which had an impact on how much time and energy were available for tasks. The Senior Team did not appear to understand the complications of working in a different and remote way with adolescents. Increased contact with parents/carers was needed due to working remotely as on-line platforms needed to be set up, contracts altered to allow for this new and different way of working. I was holding the increased workload. This was not acknowledged by the Senior Team, and so I felt isolated and alone. Despite several unsuccessful attempts to approach the Clinical Director to discuss what I was feeling, in terms of the organizational dynamics, I felt dismissed and ignored. There was a real resistance to changing the status quo and this led to my flight from the organization in the form of my resignation.

Writing this paper has been a cathartic experience. It has allowed me the space and time to digest and reflect on my role, and the roles I was taking up within this organization. My resignation was not an easy decision and I have realized that my ‘ending’ within this organization feels abrupt, and something was being severed.  I am very aware that I have often experienced endings as traumatic and severed; perhaps there was an element of my wanting to get out of this organization quickly. Perhaps also in getting to the end of writing this paper quickly, as it has been a painful process. I am aware of my desire to protect myself against what feels exposing and therefore leaving me in a vulnerable position.

On reflecting on my experience within this organization, I can now see that my earlier adolescent relational patterns were triggered. I felt as if I was with my ‘mad mother’ and dysfunctional sibling(s) desperately trying to get myself heard, whilst not being pulled into what I experienced as the ‘madness.’ It is also worth noting my strong identification with the client group I worked with, who are adolescents in need of being heard and understood.

I have also realized that I felt trapped and powerless with a phantasy that I could not get out; a repetition compulsion (Freud, 1914/2001). I often felt trapped and powerless as an adolescent living in my family home. I took flight at 18 to go to University, never returning to live at home with my mother and sibling. I have taken flight from this organization and the painful feelings that have been stirred up within me. 

What I have further thought about through writing this paper is how I need structure and boundaries to allow me to feel a sense of containment. I have realized that I manage my role much better in an environment where there is a set number of days and hours that I work, with a clear beginning of the day and a clear end. My role within the charity had a more fluid feel to it, with no set days or times for my work, just a number of hours per week. On reflection, I realize I experienced this as destabilizing and uncontained, which were later compounded by the lockdown. The charity has ‘no home’ to speak of for, in concrete terms, there is no building that is the base for the organization. Rooms are rented and clinicians share the various spaces. Again, this sense of not having a secure base, (Bowlby, 1988), became exaggerated in my mind during lockdown. It stirred up my own anxieties about being lost with nowhere to feel anchored.

I now realize what enables me to function in a healthier way and to be able to separate my adolescent self from my clients is a clear and consistent frame with time boundaries. Having a concrete secure base, i.e., a physical building, provides me with a sense of containment and I am aware that this phenomenon mirrors something of the therapeutic frame where I experience emotional holding and safety.

My experiences within this organization have already alerted me to being more honest with myself about the type of organization in which I am able to function. Further reflection through my own personal therapy and supervision will help me continue to explore some of what I have written about here. This self-reflection will be an important aspect of my continued self-development in relation to not only myself, but my relationships within organizations.

Siobain Degregorio