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International Journal of Structured Assocoation Technique No.5 pp.7-18

Case Study

A Case Report of Mental Health Improvement of a Marriageable-Age Lovelorn Female by SAT Imagery Therapy

Wen-jie Yang¹⁾, Wen-Yan Hu²⁾, Yang Fu³⁾, Qing Guo⁴⁾,

1）Mental Health Counseling Center, Yunnan University, Kunming, China 650091
2) Mental Health Counseling Center, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China
3) UCSI University
4) Education and Training Section, Political Division of Yunnan Public Security Department,
　 Kunming, China 650000

E-mail：ywj1322@hotmail.com (W.Y)

* University Students' Mental Resilience Promotion Intervention Study: New Exploration Based on the SAT Imagery Therapy, Sponsored by Zhejiang Education Scientific Planning Research Project (Project Number: SCG038 )

Abstract

In China, the public believe that the best stage for a female to get married is between ages 25 and 28. During these ages, this group of females encounters pressures from family expectations, and stressors from social responsibility. They often suffer more negative mental health issues from lovelorn experience than females under 25 years. Their mental world are easier disturbed by external influences. The traumatic early childhood experiences of this group often affect their cognition. The current research estimated the effectiveness of SAT Imagery Therapy in the Chinese culture. The subject was a 25-year-old marriageable-age lovelorn female. SAT Imagery Therapy strategy was utilized to help her overcome the social life difficulties of lovelorn experience. The result indicated that she got better psychologically, indicating that SAT imagery therapy may be effective in the Chinese culture.

Keywords
　Marriageable Age, Lovelorn Female, Chinese, SAT Imagery Therapy

1. Introduction

　　According to the Chinese law of marriage, females can get married after 20 years old. But in real life, more than 90% of females consider the best marriage age to be between 23 and 26 years. A lot of females think that the chance to get married after 25 decreases gradually. On the other hand, about 65% of males regard females between ages 25-28 as their ideal marriage partner¹⁾. They insist that the chance to get married for females older than 28 years drops sharply. As a result of many factors, females’ marriageable ages are shorter than those of males. Females often feel heavier marriage-expectancy related stress. Expectedly, parents who have older daughters bear higher marriage-related anxiety than parents who have older sons.
　　Worry about future marriage exists among all single women client aged from 25 to 28 years. Compared with 20-year-olds, 25-year-old lovelorn ladies feel much more stress as a result of higher social responsibility and family expectation. Sad experiences when they were younger could affect their later life cognition of reality. Therefore, lovelorn ladies at this age tend to be more sentimental and experience higher mental fluctuations. They usually have more negative self-image and manifest higher suspicious of the world around²⁾.
　　The subject of this case study was a 25-year-old lady who recently had a failed love. After treatment with SAT image-therapy³⁾, her mental condition improved greatly within a short period: both her work and life went really well. It seemed apparent that SAT imagery therapy may have impressive effect even in the Chinese culture.

2. Case Introduction

2.1 Case background

　　Client: A, 25 years old, primary school teacher, and extroversive female (self evaluation). Falling in love with her ex-boyfriend for 3 months, she was being criticized by him and eventually he broke up with her.
　　Mental situation： She felt extreme sadness, lonely and lost her sense of security. She had working stress, experienced noisy work environment, high expectations from school and students’ parents. She wished to change her job. While growing up with her grandmother, she heard, “I don’t want you” and “I send you to someone else” in her early childhood; lived with her parents for not more 1 year before she became 18; parents were usually quarreling; In her memory, her mother never helped her in her study, but always had high expectations from her; her father always complained about her and had no sense of family responsibility towards her.
　　Genetic temperament factors⁴⁾: A showed cyclothymia - the desire of getting acceptance from others; the difficulty to deal with aloneness. Adherence - easy to build up high expectation and requirements towards the self or others. Anxiety - easy to get into the feeling of woolgather, pessimism and hopelessness. Novelty - lack of the persistence of repeated work.
　　Behavioral traits factors³⁾: A had self-suppression - high difficulties to disclose inner feeling and desire. Interpersonal dependence - high low self-esteem to make decisions，high expectation towards others，hard to get satisfaction. Problem solving - low lack of the resource to deal with the problem，poor problem-solving skills. Difficulty to feel emotion - high repression of own weakness, hard to feel others' understanding. Self-denial - high inferiority complex of lovelorn experience，loss of hope for the future. PTSS - high，stressful fetal period.
　　A's Genetic temperament scores showed that she had cyclothymia, adherence, anxiety, and novelty. Her behavioral traits scores are shown in Table1.

　　It may be observed that A's lifestyle is “other-reward”; she has the tendency to lose her “original self”. The coping strategy for A is changing her lifestyle from other-reward to “self-reward”⁵⁾. The objective of such strategy is self-discovery by enhancing her resilience to other-reward tendencies, which may precipitate increased self-esteem.

2.2 Case Analysis

　　Present stress factors: the feeling of unacceptability and abandonment that A's boyfriend inflicted on her significantly increased her feeling of self-denial and anxiety. Meanwhile, A also had feelings of exhaustion and mental burnout due to factors such as homesickness, competition with others, noisy and crowded environment, high expectations from elders and mal-relationship with her workplace colleagues.
　　Future and past stress factors: The uncertainty about her future career as well as the insecurity from not being married were part of the sources of her stress. Moreover, A's childhood development caused her “love desire” to be unfulfilled and made her to be so afraid of abandonment; thus she formed negative self-image for almost everyone around. In the meantime, A's parents were too quarrelsome to show interest in her studies. They still placed high expectations on her shoulders and complained about her behaviors. Her family had low problem-solving and conflict avoidance tendencies. A feared about quarreling and bore others’ expectation tendencies since her childhood. In addition, A could not obtain unconditional love from her parents, such that she lost her self-confidence and built up her whole life values on others’ expectation. When she failed in her relationship with her ex-boyfriend, her feeling of self-denial increased.

3. Intervention Result

3.1 Counseling Process:

3.2 Counseling Evaluation

　　After the 7th session, A had obvious changes. She became effective in her work, re-built her self-esteem and confidence. After two months’ post-therapy sessions, A completely walked out the shadow of her lovelorn experience. She maintained peaceful mood and focused on her work. She could get value from her current job as well as benefits from a good social relationship.
　　Regarding future intimate relationship, A was still worry about some real issues such as her age, the personality of her partner as well as her relationship with her parents. However, A understood how to deal with these issues with a peaceful mind. During the phone-call counseling, the counselor emphasized what A already achieved and encouraged her to believe in herself, and keep on in the right direction. A felt warm and happy.

4. Discussion

　　Females who are between 25 to 28 years old face critical psychosocial decision-making issues in China. Their careers and marriages are often endangered. The interaction between their future expectations and un-finished businesses in the past are serious stressors that often make them confused. When they experience unexpected incidents such as divorce, they could suffer complete down moods and may not objectively evaluate the real situation. They transfer their inside weaknesses to others and get weaker and insecure. In addition, the social support system may have significant impact on them. A was an obvious example.
　　Nowadays, in China, there is a big competition for stable job¹¹⁾. Most graduate students would choose big cities in order to get more opportunities rather than choose what they genuinely like and can do. For example, majority of the students believe that working in government is the best choice. They decide to look for government job in the city and ignored their own emotion towards their hometown and family. Unfortunately, they often experience a lonely life in the city resulting in some unexpected psychic challenges, they feel frustrated, anxious and disappointed. They deeply ached for care and understanding from others instead of confront their own wrong decision-making. Thus, lovelorn experiences cause a big crash in their lives. A was an obvious case.
　　The education system in China is examination-oriented rather than focus on the self-development of children and their social ability¹²⁾. However, parents usually make efforts in developing the social-self of their children. Some parents such as A's reflect their unfinished hope in their children. Therefore, some children could not get the correct coping strategy to deal with their own life problems. A few parents even distressed their children by parenting in the improper way, such that the children may feel angry and disgusted with their parents. Eventually, such children hardly trusted others in the adult world and could have low skills to deal with their self-emotions and moods.
　　In this study, A had other-reword lifestyle which had the tendency to lose her “original self”. Her lovelorn experience caused a lot of knock-on effect to distress her. SAT Imagery Therapy strategy matched with her problem, especially in helping her recognize her true self and re-build her confidence. Her case was effectively processed. After all the sessions, A's mood significantly leveled out and transferred to “self-reward”. Her subsequent actions such as continuous learning, communicating in the proper way as well as making efforts for self-care was attributable to the SAT therapy outcome.
　　Currently, there is a big dilemma in terms of counseling mechanism in China¹³⁾. The clients focus on whether or not its cost matches its effectiveness. They wish the counselor could solve all of their problems as quickly as possible. They have high expectation of each counseling session. If the particular session could not bring them the big change, they would feel strong sense of helpless and powerless such that they lose in the counselor. SAT Imagery Therapy seems to resolve this problem. It is a short and result-oriented approach. The client could easily perceive the effect of each session. It quite matches with current Chinese demand situation. Therefore, SAT has a bright prospect of development in China. The therapy has other high-technique methods such as SKP Imagery Technique and the Three-Generations Imagery Technique. These techniques circumspect the traditional counseling methods to sufficiently empower the client for the in-depth self-awareness and resolution of his/her problems.

References

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