Case study

Joel is a 36 year old man who has come to counselling because he feels unhappy and unsatisfied in his life. Joel’s mother died when he was 12 and Joel grew up with his father, who he describes as a good man, who worked hard to support his son, but struggled with anger and alcohol issues and was never able to fully recover from the death of Joel’s mother. Joel felt that his father was distant and so caught up in his own grief that he was never able to love Joel. Joel describes himself as a rebel in his teens, who gave his father a hard time but that he worked hard and went to university, which he saw as a way out of the small town he grew up in and a way to escape his father. He now has a successful career in corporate law and is married with a young son, Oliver, who has just had his first birthday. Joel was initially h