Ms. Tillman was given an ultimatum between seeking therapy and losing her job. Ms. Tillman works for an all women firm and is the Chief Operations Officer of a software production film. Alex, the CEO for the company has told her that she needs help due to the excessive amount of complaints given by her coworkers about her insensitive and abusive behavior towards her employees. As a result, she unwillingly chooses to seek therapy. She believes that she is a highly qualified worker and one day will become the next CEO. She despises all her coworkers, especially Alex, because the board has chosen her to be CEO, instead of Ms. Tillman, which she felt that she deserved it more. She is “ferociously independent” and never shows signs of weakness, which prevents her from disclosing herself to anyone. Ms. Tillman was a victim of child sexual abuse by her 11 year old brother; name Kyle, when she was only 6 years old. Feelings of anxiety, mistrust, and anger have repeatedly surfaced causing Ms. Tillman to create a livid attitude towards people. As a direct result of this traumatic experience, she struggled with social, gender role, and identity issues. Today, the scars of her childhood experiences have prevented her from becoming intimate with anyone, both physically and emotionally; unable to overcome the past, which is perturbing her present.
After being held back by hospital authorities to see her mother from a car accident, Ms. Tillman develops overpowering emotions and since then she has been having trouble maintaining quality relationships with her coworkers. Her chief complaint is her repetitive, impulsive, angry behavior towards her coworkers after she wasn’t given the job as CEO. She is seeking therapy to help her put an end to this damaging behavior and to release all up bundled up feelings from her past. Some of her symptoms include depression, anger management, social difficulties and physical abuse towards herself. Ms. Tillman chose the right path where she is able to disclose her bundled up emotions and her childhood experiences that is affecting not only her career, but her overall central core as a human being.
The best method of therapy for Ms. A would be Feminist Therapy. Feminist therapy focuses on empowering women and helping them discover how to break the stereotypes and molds of some traditional roles that women play that may be blocking their development and growth. In this case, Ms. Tillman is still playing the role of a 6 year old child, where she was traumatize from a sexual molested event by her older brother. Feminist therapy also strengthens women in areas such as assertiveness, communication, relationships, and self-esteem. During Ms. Tillman’s therapy, she overcomes all these different aspects, that helps her become aware of her own personal solution.
In feminist therapy, it is based on beliefs that people are the experts in their own lives and people have the ability to change their relationship with the problems in their own lives. From the start of therapy, Ms. Tillman has been the expert when it comes to what she wants in her life and the primary interpreter of her own experiences, controlling and realizing her own problems and mistakes.
Worell and Remer (2003) describes the feminist theory to be a gender-fair approach. Feminist theory works to create a gender fair approach treating individuals with an understanding of the effect of the current social and cultural environment. A major component of this understands that personality development is intensely deep-rooted in the societal anticipation that women are the primary caretakers of children. The therapist does a great job by correcting Ms. Tillman when she tells him that “he was a man and wouldn’t understand.” He response to her was that he agrees that women feels and experience many things a man can’t understand-being the victim of male sexism and delivering a baby, but what she describes
