 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 the wonderful Bob Cook and myself Jackie Jones and his episode 44 and we're going to be looking at working with the delusional clients this week. Another one of your wonderful titles. 44 and all the fours. I feel like it needs saying it won't be long before we've done 12 months of the podcast Bob. Now we are there's no delusion here we've got we've had 44. 100% 44. If you believed as a child that people exaggerate things because you had a parent which always told you you know oh people there was parental exaggeration don't you believe it don't you believe it have you met my mum Bob that's and then it might be very normal for you to either check that out or perhaps minimize that or even believe it's not true. Yeah so we're talking about delusion here and when I'm talking about delusion again I'll probably say this a most podcast but I want people to really you know get this that about most things we have a continuum. Yeah we are continuing from people who are one side it's sort of it's different levels of delusion really who may have a contaminated belief systems all the way up to psychosis. Yeah where if we give a definition of psychosis definition of psychosis is when you're out of touch with reality. Now if there's a podcast on psychosis we can now talk a little bit about what you can call on the spot psychosis where people drift in and out of psychosis in terms of what's real and what's not real we could which is often called floored psychosis or we could talk about when people are fixed psychosis and they feel out of touch with reality from a lot longer than just a moment in time. But as it's not about psychosis I'm really talking about I think we might get back to psychosis because often some people who are psychotic can also have what we're talking about in this podcast anyway might be termed extreme delusions and paranoia fantasies so but that's that's on the real sort of I think the extreme side of what people talk about when they talk about delusions I think what most people talk about delusions what are what we call in transactional analysis psychotherapy contaminations. Yeah so child contaminating the adults and parent contaminating the adults and yeah yeah. So what we mean by contaminations basically is when early in the person's history they hear a certain parental slogan and they may accept it as adult reality. So in other words yeah people listen to this podcast and they think about their own families they probably can remember many times when there might be parental slogans like kids should be seen and not heard. I don't know what parental slogans you might have had in your childhood that you could have remembered Jackie. Yeah that was one that was banded around as well yeah yeah one of my mum's favourite ones I'm not sure whether it was a parental slogan but it was one that was always used was all what a tangled web we've when first we practice to deceive she was always throwing that one out there. What's really important there is is how the child interprets what that means yeah now I don't know what as a kid you interpreted what was meant by that yeah what I expect she did and then from that you would have made a decision. Yes yeah and then that becomes you know something you've then taken to adulthood. Yeah so if I go back to what one I just said kids should be seen not heard yeah and if the child believes as that is adult reality in other words as if it was true yeah they might at the age of 44 come into my consulting room and say things like you know what I'd really like to change is my aloneness I feel like I'm always alone in life I don't feel that I'm assertive I don't feel that I can assert my belief systems or my thoughts or my feelings and people call me a doormat and as you explore that more you can see where the decision from childhood so the parental slogan is kids should be seen or heard yeah well things is adult reality and decides well I better be quiet to survive in this world and then that's taken into relationships in later life and then the person comes in at 42 and says well I'm always been so timid people don't understand why I don't express my opinions but you know I actually feel it's quite dangerous for me to express my feelings and thoughts so that could be a delusionary system but if you trace it back it makes pure sense yeah this is the thing with the scripted stuff and and you know what you were saying about the child and everything the way it's interpreted it does make sense and it does become survival and a lot of it feels life and death stuff it is like it is because if that's if you if you what happens the child makes this decision as well but it'd be seen you know I better not be seen or whatever interpretation is and if that if I go against that I'm gonna get hit by my dad or whatever it is and it does become survival yeah it can become deluded what about here's another system what about you know when the parent says you know what John or Jack or whatever knows you know what son you should never you know never trust anybody in this room because no one is trustworthy yeah so then the child decides what he can't trust anyone 52 years later they turn up in my therapy room saying you know what I can never maintain relationships I always have real problems with people in life I've got no real friends and I think it's because I don't trust anyone yeah now it's a deluded system because yeah message is untrue because the truth is the real truth is well some people may not be trustworthy and the real truth is many people are trustworthy but what's certainly a delusionary system is when the child makes the decision well therefore I won't trust anyone yeah interesting enough with with that particular example it does depend how we interpret it as one of the things with that that I I whether yeah I personally interpreted it is it's not necessarily that I don't trust other people it's often that I don't trust myself well as a child as a child if you've got a parent saying don't trust anybody don't trust anyone because the world's not trustworthy place and you can't trust anyone yeah then okay you may not quite sure how you wish shifted yourself but you could but I think it's more likely you would decide well I won't trust anyone there yeah to survive in this world yeah because when we're looking it from a child's point of view it is very black and white that's how children see things it's all or nothing there is no gray area that's right but can you see how it's a distorted system yeah which we could call delusion if we want to yeah yeah I think that's one of the ways I always describe you script and those sort of things is it is very black and white it's you know as a child when we made these decisions and choices we didn't have the life experience to work it out we took it on face value at our understanding level and that then became part of our belief system and 100% we bring it back day after day it's in there somewhere yeah and the more younger that parental slogan the more bizarre it is the more toxic and more distorted the script belief system comes and the more delusionary or distorted in life those belief systems might be yeah so somebody comes into that I'm not talking about the narcissistic grandiosity cell particularly here but I mean I don't we could go into character types we'll just pick another one somebody comes into the room at the age of 47 or 37 or whatever it is and so see do you know what do you know what I think people can actually read my mind I tell you what I tell you why I think that because I can read people's minds and I'm not I'm not the only one surely I can read always yeah and I think other people can read my mind as well it's very very very scary now is that delusion or distortion or not it is obviously delusion because it's not yeah I was gonna say it's definitely if you know very like I've been married 30 nearly well actually 27 years can I read my wife's mind no I wouldn't want to but can I but what I can do I've had it if I have a good guess about a repeated predictable style of behavior yeah so and I may get it right and I may get it wrong by the way so what I tend to what I do do is ask her what she's thinking well and guess what she's thinking in couples that who particularly get this process of people we know had a long time who actually go along a process of never never or believing that the other person should understand what they're thinking yeah and of course we're not mind readers it's true the longer being people you might have good guesses the 50% of the time would be going get the wrong yeah yeah so it's a deluded distorted picture when I believe I can read people's minds yeah or other people's mind however there's a philosophical assumption for you I believe in therapy if we however bizarre the statement or the behavior seems in present day yeah if we trace it back to the origins over the context of where this whole process began it makes total sense yeah yeah it does it makes total sense even though they themselves will sit there when they get that insight about where it actually originates from and they go but that is just ridiculous and it's like it might seem it now but back then it made perfect sense yeah so the trace it back go right back and what you learn is that the child had to had to believe in these supernatural abilities because unless they believe they could read everybody's mind they would get very hurt or beat up or whatever it's like so they developed a way of being to try and protect themselves and then you get a distorted delusionary system yeah which may be on for a long time or they might have had a parent that said that you know if you try hard enough you can actually tell what people are thinking so and then they interpret it and there we are 45 years later coming to my office with a distorted deluded system obviously but if you trace it back to where the trauma began everything makes sense yeah yeah it's it it's an amazing thing when we work all this stuff out that one of the things I do often talk to clients is it's okay knowing where it comes from re-deciding it or making a new choice can be quite anxiety-provoking sometimes when we step out of our comfort zone yeah yeah I mean that's the second part of the treatment the first way you've got different parts in a psychotherapy treatment I believe the first part is getting to know the client in front of you yeah creating a safe secure protective relational space for that to happen in and as you as you go through the process and how an understanding of them the next part is to help them understand themselves and help them being aware of how past effects present yeah from that the third part of a psychotherapy sequence is what you're talking about helping them then make new re-decisions from the younger self of where the trauma happened which takes a long time yeah and the fourth part is helping them reintegrate those new behaviors into their life today yeah and we have a four-part psychotherapy sequence yeah and it's nice to look at it in that way that there is there is a journey there is a process to it and you know I often talk with clients about sometimes we rubber band back and sometimes you know it you it's the cusp of moving over into that new area I think it might have even been Steffi that said it once in a second yes yeah and she said it's kind of like you've got two trains one's very familiar you know exactly where it's going to stop you know the people that are getting on it and off it and you know where it ends up and everything and what therapy does is ask you to get on a new train that you don't know where it's going you don't necessarily know who's going to get on and off at the stops and everything but we can always get back on the old train if we need to and that just kind of made me feel a bit safer it's it's not do or die with all of this stuff we will revert back to scripted stuff when we're stressed when we're overwhelmed it's not like that part of us never comes back again no however I think the first step is allowing the therapist on the train good point yes therapy takes a very very long time if the client doesn't allow the therapist on the train and in fact the train won't even start unless that bit sorted out yeah now the delusion and you know we've talked about deluded crime talked about contaminated crime there has to be a lot of work dealt with to throw the for the person to feel safe enough to allow the therapist on the train to even get in a process you know helping them understand that developmental history yeah yeah because sometimes they might not you know we're talking really early in their life that there's certain things that they might not remember or that they've forgotten about that needs unearthing or looking at or exploring yeah that's right and I think the more you know we look a lot of these personal adaptations or personality styles you know quite often a level of grandiosity is labeled to these levels of disturbances with particular clients we can talk about and if we're talking about grandiosity we often could be talking about not you know a very short step to delusion yeah I've been doing a bit of work in my own personal stuff on Facebook and things about gas lighting over the past few weeks and when you were talking earlier on about losing sense of reality and things like that it just sort of triggered that for me that you know sometimes in relationships we can be manipulated to to lose our own sense of reality oh yeah touch with there were all if that makes sense of course you know if we're in a very dysfunctional automatic system or you know we know this happens a lot in the school schoolyard of course but you know the you know like the dysfunctional parents or significant people or care makers their reality has to be the most pal mad yeah and the other person kid the kids reality has to be wrong yeah that's just understood it you didn't yeah yeah 100% it's gas lighting yeah yeah so that's where a lot of this starts yeah in the actual family home yeah I get played out in the schoolyard or different places but it's often modeled I think much younger on if we look at the technique or the theory around the okay current which you know I'm okay different life positions then if we talk about gas lighting we can then talk about we can we can certainly see where that those positions are on the okay current yeah but you know what if we go back to what we're talking about here the most important thing is is that the client can make the therapist okay enough to actually get on to that train with them yeah which is easy it's a it's a big step to do that yeah we're not going to get on that train on session one no and depends on the type of client you got of course but you might not be on it by session 50 yeah hopefully you'll be on it perhaps before you know but earlier on than that or the client will probably have gone off on the next station yeah it's an interesting thing Bob I love the way that you you talk about things it just tweaked my interest then when you were saying that one of the criticisms I often hear about therapy is that therapists are all in it for the money that's why you keep seeing your clients for five years or 10 years or whatever it is that it's so that you get loads of money off them you don't want to cure them or help them or support them because then you're you're losing a client but when you were saying then about you know it's the client letting the therapist on the train with them it is down to the client what's that we can't make our clients do anything in in the therapy room we can't get them to trust us on session one it's it's a process I think it's impossible almost whether any client in session one will get on that train I mean I know some do so it's not possible but it's a rare between takes a take it takes you know a few sessions yeah but if a client came to us with anxiety or I don't know a fear of something whatever it was and you know if they go and have CBT say for example they get eight sessions and that's it it's over and theoretically they're okay with that therapy is completely different well the type of therapy you and I talk about these podcasts is very different because that's relational because we're talking about relational long-term psychotherapy yeah yeah yeah the two completely different beasts they can't be compared to each other but a lot of the time people do compare it they'll they'll come and you know they'll ask me how many sessions do you think I'll need I don't know how long's a piece of string well if somebody comes with fixed illusions and they are delusionary systems or distorted systems or of levels of grand geosities which actually isn't helping them in life anymore then you know probably there's been high trauma so you can actually say something back to them well the more trauma you have in your history by definition we're talking about quite a few stops quite this train will probably go on quite a long time yeah and you can always get off and we will get to the end sometime yeah but one thing's really important you and me would be there together and I'm not getting off this train if you are me and I'd really like it if we go the journey together yeah now that might take quite a long time for them to actually trust me up to get off on to get on the train but that's what I'm aiming for I think that's really important as well what you said that I'm not getting off the train yeah off this train you might pull the red chain or whatever it is and we can stop and look around the field and look around the landscape and talk about how you're feeling and hopefully we'll continue when it's safe yeah we might have to chuck some people off the train I have to evict people off the train because we don't want people on train who shouldn't be on our train so I love that yeah that might happen but we'll get there yeah yeah and like a very wise person once told me that therapy is a it's a process not an event it's never never an event and these delusions these distorted systems these contaminations they're way back in history what I said was delusions the more extreme and intense and bizarre and traumatic processes they've come from can sometimes move into a level of psychosis which takes quite a lot of tending to but if you can catch the contaminations earlier then we're into a you know maybe a different process of therapy yeah but in the end of the day all these systems and belief systems we believe in are built they're there to keep us safe so yeah it has to be a gradual process yeah and the other thing is as you said early on we have to get to a place where the person may you know it's done enough healing and trauma to put a different show on the world yeah that's that's the end result that's where we want our clients to be it's to me a choice you know I know for me sometimes I it took me a long time to get to know my script is stuff but I know I revert back to it at certain times I don't stay in it for any length of time now when I know when I'm in it I do it in awareness which is completely different but I still go there sometimes yeah so if you've decided you know if you've been in a system where you've accepted parental slogan you know has adult reality because that's how you survived in your childhood system that the world's not trusting place then sometimes you may under stress go back to that system you know because that's the one one you knew but hopefully as you've said if you don't some therapy and work on yourself a bit you might get out quicker yeah yeah definitely get out quicker and I'm aware when I'm in it I know when I'm there now and I'm not shocked in the well it's all out of awareness a lot of it I you know yeah it's just that circular stuff of doing the same thing and expecting a different result a lot of the time thank you Bob I haven't looked at our list again so I don't know what we're doing next time so it will be a I'll be astonished I don't think it's a delusion this is I think it's reality I'll be astonished you know if we get to an end of one and you've got the I don't have to be astonished because it's only sometime we should do know what we're gonna do next time yeah I need to look at three ones instead of looking at I always have two in the back to me and but not the third one yeah I've provided a big list so you know it's it's not surprising really and that's okay because in another level together you know spontaneity and you know coming along listen to podcasts and then be delighted with what you're gonna we're gonna talk about it's really fine as well I like that I'm sure the listeners are delighted about what we talk about every week thank you so much Bob and we will be back next time with episode number oh yes that's right 45 oh my gosh surprise you know one thing I didn't put on the list of podcasts is surprises excitement curiosity in the world of the psychotherapist I didn't put that but that would be a wonderful title do you want to do that one for yeah not not next one but we could have it on the list there was something else that you said as well that I'm not sure whether it's on the list but we need to put it on the list is them synchronicity in the therapy room oh yes yeah I like the thought of that one this is loads they're literally there isn't an episode that I'm not looking forward to go great well it's been nice talking about is it the this subject tonight okie dokie right so I shall see you next time okie dokie see bye bye 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