 Welcome back to the next episode of The Therapy Show Behind Closed Doors and we're going to talk a little bit about how can therapy help with relationships this week. Fantastic title, one of my most favorite titles you've come up with. Favorite titles? Why, Bob? Why this one? Because I firmly believe the most important relationship we need to adhere to is the relationship with ourselves. Oh, that's nice. Which I think that's overlooked a lot of the time. I wrote a book called that. Did you? I wrote a book called The Most Important Relationship and it was privately sold, so it was 1986 or something like that. Yeah, I've written a very, did it go Cosmopolitan? I'm not sure, but it was a very well-received article talking about the most important relationship with yourself. I'm a firm, firm believer that's what therapy is about, so we have to start there surely. Surely we have to start there because you see everything that's happening internally between ourselves and TA has a very good model of looking at this. This has a very good model of personality looking at the three parts of the ego, which in TA is called pair and adult and child. That's a very good model for understanding ourselves and unless we really look at ourselves first, the relationship with ourselves first, then we'll act out or we'll communicate with people externally in a way perhaps which isn't effective because we haven't actually dealt with the relationship within ourselves. Interesting. So that's where I come from as a therapist and I always have. That is that as we deal with our own hurts and the communication and transactions between the different parts of ourselves, we will then be able to externally more be effective to other people. Yeah, for some people, when I talk about we compartmentalize and we put things in boxes and separate out. I don't want to say I have different personalities, but sometimes clients can misunderstand what I mean by that. They think they've got multiple personality disorder or the split personality and all these sorts of things. And it's like, well, no, I'm quite happy with the fact that I'm a different person in different places and with different people. There are different facets to me. I'm not a cardboard cutout that's two dimensional. And that's how I see the relationship with myself, the different parts of me. Absolutely. And if you're not kind with yourself, you won't be kind with other people. If you don't respect yourself, you won't respect other people. If you don't talk to yourself nicely, you won't talk nicely to other people. Self-care can be seen as quite selfish, though, and self-centred by a lot of people. Might even be seen as self-indulgent. Yeah. But I quite like the word self-care. Me too. I'll change the word self-indulgent to self-care or being aware of yourself, because unless you're aware of yourself and what's happening in terms of the narrative and how you talk to yourself, you'll not be aware of how you can have more effective communication with other people. Yeah. And I see, you know, self-care, people say it's selfish. I always say it's not it's selfless. We need to prioritise ourselves because there's a reason why we're told to put our oxygen mask on first before we help anybody else. Yeah. Because if we treat ourselves in unkind ways, we will be like that to other people. So the people, the person we need to change first is our self. Absolutely. And it's the completely the wrong way around. In other words, if we just concentrate on external communication at the expense of leaving our internal communication, things won't be as effective as we wish them to be. So couples therapy, for example, if you go to a good couples therapist, they won't just concentrate on how you talk to each other. They'll talk first of all, I hope, how you talk to yourself. Or how the two parental systems interlock. So as a couple therapist, in terms of, you know, say somebody came to me and said that they wanted to communication have broken down. And they wanted to restore communication an effective way between the two of themselves. Probably one of the first things I'd be looking at is how they're two frames of reference interlock or don't. And a really good question to say is, right, if their parents are alive or even if they're dead anyway, but if you put them in the same room together, would they get on? Because it's the communication that you have internally about yourself and the people in the world that is the basis for any relationships with anyone else. And the number one place actually, Jackie, where relationships start to go around, well, not number one, but number two, is when, of course, the couple have kids and their styles of parenting are completely opposite. Yeah. And that's because they both have had parents, which have had different parenting styles, and they've internalized different ways of parenting. And then they start arguing. Yeah. So that is something that I've discussed, you know, at length, at certain times in the therapy room is about, you know, how can we compromise with certain things. If we're both bringing our own upbringing and our past experience and the way that we were parented into the room, is there a compromise or are we on completely different pages with how we parent? Absolutely. That's one of the major top skin therapy I would imagine. Yeah. And I, you know, whether it's right or wrong, but I always say that, you know, there's this middle of the road parents in, which I think is what we should aim for, because there's overindulgence on one end and neglects on the other. And, you know, either one of those extremes are just as damaging to the child. Absolutely. So I think going to yourself and looking at how you talked to yourself and the narrative you talked to yourself about and whether you're kind to yourself and love yourself and can give warmth to that child inside yourself is the foods for effective communication with others. Yeah. Whatever relationship. Yeah, yeah, totally agree. And being, you know, being conscious of the words that we use, I think are quite a good, you know, I don't know, barometer of where our thoughts are. You know, if we're saying things like, I need to do this, I should do that, all those sort of things, which ego state we're in. And, you know, a lot of the internal dialogue that we have can be quite negative. And it is quite, you know, coming from the critical parents a lot of the time. Yeah, I mean, I am responsible for nearly all the assessments at the Institute where I work at. And when people come in and get assessed for therapy, one of the questions I always ask them almost every person is, are they hard on themselves? And invariably, they say yes. Now, if that's the case, they're going to be hard on other people. So relationships are therefore from that stance, stance are problematic from the beginning. So is it again just, you know, shining a light on that and, you know, bringing it into our awareness, the, you know, the way that we talk to ourselves? Yeah, I think that's a one really big area to look at in terms of how we can be more effective in communication. If we're more effective in communication with ourselves, it's a really big area, isn't it? Yes, yeah, yeah. And again, I suppose being honest and truthful with ourselves and our thoughts and our processes as well. Absolutely. And there's a difference between, well, let's put it another way around. You know, I think the ideal for couples in relationships and in relationships per se is interdependence, not dependence or co-dependence. It's where both, both parts of the couple can get their own needs met and so it's interdependence. Yeah. So you have to be aware of your own needs. Yeah, see, I, sometimes when I have worked with couples, there's been an interesting conversation that's gone on because I suppose one of the first things that I kind of broach with them is that we can't change another person. We can't make somebody else behave in a certain way or do anything. So really, the only person that we can work on is ourselves in that relationship. And they say, well, he's the one that's causing all the problems. And what do you say back to that? Well, if, you know, both parties are invested in the couple therapy and both parties are working on themselves, then ultimately things will change. I think, you see, you are right technically. You are right, obviously. Good. I like to be right technically. No one, you know, like no one can make somebody do something. No, I'm with you obviously on that. However, or so can people do have impacts on people. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, that is important to bring into the equation. Yeah. Yeah. One of the conversations I have an awful lot is that, is it our thoughts about what the other person has done that creates our feeling? Good question. That's a very good question. And that's the conversation that I have a lot of the time, you know, that maybe what the partner is doing isn't fair on me and I don't deserve it. And how can they do that? Because that means that they don't love me and, and, and all these thoughts around it are often what, well, under percent I believe what caused the impact. Well, that's usually, and of course, probably goes in with your thinking. But mostly, of course, you know, we are projecting parts of ourselves on the other person. So if we look towards ourselves and the resolution ourselves, then we're onto a winning ticket rather than always blaming the other. Yeah. Which I think, you know, particularly if we're talking about couples happens an awful, awful lot is, well, if they didn't behave that way, I wouldn't react the way that I do. And it's kind of looking externally for reasons, for our happiness, sadness, whatever it is, rather than looking internally. Yeah, absolutely. And if you widen this out to, and I know he wanted to do this, so I, I'm going to do it. If we widen this out to relationships per say, I think, especially for people who perhaps don't know this model, listen to us. I think the model of transaction analysis is very interesting model to look at. And Eric Burn, who is the originator of TA, had a whole theory of communication where he analyzed transactions and talked about how people could come from different parts of themselves to to help change the course of communication. So you've got more effective communication. I would suggest TA books, some of the early, very simple TA books, would be a good place to look at. Because Eric Burn talked about three separate types of transactions in effective communication, adult to adult and complementary transactions, ulterior transactions. So that's a good place to look at. And a lot of problems in communication, generally, is when people think they're coming from one part of themselves, but they actually aren't, they're coming from another part of themselves. And as a therapist, I always look towards people attempting to come from an I'm okay, you're okay position, and coming from an adult to adult position. So TA has a lot to offer here, I think. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's a model that on the surface is quite easy to understand. But I can remember when somebody first asked me when I was starting, I think it was on the TA 101 that you did, you know, how much are you in your adult? And I said all the time. And that was my immediate reaction. I am an adult. I mean, my thought is why would I not be in my adults all the time. But it's when we unpack that. And yeah, that I realized is probably a lot of the time I'm not in my adults. Well, I think, you know, let's just take some stressful situations, which might be an example of what we're talking about here. Let's pick going to an interview. I've said that because I think most people listen to this poll, we've gone to an interview at some point. Yeah. Yeah. And usually, interviews for most people are quite stressful. Yeah. And they may prepare and rehearse and goodness knows what. And hopefully they may get the interview. I was thinking particularly about actors and actresses here who go through thousands of auditions and etc, etc. But anyway, so what happens in a lot of interviews is they go to the interview thinking they're coming from the age they are 42 or whatever it is. But actually, they're coming from a much younger self. And they project on to the person on the other side of the interview, their mother, their father, their critical parent, whoever it is. So they end up doing the interview from a position which doesn't help them. Yeah. And often can be a breakdown in communication. So when a person is coming from a younger self, often in communication, things don't work out as they want them to. Because they're not being in the here and now to use the effective resources they've got. Yes. Yeah. To enable them to illustrate their potential. Yeah. They're stuck in some sort of scared place or wherever it is in the past. Relationships are perfect. Going back to relationships when people project on their onto the other, their parent or their critical abuse or whatever it is, and come from a scared, compliant, overadapted place. And the relationship is then more parent child driven than adult to adult. That's a TA language speak. Yeah. Yeah. And that parent child transaction can be complimentary. It can be that way for quite a long time. Again, with couples that I've seen in therapy, we've spoken about it and one does take on the parenting role a lot of the time. And the other one is quite comfortable in the child status because they're allowed to be in the free child a lot of the time because the other one's taking control of everything. And it's usually representative of their history. Either what the child has watched in terms of the parent and in terms of the mother and father drama they're watching in front of them or one they played out. Yeah. Now those types of relationships you talk about, if they're usually that way, child to parent driven, they usually break down some time or the other. And that's because there's not really a relationship that's happening in present time. It's from two different parts of the self. So the other parts of the self are not used. So the child, for example, if they get stuck in a younger child, isn't using the adult resources that they've got. And if somebody's just stuck in parent, they're not. They don't have access also to the freer child or whatever it is. Yeah. There's a model, I think, to look at how communication can break down and what to do about it, which is usually getting back into adults somehow. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I know, for anybody that's listening to this that wants to know more, your YouTube channel has some really good videos on there around parent, adult and child and some of the, I wanted to say the basic TA. Yes, it has. But I think it's more in depth as well. It's not just basic stuff, but also some quite in-depth things on there that people can go and maybe have a look at. Yeah. And if you want to put things even wider context, you can look at societies and cultures and think, well, are they parent driven cultures or are they child driven cultures, for example? Yeah. So TA is a good model to look at communication, I think, generally. Yeah. We can get into adult frames, rather than being stuck in an archaic past or some parental future. And it's often about awareness and understanding when we are in these different places, the different ego states. And, you know, at certain times, you know, if we're feeling unwell, if we're tired, if we're overwhelmed, we're not always going to be open to being in the adult. No, stress. Sometimes we want to be looked after, so we will go into it, are we younger self? And that's okay. The problem isn't that, Jackie. The problem is, when a person gets stuck in that place, not that they don't go into them, I can, I'm quite happy to address to a four-year-old to be looked after. Me too. But that's not the problem. The problem is if we get stuck in that place, that's the problem. Yeah. And I think some people, when I talk about ego states, they kind of have a misunderstanding that I'm talking about them being childish in the relationship. And it's, it's... Not that. It's how I explained that, you know, that isn't what it means to be in your child ego state. No, no. So, it's a very good model. And I think that fact, I think it's one of the best models to look at how you, to understand how communication may go wrong. Yeah, me too. I think I've said it in quite a few of these podcasts that I love transactional analysis, because there's pretty much a diagram for everything. And this, a really good diagram, to look at how communication goes wrong, is often called the drama triangle. Yes. Where you have, and they're not real roles. They're psychological roles. It's a triangle where you have a persecutor rescue and victim. And looking at how people fall into these psychological roles. And, and as they do, of course, communication will break down. And of course, therapists will help you get off that drama triangle, if you like, and come from a more adult place. Yeah, which I think is a wonderful ending to this podcast episode when you're talking about the drama triangle and what you were saying about our relationship with ourselves at the beginning. It's kind of gone full circle, really. How we see ourselves, how we talk to ourselves, do we talk to ourselves with a victim mentality or a rescuer and those sort of things. Yeah. And how we can get off that triangle and treat ourselves in an okay way. Yeah. Thank you so much, Bob. Great, great. And what's the next podcast? I don't honestly know. It will be a surprise. We've got a, we've got a long list to cover. We have a long list. So I'm sure if you had that list in front of you, you would be able to entice our listeners. I would be able to do. But anyway, I look forward to talk about whatever it is. And that'll be fun. Yeah. Okay, Dott. Thank you so much, Bob. I'll speak to you soon. You're welcome. Take care. Take care. Bye. You've been listening to The Therapy Show behind closed doors podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'll be back next week with another episode.