 Hello and welcome to MIPTV and here with Bob Cook in TA Made Simple where we make transactional analysis theory and we simplify it so everybody can understand it and learn it and on this particular episode we're looking at something called script backlash so share what that is Bob. Well in earlier TA Made Simple videos I talked about a central concept in transactional analysis language called script and that's a life plan which you learn and decide on in early childhood and you play out today. That's basically the definition of a life plan and mostly what TA Therapies do is identify this life script which people have chosen and it's not helping them, help them put a new one on the road. Okay now the concept of script backlash which Eric Byrne devised in 1968 and 69 just before he's what you say how they look on scripts is the idea that when people start changing their script which has been decided on early on in childhood usually it responds to parents and significant others and it becomes part of their identity and how they see life that if you start changing it you often will get a backlash and feel uncomfortable. So here's a clinical case for you. Okay very early client of mine and this is a two story. So I started seeing eight, nine, ten sessions and on the 12th or 13th session I asked her to do go back home look in the mirror and start finding you in a child and give you certain in a child permissions to be and to you know love yourself. So I thought that was quite a good homework and at that time certainly in the TA literature it was like giving permissions to you in a child. Anyway she didn't turn up in the next session. So in those days there was not such thing as voicemail so I was worried and anxious and anyway I decided basically to phone her up unless the voicemail because she never answered but she came to the next session so I said oh you know where were you last session because I thought we'd done really good work the week before. She said I had a terrible headache. In fact I've had a headache ever since I started doing that homework we talked to me about. Oh yes oh tell me about that you know that homework when I had to look in the mirror and say you know that I'm lovable to the child and me all I could see when I looked in the mirror was my mother. And my mother was telling me off for being indulgent and actually braking and I then got a headache. Ah so she skipped the adult and gone into the little parent. Yeah so I said where was the headache you know and she pointed to the left side of her head I said oh right she said yes every time I did something bad my mother used to hit me so script backlash when she started to do something against the script that her mother had laid down for her she got a backlash that's the term. We often find that as people start to change what they've often been programmed to do especially by significant others in their childhood. If they start to change it and put a new show on the live they often feel more uncomfortable and rubber band back to childhood. Isn't that interesting isn't that isn't that interesting you know and there's not you know there's also I'm guessing some kind of transference in there because if she's experiencing what her mother did she's actually kind of she's kind of actually living in a bit of a transference there isn't she. She's gone back to an earlier time where she was you know in relationship with her mother and her mother in this scenario was telling her off for to be bad and actually hitting her for actually braking and seeing herself as special. Now it's very very common worry that when people start changing they actually hit resistance to change because actually they would have changed if they could have changed easily wouldn't they. So what happens is as they start to change their script or things about them you know like expressing emotions for example men particularly. They will often feel resistance to that and that is called script backlash and they often feel uncomfortable and psychotherapy might go back a stage to go forward. How interesting and how does the therapist support script backlash what kind of interventions would you or did you put in to support this uncomfortable kind of dissonance the client was having. Well the first step is you believe them. In other words you stay congruent in the relationship and you may even say sorry by the way that wasn't my intention. I didn't mean to invite you back to an earlier stage. Let's talk about this and let's start examining the script and help her understand her story. And here's a very crucial thing is that you stay with her in therapy and you need to eventually be larger than the actual original parent. There was a protection. Yes it needs to be a bodyguard almost. That's a very good and really like that. That's the first time I've heard that term but absolutely that's a fantastic term. Yes you are a positive bodyguard. How interesting. That's a really good term for this. Yes yes. That was a positive bodyguard and stands in between the interjected parent and the inner child. It's interesting I'm sure a lot of therapists do that no matter what modality they're in. Because you know sometimes it feels as a therapist myself that you're literally in this kind of battle between the abuser or the parent. And the client's in the middle and it's almost like your intervention and their transference is colliding. Eric Byrne talked about giving permissions. Yes. Now I agree with him however you really need to analyse the script, the life plan, the early childhood dramas and know the person really before you I think give out permissions. Because if you don't know them and you don't understand the script you could be actually inviting them to do things which actually are inflammatory to the earlier parent or abuser even. For anybody who's watching who's not a therapist that I think is a universal kind of idiom really. Because what you're doing is you're really understanding the client and really understanding where the client's coming from and their history and where they are building that relationship before you're putting any form of intervention in. Because you need to know you don't want to retraumatise them which is effectively what happens. And what I did and I was a way back in my early history and I'd only seen it for about 10, 11 sessions and no way was the relationship formed. If I go back in the middle 80s and relational psychotherapy wasn't really explored even as a term and I had not seen it long enough. I hadn't got the relationship formed properly. I hadn't certainly hadn't analysed a script. I certainly didn't know very well and I was giving up permission as a woolly in Italy to do things via homework without knowing the intracyclic consequences. Of course intracyclic means the understanding and the living with self. That's what it means isn't it? I think that's fascinating and I think my big takeaway from this Bob is as a therapist don't act in haste. Patient wait for the process to unfold, wait for the client to unfold and then you can really understand the client and also make sure the relationship is strong enough. People have spoken about it, clarked and spoke about the repetitive relationship and this idea that you're building that therapeutic relationship and at some level you're... I'll get you back to Colberg and all the historic self-psychology people where you're borrowing a piece of you until they ask themselves up. I like the term bodyguards and I think it's an idealised bodyguard. That's the important thing and necessarily so. Now cohort in self-psychology when you talk about idealised transplants what he's riveted talking about is protection. Yes. And I think a positive bodyguard that is providing protection is a wonderful metaphor for change, helping the client change in a protective way. All goes back to our early life experiences, how children run to an adult who offers them hopefully protection but also a kind of adult from an adult perspective. I really like what you're saying about across different modalities hopefully the therapist or counsellor. You know, not only has language to understand what they're doing but actually will think about building a relationship, building up understanding a script and not making interventions before they really understand the person in front of them. Yeah and it just links into something else Bob. You know when you see clients that have had abusive histories sometimes they test you out to see if you're tough enough. That's absolutely right, that you're big enough parent to stand up to the abuser. Yeah, that you're big enough, strong enough and that you won't buckle because effectively what they're looking for is they're channeling that person from their history through them to you and they're making sure that the person who ran over them won't run over you. Absolutely. So it's a very important concept to think about. Yeah, and of course it links into what we always talk about at the end of these metaphysicals about self care, about own personal therapy, about having good supervision, about understanding the nature of trauma and of you. All those kind of things that without that you really could get well and truly trampled across. Oh, without that, well said, I agree with that. Well, there we go, it's script backlash. We've extended that a bit with a few other bits of information. I hope that's been really useful for you. Remember this video is part of a playlist. So if you want to watch the entire range from ego stage, which is the very beginning, the structural model, right through to this, you click on the playlist. You'll find all the videos and you can literally teach yourself to some level TA. Yeah, the 101 there. Yeah, the 101 there. So it's always Bob Cook. Thank you very much. Thank you.