 We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is The Therapy Show, behind closed doors podcast with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome back to the next episode of The Therapy Show behind closed doors with myself Jackie Jones and the wonderful Mr Bob Cook and we're up to 108 now. Yeah so this episode I'm looking forward to this one Bob this one you titled injunctions and how to deal with them. I title most of them don't I. You do you title them all not most of them every single one is yours. Well yes I've titled this one as well because when I started to be a therapist I trained in transaction analysis and you know for many many years and so when I work as a therapist and I still do occasionally TA is my default model even though I trained in integrative psychotherapy for a long time as well and when I started with transaction analysis I want to think first things I was taught besides how to work with ego states that's the PAC model was to look for what was called scripts which are an unconscious life plan decided early in childhood which we enact throughout life and also to look for what makes up a script and that was the early decisions that people made so when clients come through the door in therapy I'm always thinking about the early decisions that they made back in their childhood which were survival decisions really then but actually are perhaps outdated now and the updating so I was looking at that and I'm looking at what what is beneath the decisions really and there the how can I explain this the injunctions and drivers in transaction analysis so the injunctions would be the messages that you couldn't follow in your script and the drivers were the parental messages of yes these are the things for you to do really and you'd have been taught this as well when you absolutely absolutely yeah so how do you see injunctions then I thought we'd talk a little bit about them because as a TA therapist I always look out for injunctions and how to help a person move away from injunctions because injunctions are inhibiting to life growth if you like yeah to healthy decisions so I always look for injunctions so how would you describe injunctions then from your frame of reference I think one of the things that I always say is that the kind of unconscious messages that we pick up from our parents so they're not direct messages that our parents say to us or our main caregivers but we kind of pick them up along the way and and yeah they're always negative as well that's one of the things you know to me I can remember when I learned about these that they were quite depressing they all start with the dawn and we stood out for me yeah and yeah they just the messages that we pick up as we're going along that's right so psychologically yeah transactionalist as good as a personal model and a way of looking at how the past affects the present yeah and you're quite right that developmentally we pick up on these injunctions which are unconsciously and sometimes consciously but mostly unconsciously passed down from our parents and then we there are all negative so that even we like for example don't express feelings let's say that is one of them yeah we're sort of programming way to and we decide that we decide that as well so the messages we get passed down we then decided a part of our own personality if you like so expressing feelings doesn't give us any recognition from our caretakers so we I'll say program because I think it's a good word really so we tell ourselves not to express feelings yeah so there are decisions in a way because we decide to follow them but they programmed in a way and become part of our how we see the world early on in life so Eric Byrne who was the originator of transaction this came up with a whole category of injunctions and I'm sure there are many more I was thinking of ten I was taught so I thought we could give ourselves a little bit of a I was there test but we could actually look at if we could name them for the readers so I'll start with a few and you could sort of fill some in see if we can get to ten so if we look at this category one of the major decisions or injunctions passed on to us which often be it became the hub of a negative life plan would be don't exist yeah that was the one that really shocked me I can remember when when I heard that when I was like wow that's that's quite depressing that one so how do you how how would a sister help the podcast people with you perhaps don't know TA how Jackie would you spot as somebody's got don't exist in other words somebody who comes in with those are sort of unconscious decisions that are underpinning their personality how would they be do you think I'm did they would be quite depressed they'd be quite down on themselves sabotage themselves you know to mean kind of just yeah they're always looking on the dark side of things yeah and they probably be very much attached to addiction harmful behaviours yeah attempting not to be in the world yeah I feel useless and unlovable and just yeah feeling useless unlovable believing they don't have a value in the world yeah and usually the sort of unconscious messages would pass down a model to them in terms of well you know well you might will not be here you know you aren't important you don't do anything useful to the family XXX so the person may easily decide then that well I might as well not exist so they then have that in the the underpinning of their psychological spirit so then very little self-esteem grows yeah position they don't believe that have any value usually feel as you just said worthless and down and really don't put any consequence on healthy behaviours yeah and don't exist as a really powerful one which in some form or other we all may have a flavour of I think another really lethal message we might give to ourselves in response to the model modeling from our significant parents if they model down don't be you yeah or variant don't be yourself yeah so that's in the remit I think almost of don't exist because it's a it's a sort of model or message which is passed out which is don't be you whatever you do around here isn't good enough yeah I know another third one would be don't be you do what I want you to be yeah be do what I say yeah one of the things I thought about that I can remember when I was doing my training was that you know my dad I've got an older sister and my dad always wanted a boy and he had me which was another daughter so it was kind of like I always got a sense of that is that potentially what I had because I was born the wrong sex you know because he really wanted a boy and got me so it's like don't be who you are I mean a very powerful example and a psychotherapist would really reflect on that with you and dialogue on that with you and see what sort of unconscious processes or how it's affected or enacted out your life today I was a real tomboy when I was younger and you know to me and I didn't like wearing girly things I wasn't a girly girl I was definitely a tomboy so I you know unconsciously I suppose I need to pick up on that yeah well you know it would be hard well I think somebody who passes down that type of modelling to their children it's not surprising then the child picks up on that and may think they're a disappointment to their father or may make addition then that I'm gonna be do what boy thing boy people do yeah you could think of many variations on that could we yeah which may then get enacted out in later life like you've just said yeah I'm sure like I said that you know I think with these he never directly said it to me but just he was spoken about you know something that my like birth story was that he he was always wanted a boy I think I was meant to be called Graham well for you to know that and to be able to explicitly just say that it would be very unusual if that will that sort of injunction hadn't been modeled down to you and it'd be very surprised and if you hadn't made some sort of decision around that yeah another injunction which I think is pretty negative as you say most of these are negative and we're gonna go through things number four is don't express feelings a quiet cold one in our culture because we have a quite a schizoid culture I think well withdrawn quite a lot not like the Italian say culture for example or the American culture for example I think I I think the cultural script that we have mainly is about withdrawing being reserved keeping ourselves to ourselves all those sorts of things yeah don't express feelings which certainly was a model down in my house but I wouldn't get any anything positive at all if I express feelings and of course you got a variation of that so there might be something like don't express anger yeah or don't express sadness around here I was gonna say there were certain ones that it was okay for me to express and certain ones that I wouldn't you know it was there or don't be sad don't be angry don't yeah somebody who's had an injunction modelled down to them about not express feelings will fit very well into a sort of boarding school profile because the children that went to boarding schools often have that injunction really modelled down to them about it isn't positive to express feeling it because that would be seen as a weakness so yeah strokes whatsoever there and so you'd have to have a sort of be strong or tight up a lip or whatever the phases you like so don't express feelings is a very very common one I think I've never six another one I would have had we've said don't be you said don't be yourself don't be close it's another one Eric Byrne talked about whether where closeness intimacy was found on in the core in the culture or the original family for example for could be for many different reasons that parents might have modelled that down so the child then decides that being a self-aligned loner is the best way forward for example yeah being close to people was not what they got a recognition from so they often enacted that out of might well feel overwhelmed with closeness yeah relationships as a girl yeah yeah and I think you know I don't want to you know bad-mouth parents or whatever because I'm a parent and I'm sure I've got it wrong and everything but it's kind of generational sometimes as well because you know our parents had this they went through something so you know I was thinking I know one of the ones that I can kind of relate to is don't be important and I'm sure my mom had a don't be important injunction that I kind of inherited or picked up from her you know don't be important yeah it's certainly not about bad-mouthing parents it's more about a psychotherapist model of understanding that's it yeah I understand how you become the way you are yeah absolutely I think of a really good way is where you've just mentioned really it is the generational passing down of these ways of being if you yeah and it's important to look at it that way rather than you know look at in terms of parents processes because as you said all parents you know aren't all bad for example these are often generational and might come from the culture they live in as well so there's many reasons or many traits but it's what the child decides yeah and act out which isn't useful for them nowadays yeah the third best major task for looking at yeah and I think that's really important and you said that at the beginning of this Bob that you know we do have a choice to pick this up and run with it ourselves so it's not like it's done to us we have a choice whether that's what we're going to do or it's not what we're going to do so we play a part in it as well which I think is quite important yeah I mean you know if you look at the literature going down that and we're doing a podcast called injunctions but if you go right back to the beginning I hope Bern called them injunctions stroke decisions complex otherwise there's always a decision yes child always decisions even if it's Hobson's choice yeah yeah so bear in mind that so don't grow up yes yeah so often the this is a path quite powerful modeling when the mother or the father wants to out of their awareness keep the child infantilized in a way and not grow up so it can always stay with them and stay there baby girl yeah you know and this is out of awareness but I was just thinking of only children for example so wanted that it may be unconsciously hard or even consciously hard for one pound or even two pounds to let the child go if you like or to be autonomous or to grow up yeah and it is really done out of awareness because they're often so special yeah only only child family and decide the child child might decide well I'll have to stay young then yeah and that's it it's something the best of intention in you know to me in that situation like you said it's an only child and it's all they love them so much and everything but yeah the the understanding that we pick up about it it's like you're saying you know don't grow up the opposite of that is don't be a child where you know we're expected to grow up and not have child like traits from a really young age yes so the opposite of that is completely don't be a child and then again you know there's lots of reasons why that might be modelled down if you could if you're in a big family for example yeah I'm important to be the younger parent yeah very very quickly yeah and also if out of awareness say one of the significant other people had also had that injunction or that history of never being a child or not expressing child feelings I mean yeah and out of awareness that would be passed on or could be passed on to their own children mainly because you know the father or the mother might feel uncomfortable feelings and sadness around not having a feeling expressed when they were child so there's many reasons those messages might be passed down but as you are quite correct they're all negative yeah now because because they you know it's like if they follow those or if the child makes a decision say well I'm not going to express feelings or it's a survival decision because that's how they then get out on in the childhood sorry that's how they get on in their family yeah yeah absolutely yeah did you hear me you went off yeah you're you're freezing a bit but yeah am I freezing as well yeah you were then but you're back again now okay so the important things that the T8 therapist would look for because I said as before they all make up a healthy sorry unhealthy life plan if you like and get enacted out in life and all often cause problems for the person so we look for those and we also look for corresponding permissions that might be given which we can call drivers yeah isn't necessarily the subject of the podcast but there are drivers that people have corresponded to those decisions that people may follow automatically like hurrying up or trying hard or being perfect and we've been over them in various podcasts but in terms of injunctions which is specific in this podcast they're really important you know for a T8 therapist to think about what's been the modelling by the parents that the child may pick up and follow to survive in the you know the family of origin that's really important because if you think developmentally if you're a developmental therapist and you think of how the past affects the present then you're going to be looking back at what decisions be modelled by the parents which the child may then pick up and actually enact out as if it was their own decision yeah yeah one of the things I often you know in the early days when I'm getting to know a client and you know trying to work out the the script or the early decisions that they've made is you know what did you get praise for when you were growing up you know when you got praise what type of thing would you have been doing and kind of that gives me a bit of an idea towards the drivers and the injunctions you want to give an example of that what the type of thing that they would say well the first thing is whether they're getting praise for being or praise for doing that I asked you know to me whether they're actually doing something or you know just being you is enough and you were getting praise for it but it kind of just gives me a feel for what it was like for them yeah and if yes and you would out of that get some information about or hypothesize about the modelling and the injunctions that were passed down to the child that they may then decide and underpins the way they live their life yeah and in fact as I said a really important part is that the client takes the decision on as if it's theirs yeah rather than are aware that it's been passed down from that from their significant others yeah really important point and because in therapy if you help a person being aware of whose decision it was and whose message it was and what was modelled down then the client will be empowered by being able to separate separate out what was their decision and what actually was modelled down to them that makes a big difference yeah absolutely yeah yeah I think when they have that realization you know to me because if we've made the decision we can make a new decision we can decide something different if something I always kind of see it as if things aren't done to us you know to me it's kind of like we're I know it's difficult because we're a child and we're growing up and often it feels like we don't have much saying it but we we always have a choice yeah exactly that I love that phrase even if it's Hobson's choice we do still have a choice and that to me is really empowering even if we feel we haven't yeah I use that phrase again it's Hobson's choice you know it's a good thing to remind clients of at the right time yes yeah right that's the bit yeah right time when they've done a lot of their own therapy work yeah yeah because it is a difficult concept to understand why would I choose to do that especially if it's you know something negative or it's something that's causing them harm you know now why why would I choose to do that I can remember when I was working out things in therapy it didn't make any sense to me a lot of it and it's like peeling off different layers and going deeper and deeper yeah what didn't particularly make sense to you so the podcast listeners can sort of hear the thought processes in your brain for me there was something about not being seen but yet wanting to be seen and it was like you know to me it was like I was stuck and I couldn't win I like to be invisible a lot of the time and not be the center of attention but yet I wanted to be the center of attention so it was kind of a it always confused me so there are two parts for you at war if you want yeah yeah so I would just end up stuck a lot of the time yeah so in TA there's a word for that for people interested and that's impasse impasse yeah that is you know when you're stuck and there's two conflicting parts of the self at war yeah quite often as a therapist you would put one part onto one chair and one part to the other chair and help the client by role play explore the two different conflicting parts now it's a very important that you're trained how to do it yes listening to this because it's something that is really taught quite intensely in training it might be called chair work could be called projection work could be called to chair work but you need to be taught this I think yeah I've seen it done but it's not something that I've ever done myself in in a therapy session yeah so it's very important to I don't know how you did Jackie prop you did it through different methods and techniques but to help the client be aware of the conflictual parts of the self and the impasse that they're actually in and to help them find a way through that impasse so they can find a different quality of life and I you know I think that's a really valid point for any of the listeners that if ever you are feeling stuck and there are you know conflicting things going on then it's an impasse that's that's kind of where you are you just end up going around in circles you're not moving out of it yeah and I think with all these injunctions they're modelled down and the child takes them on and makes a decision that that's the way they're going to live their life and they might even get reckon some recognition from the parents for following that but as their unconscious modelling it's usually the decision that they take and they see it as part of their identity yeah and I think it's really important that how can I explain this the therapist helped the person understand the different traits they may have the different injunctions that might be underpinning you know how they see their own identity yeah because once we can help clients get to that and once our clients can see that usually that's been modelled down it comes generationally from another place they then can start to see how that way that they chose which comes from a different generation perhaps isn't helping them today and then they can make with the therapist help a different decision and a different destiny yeah yeah and that you know the the realization of all of that and then doing that work takes takes time to this kind of for me I think about there's a grieving process that goes on when we understand that and we want to let something go that theoretically might not be always to hold on to in the first place but yeah there's there's there can be quite a big shift when a client gets to that point we have a very very important have we ever done a podcast on a parent interview no because this would be a part if we get to that part you just talked about where the client starts to realize that the central pillars of the identity is often ones they have they've chosen to you know take on board because it's from their significant other people often for survival reasons and they want to change this because it's helpful now they often have to psychologically psychologically now I'm not talking in real the real world here talking psychologically give it back to their parent that decision I mean yeah I think again I've witnessed it in group therapy I've seen it done in group therapy yeah now you do that by putting or you could do that if the therapist is trained in this by putting the significant other figure whether it's parent or whatever here whether whoever it is there was pops the bad and you would give back the the modeling back to them like the modeling you know you're not important yeah and tell them that you are actually important and you're going to follow through more healthy behaviors and decisions and let that go now not only do you have to well psychologically may talk to the parent you're right once you've done all that lot and work through all that lot may come a lot of sadness of grief a lot of loss a link with that there really does need to be what you're going to put in place yeah that's negative modeling which was so destructive here yeah and that's a really that's a really important point I think yeah we need to replace it with something positive yeah like you know it's okay to express feeling and the world won't clap yeah okay for me to really take charge of how important valuable I actually am and what that means differently in my world today yeah yeah and I think that the podcast that we're going to do after this I think leads on quite well from all of this stuff yeah yeah yeah important I think when we talk about injunctions we see it in this light now one of the some of the comments which are left on our podcasts I like to dress here because I've been answering a few of them one of them was by somebody who would like us to you know leave or say some books titles away you can find these things because they found it's on the podcast when I've talked about books they found that very useful so I'm going to mention one and you could mention one as well okay many but I'm gonna mention a textbook and it's not a book that you read you know you get up and read and you put down it's pretty like the Bible I'm not saying it is the Bible side but you don't pick up the Bible and just read the Bible you know I was reading the Gospel of Matthew the other day and I thought I'll go on to the next Gospel go on to the next one but I realized it is not a book that you just read from A to B A to Z I mean and it's the same here it's a textbook this and it's called TA today and it was like oh there she how is his magic how did you know the people watching this on my YouTube she's put up TA today by Ian Stewart and Van Joins and I never knew after a year and a half do podcasts of me that she can read my brain she has put TA today by Ian Stewart and Van Joins Ian Stewart's you know a Scottish psychotherapist and authored a lot of books and find Joins are well known I think it's not California it comes from I think I can't remember part of Moca's come but they got together they wrote this book in 1989 became a textbook really for people of students learning TA and to read it bits and pieces is the best way to look at it but there was a chapter on injunctions chapter on drivers chapter on eager state so if you're interested in you know reading the theory more that's a good book to point you to yeah I own on the Manchester Institute of Psychotherapy website is a section where I've reviewed 100 TA books and I think it's number one that I actually reviewed so you can find the review on there as well but I think to understand what underpins our personality in the way we make life decisions which might not be healthy for us which usually aren't in terms of injunctions we're talking about and how that then may cause was problems today it's a good reflection to think about junctions yeah I think it's one of the the basics that I talk a lot about I often draw the diagram of I know it's a classic diagram the drowning man with the drivers and then you judges at the bottom I do that an awful lot for clients to try and explain you know what drives our behavior and what can kind of hold us back and how therapy works because sometimes you know if we've got a really strong be strong driver and we're told to not be strong anymore and to start to show emotions and talk it's kind of like we're cutting off one of the things that keeps us afloat whereas we need to be looking at the young injunctions underneath in therapy rather than stopping the behavior we need to look at why we behave the way we do that negative modelling of the child picks up and makes a decision about which then becomes a negative decisions up in a person's way they conduct their lives it's often why people come to therapy yeah and I'm a big fan of educative therapy and someone again put the question which I think wasn't these questions on who was talking about how they didn't think it was the job of a therapist to teach or impose educative therapy on the class and I said I think back again well I totally agree I do not in any form or shape believe the therapy should impose anything on clients and in relational dialogue I think if the client wants to it's really important I think to help a person look at how they'll help them understand how they become the way they are which I've got to go to therapy I'm not talking about posing it I'm talking about a relational dialogue where both sides by a lateral D yeah yeah they find it very useful I think so yeah I don't think I've ever come across a client that hasn't won to you know explore certain things and for me and maybe maybe I am biased but I I work better with diagrams I can explain things better so yeah but I do agree with what you're saying it's not about imposing things on to a client now nothing the person left the question for a valid obviously from her I think was her experience maybe with a therapist or maybe if she comes from very she I'm sure she's part of me to see comes at a very client-centered position maybe there's a whole process around that and I think that's like you most clients you know found a useful and I always respect a client that says they don't want to absolutely so it's but I think most people who are interested in what we talk about in Johnson's here can find a really good chunk of food my they might find interesting in that book to you today yeah and I agree with what you're saying about dipping in and out of it I don't think I've ever read it from cover to cover I'm sure there's bits in it but I've still not read but if ever there's something I want to know this is my go-to and I do refer to it as a Bible because you can dip in and dip out of it yeah very much so and it has I think two chapters on injunctions I wanted to talk about a podcast on it because as a therapist especially a TA therapist you would look for these modeling so negative decisions which client will pick up and may napped out in their life and one of the jobs of the therapist is how people can be aware of that and as I said separate out so they can have a different destiny now many of the people listening this may be trained in a different without you all together and we'll have similar language for this yeah but this is TA this is what you know we do so but it is very important really important I think because in the end the client then can with the service help put a positive programming on the road or positive for decisions which will end up in their personality and they probably will have to do the grief world with that yeah so thank you Bob until next time where we're going to be talking about script backlash and how to deal with it in therapy subject yes so until then I'll speak to you soon 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