Unfinished work through dream analysis in emotion-focused therapy

Temucin Olcayto / MD Psychotherapy Institute, Istanbul, Turkey tolcayto2@hotmail.com

Betül Sezgin, Turkey, Psychotherapy Institute betulsezgin@yahoo.com

According to many researchers , dreams are controlled by one’s emotional state. The main control mechanism is the emotional state of the person.

The most basic, first-line model of therapy that works on deep emotions is EFT. EFT is a therapy model that works on the experiential plane. Individuals face painful feelings that they have previously struggled to accept; it helps them to reflect on these emotions and create new meanings and transform maladaptive emotions that disrupt harmony. Positive self perception and relationship styles are develop ed based on the new emotion.This ability improves an individual’s capacity to cope with their problems. It enables the individual to live in harmony both in his own inner world and with the people he interacts with. During the study, the target was to have the client express his emotions and needs. In unfinished business study, it is aimed to reach the feelings that hurt the client the most and to tell the feelings and needs that he can not express in the experiences of bullying and abuse. In this study, we wanted to present our work and its stages on reaching the deep maladaptive feeling with an empty chair and unfinished work and replacing the emotion with emotion , based on a dream of one our client’s with whom we work with emotion- focused work.

Brief history of the client: 25 years old, Computer Engineering student, male client.His father figure is weak and he meets this need through his older brother. He experiences every break of the love bond with the critical mother as abandonment depression. The client complains of feeling incomplete, inadequate, unloved and unliked and they are his primary complaints.His body image is also distorted, and he often finds himself criticizing.

When he brought his dream that his sister’s husband was killed to the seance, the process turned into unfinished work with his mother, over the feeling of deep sadness he experienced in his dream. And reaching the wounded self, the root of maladaptive sadness was reached and transformed into adaptive emotions.

As a result, unfinished work with EFT has been studied. This has helped develop tolerance and stabilization of un- regulated emotions, by creating positive self-perception based on new emotions.