 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 episode 104 of The Therapy Show, behind closed doors, with the wonderful Mr Bob Cook and myself, Jackie Jones. And what we're going to be talking about in today's, I think we've touched on this, you know, as we've been going along, but dealing with your own emotions in therapy. Well, thanks for the introduction to start off with. That's all right. Absolutely. Yes, we've never had a podcast on the subject. We've just talked about the importance of being aware of your own feelings in the psychedelic process, but I thought it deserved a whole podcast. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because the biggest danger of not being aware of your own feelings can be over-identification and merging with your client. Yeah. So, in fact, in the end, you're doing your own therapy, probably, and the client is paying for it. Yeah, which isn't fair. No, but there is something about, you said then, about being aware of your own feelings. But there's also something about self-care. If you're going through something personally, should you be seeing clients at that time? When do we take a break from it? Well, that's, I mean, that's a very good question, isn't it? I mean, unfortunately, Jackie, I think, I think I've come to this conclusion over 35, 40 years of mixing with psychotherapists, counsellors and training them. And many, many psychotherapists are workaholics. Yeah. And they're workaholics for lots of reasons, I think. It may be, you know, they're workaholics for economic reasons. Yeah. They could be workaholics, workaholics because it's in their personality traits. They could be workaholics because they haven't done their own therapy. But many, many therapists and counsellors tend to be workaholics, which isn't, you know, I think a particularly healthy thing. I mean, you might want to put me in that bracket. I think I've changed a lot on that, but I understand the concept of workaholics. I mean, what you're talking about is a really important question. It really is. There's many, actually, there's many aspects to your question, but let's start with one of them physically. Yeah. If you're physically ill. Yeah. I think it's important for a psychotherapist to actually take time off to get over their illness for lots of reasons, one obviously for themselves. Absolutely. Yeah. Doing the job when you're very unwell, having flu or cold or headaches or tiredness or XXX. We don't do our job very well because we're ill. Yeah. Absolutely. Secondly, it's not very good modeling to clients. I don't think so anyway. No. It's that you would just carry on a willy nitty without taking care of yourself without putting some investment into yourself. I think it's not healthy modeling. Yeah. Especially with clients who are dealing with lack of self-esteem, lack of self-assertiveness, lack of thinking about themselves. They need some modeling from the therapist, not a therapist that is going to ignore all that. That's on the physical side, same on the psychological side. It's probably difficult though, can't it, Bob? When we were cancelling clients, especially if it's a sudden illness that comes on and there isn't any warning to it or anything, it can bring up a whole heap of stuff for the client. Absolutely. I'm the therapist, of course, but certainly both of them. You're right. I still think therapists can just carry on far too long ignoring their unhealthiness. Yeah. Because a lot of us that are in private practice aren't employed by somebody, so we don't get sick paid. If we're not working, we don't get paid. And that financial burden can mean that sometimes we will work when we know that we're not really up to it sometimes. Yeah, that's true. Self-employed, most therapists are self-employed, so I think self-employed people per se, whatever business they are, often work when they shouldn't be working. Yeah. It's a strange one, but actually it's counterproductive to actually work beyond your limits or into a situation where you really should be off. Yeah. Because in the end, you won't be able to do your job very well and give the service to your client. Yeah, definitely. I've known people that, you know, that work well into pregnancy and literally have a week off after having a baby type of thing and then they're straight back at work again. And it's like, you know, it's not good for either one. Exactly like you said, the client or the therapist. Yeah, we're not indispensable as therapists. Do you know what I mean? They've been knocked down to us. No, I agree with you. I mean, there's that whole aspect about awareness. I think I was talking more about the awareness of feeling some account of transfer's position and how that might actually mean that we merge with our clients and don't actually or aren't able to give the services that we were contracted to do because we're actually merged. In other words, if there's some identification, you know, say, for example, you know, you've suffered from severe trauma and loss in your own history. Yeah, there's a lot of identification with the client. You may actually keep away from the areas that you need to go to. Yeah, it hits yourself and you don't want to feel those feelings. So you do something else instead. Yeah. So awareness is the first thing. And then how do we manage those? Now, the best way to manage them is to, well, if you're aware of them, is to go to get some therapy, get some counselling. Yeah. Second, talk to your supervisor. Thirdly, do network and talk to your colleagues, any of those things. But we need to get to a place where we can start managing our own feelings away from the therapy room. Would you do that while you're still seeing that client or would you refer the client on if you became aware that this is actually, you know, impacting on us on a different level, whether that's over-identification or triggering for the therapist or something? If you can't move away from the transplants, if you're not able to do the therapy or the supervision to enable yourself to be an adult, then you need to refer off. Okay. Because you can't, you can't complete the contract. No. You're going to be in a place where you're over-identifying with the client. Yeah. And I think one of the things with this is we don't always know what the client is bringing. Do you know what I mean? They might come with one thing and then six months down the line, something else come up for them that you do over-identify with. So at that point, it's quite difficult to refer on for some people because they've got a relationship, because they've been coming for six months. I understand that. And hopefully, by going to the therapy yourself, yeah, or working with colleagues and talking about it, you can get to a place where you can move away from merging with the client. Yeah. I think it's a difficult one, but I think it's the duty of the therapist. As soon as they're aware that they're caught in a counter transference position, they go out of their way to talk to the supervisor, to talk to your therapist and to do things to disengage from that merging trap, if you like. Yeah. It's not an easy one, especially in the situation you just talked about, where you've been with the client for seven, eight, nine, 10 months or whatever it is. And then they start dealing with things which you didn't really know about. Yeah. That suddenly appeared, but it reminds you of some trauma in your own history or something. Yeah. The first step is being aware that it's happening. Because, you know, I don't know whether I could be completely wrong here, but to a certain extent, being able to empathise with the client and understand what they're going through is quite helpful, but it's the over identifying. It's like you say, it's the merging that causes the problem. Yeah. Yeah. Have you been in the situation yourself, Jackie, in your history? I've been in kind of similar situations where I've been going through, like I think just after my dad passed away, you know, one of my clients went through a similar thing. So, but I don't think I over identified or merged with them. It was more of an empathic thing that I could understand what they were going through, if that makes sense. Well, it makes sense because what you're saying, you hadn't identified to the intensity where therapy couldn't happen. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't like I went through a personal trauma. It was something that I was, I suppose I was quite dramatic about it, that, you know, death happens, then I've dealt with it with other family members and things like that. So it wasn't, I did take a couple of weeks off, but it wasn't that I needed to, you know, stop seeing that particular client because they were going through something similar that I had been through. Yeah. And, you know, most times when a therapist reports they're stuck in supervision, it's nearly always been trans-French issues. Yeah. And as a supervisor, it's nearly always about what's happening for them, because that's the therapist in their own internal fame of reference. It can be sometimes pure information piece that the therapist didn't know, but quite often when they're stuck, they need to explore their own internal processes and how they're managing or not managing what's happening on a feeling level for themselves. Yeah. So by examining the Transference in Supervision, that often can help the therapist getting an understanding and therefore perhaps an ability to decouple from the personal identification, because if they can't manage their own feelings, then therapy becomes much more harder. Yeah. If they can't regulate themselves, this is a therapist. If they can't contain themselves, this is a therapist. Yeah. Then therapy becomes much harder. Yeah. Because being a therapist is quite draining at the best of times. You know, you go to some quite deep emotional places with clients when you're not identifying with them. So if you are identifying with them and over identifying with them, it's exhausting. It's not good for us health-wise, apart from anything else. That's right. So I think we're both on agreement with this. The next bit, perhaps in this podcast, is how does the therapist start being aware that they're in a counter-transference situation? Now, I think if I took a whole lot of therapists here and asked them that question, they might come out with a myriad of reasons. But for me, one of the ways that you might know that you're, have an experience, coming from a counter-transferential position is that you start doing things that you normally wouldn't do. In the therapy room. Yeah. You might start keeping away from particular areas that usually you would go towards. Okay. Say, you know, like trauma, like depression, like obsessions. Yeah. So you start being aware that you perhaps are going, you're keeping away from areas you will normally go towards. That's one. Another tip, really, is to be aware of what's happening to you, what's happening to you at a body level. Yeah. Because often, when we are merging with the clients, or there's a counter-transferential reaction, we fill it in our bodies first. Yeah. Some of it might tighten up, or we might have a heartburn, or we might have a headache. We start having a bodily reaction. Often, that can be a clue to something's happening in the therapy process, which we weren't aware of. Yeah. Very, very common. Headaches. Often they come on. Often a sort of feelings in the pit of your stomach. Yeah. Often you might feel yourself tensing up. Often you might feel yourself frightened to deliver transactions you would normally deliver. And they often held in the body. So if we can do a body scan, especially when we might start feeling any of the feelings I've just talked about, I think that may be a good clue to asking ourselves what's actually happening in this relationship here that I'm actually feeling this way. Yeah. You could even ask your body away from the therapy room, of course. Yeah. But it's certainly a tip or a clue to take into supervision. What about, because there have been cases with me, whether it's over identification, or I don't know my state of mind at the time. But with some clients at certain times, not being able to leave it in the therapy room, it's kind of hung over me for a while afterwards. Is that over identifying with the client? Did you say that in another way? Or say a little bit more so I can understand? They've kind of shared something with me and it's resonated with me and I've not been able to shake it off. Oh, so you so do. Oh, yes. I know where you're heading. Yes. This is another very good tip for people listening and often very common in supervision. When the therapist, let's use your language, is unable for whatever reasons to shake off what the client's been telling them. Yeah. No home. I walk home quite a bit from Charlton to Disney nowadays. And I find myself in thinking obsessively around the story that the clients put in. Or I'm aware of my bodily feelings or I start feeling down or whatever it is. And then I go home and I'm quite irritable or I start daydreaming about them or worse even still, I think about them when I'm sleeping. I dream about them. Yeah. And all those things start happening. You need to go to supervision. Yeah. Because I don't want to make out like I'm normally quite flippant about clients, but I'm normally quite good about leaving it in the therapy room. Do you know what I mean? And once the client's gone, then obviously I have a break in between clients and I can kind of get in the right frame of mind for the next client type of thing. But with some, it kind of hangs on for longer than it does with others sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. See, I think that's why I asked you to explain a little bit more because when you say hang on. Yeah. Offer over you. That's what you mean by that. I mean, I started to say things like obsessively think about clients or I start to, I feel maybe feeling in my body or I may daydream or overthink or be irritable or what do you mean by hang over you? Well, that impacts on me. You know, it's like we're not, we're not a channel that all this stuff goes through. You know, some of it sticks to the side sometimes and it does impact on us personally. That's okay. Okay. I've gone a bit further with that. Well, other tips as well as taken to supervision is things about I know my wife does talk about doing this quite a lot. Where she would go for a walk in between clients to clear the air. Yes. She would have a sprayer. I'm not sure what she would call it, but basically it would clear the energy in the room. Yeah. That's what you mean by hanging over you. So she would do things to attempt to make a break between. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Now, of course, you know, some tune to sometimes makes four. And if you've got to have the same history or a very similar history to the client, then though you haven't got the same experience or you might not have, of course, we all have our unique experiences, but there might be parts that you understand cognitively where you might be more vulnerable to the transference. Yes. So you can sort of always preempt it in a way. Yeah. You can take it to supervision. And you can say, you know, I had a similar type of experience to this client I've taken on. And even though I've obviously understand we all have unique experiences, I have half expecting there might be some common threads. Therefore, I'm thinking ahead about this. Yeah. I mean, there's many things I was just said, mindfulness, meditation, all these things we might start incorporating as a way to break that energetic, intense identification. Yeah. Absolutely. Because it's like, you know, I don't know, the cancer journey that I've been through, would it be acceptable for me to see somebody that was going through a cancer journey? Is that seen as unethical? Or would I be more empathic and understanding towards somebody that's going through that journey? Where do you draw the line? Here we are, personal perfection. I'm going to give you personal and professional thoughts here. But I'm going to start off with the contract. Now, NTA, contractual theory, has always been entwined in the doctrine of transaction analysis. Eric Burn was very hot on contracts, especially adult to adult contracts. Yeah. And I think it's just, I think I have a lot to say on it, but I would, I'm going to start off with contact simply because I think it sets the frame. Okay. So, I think if you said to your client, well, I'm going through cancer, or I've had cancer, or whatever frame we're talking about, and how do you feel about that? Because I think I have a lot to offer in terms of, you know, I know you've got a cancer journey. So, I've got a lot to offer in terms of maybe empathy, information about the journey ahead, or many of the things you just talked about there, Jackie. And the client says, yes. You know, in other words, there's a sense of transparency. Right. Yeah. I think that's a good place to start. Okay. Because a lot of the things you just said there, I think for people on their own cancer journey, though, the therapist who has cancer has their own unique experience. There's going to be many, many, many opportunities for the therapist, the person who's, you know, I, therapist in this sense who's been on the cancer journey or has cancer, can, you know, give information, can empathize in ways many other people might not be able to. If we look at one of the unmet relational needs that I talked about several podcasts ago, which was around mutuality, and the important, the importance of someone is being on the road, the same road, if you like. Yeah. That's what I mean by mutuality. Yeah. To have somebody on the same journey with them or somebody's, who's travelled that journey. I think that's an important relational need. Okay. So, for more of that sphere, I think there's a lot to offer somebody if you've been on the same road. But it's about transparency and the contract and those sort of things. Yes. Beforehand. Yeah. And then the other side, people might say, this is what I talked about, the contract first Jackie might say, oh, because you're, you know, you've been in the same position as the other person, your identification might be so acute that you're not able to help the person go to where they need to go to in their own personal journey, because you might go unconsciously or out of awareness somewhere else, because you would don't want to deal maybe the loss of yourself or the loss of your own ability or whatever it is. I mean, that is something to certainly consider. And I think if I was in that situation, contracts, transparency would be very important for me. And also a conversation my supervisor would be very important for me. Yeah. And, you know, because it could be too much for the therapist as well as the client. Oh, you know, so therapists can also, you know, how can I explain this? It just could be too much. If you're recovering from some process, you've had your own traumas, you might think you're able to help for lots of different reasons. But I think the process needs to be talked over with a supervisor who's got some impartial distance to talk about whether it's in the service of the client, you to offer this therapy. Yeah. Yeah, I do, I do agree. And I think there needs to be a certain amount of time that passes. You know, it's like, I can remember after my dad passed away that I was really interested in getting into bereavement counselling. But I think two years had to pass before you could do it if you'd lost somebody close to you. Do you know what I mean? They wouldn't let you automatically go to bereavement counselling if you'd had a recent death in the family or whatever. I have to agree, and I remember a therapist who lost their son, he was very well known therapist. He lost their son, I'll forget his age, but he was in an accident. And he just felt he couldn't be a therapist in any formal shape and took a year off. Yeah. When he came back he realised that for many clients to do with loss and similar trauma we're talking about, he hadn't healed enough, so took another six months off. And I think there has to be distance. Yeah. Time. Yeah. You need to talk with your supervisor, maybe your therapist if you have one, about when you go back to work, types of clients you might take on, types of clients that might be too overwhelming for you. And put yourself first here. Yeah. I think that's what I was thinking. Self-care things like that are really important. When you were talking about that therapist that took 12 months off and then realised you needed a bit more time off, prioritising ourselves and self-care is really important. Absolutely. So it's going back to the contact because I know you're somebody, well I think you are, I've never asked you Jackie, but what is it, Facebook and things like where you're quite open with or have been quite open with your journey. Yeah. But however if you, I don't know if you've started back as a therapist yet, but yes you have. Yeah. Clearly recently I did take, you know, pretty much 12 months off while I was going through it, away from one to one client. You're going to take money. Yeah. It was an economic part to this. I think transparency, contracts are really important, plus all the self-care we talked about. Yeah. Absolutely. Because I often think there are certain things that happen to me. I wouldn't find it very, very, very hard to go back to work or even want to go back to work if something happened to members of my family, for example. No, I'm 72, so economically I don't have to work about that luxury, but when you're 22 or 32 or 42, maybe you have to go back. Yeah. But there should be definitely some self-care here. Yeah. And like you said, maybe about us, you know, I know when we're training, part of it is that we do need to have personal therapy, but maybe it's about us being aware that when we need to go back to therapy, you know, not necessarily supervision, but a therapist completely away from our job and all those sorts of things where we can just be authentic and honest about what we're going through. You're absolutely right. Because we're not superhuman. Things impact on us just like they do everybody else. They do, and talking about impacting us, I started training to be a therapist when I was 35. And for many, many, many years, and I'm talking about a lot of years through my training to be a certified transactionalist, all the way through to start training people to be certified transactionalists. But certainly, I think six, seven years, I used to think about therapists. How can I explain that? Therapists, I think it was some sort of distorted belief in the system. Well, maybe I was actually even taught it, but anyway, to not show feelings at times. Now, I then went to some therapy mathematicians with a very well known therapist and started to do some really deep work on myself. But I watched him do a lot of work. And he was able, and this one piece of work that I saw, where he started to, you know, share his own feelings. And that had such a big impact on me, in terms of permission, and seeing the importance with some clients that they see the heart of the therapist. And so now I'm somebody, when we talk about feelings and therapy, which is podcast is about, I think that with certain clients, it is important to show your feelings. I'm not saying you use that as a technique. But what I'm saying, I suppose, that if you deny part of yourself in the therapy process to your clients, or at least some of your clients, it could well be counterproductive. Yeah. So now I do, I would show feelings of that level of intensity with clients, and I did do. And I certainly wasn't a therapist that believed that we should compartmentalize our own feelings. Because if we do that, part of ourself is in the way. I have this very conversation with somebody this week about, you know, certain modalities of therapy, say that you should leave yourself outside the therapy room. And I've always struggled with that. I don't know how you do that. Psychoanalysts, like, 100 odd years ago, forwarding analysts, young, you know, perhaps not so much young. Yeah, analysts per se believed exactly that. Yeah. And they wanted to be as far removed from the relationship with the clients as possible. Because they believed that if you were actually in any sort of relational process with a client, there would be a distortion of the field. And that it was important to stay away as much as you could. I'm not okay to give interpretations, but to show feelings, well, that would be a heresy. Well, I'm glad things are changing and that we have got permission now to show certain feelings. Yeah, but you see, I think it's a really important subject area that I'm not sure is talked enough about in training, in trainings of therapists. Because I still, I don't know how I've done the research on it, but hopefully this podcast might help people. And you think about this, would you allow yourself to cry with clients, to be vulnerable clients? It's such an important topic. Yeah. It's about, if it's in the client's interests, you know, we've got blovering and taking over the session and obviously that's not in the client's best interest. But you know, in fact, I did it this morning with one client. I actually said, I'm feeling quite emotional when you're talking. So I didn't break down crying, but I'll let them know that what they were saying was touching me. It did touch me and made me feel emotional. And that's that reasoning of clinical disclosure. And I'm sure you thought about it anyway, could have been pivotal to that person in the therapy process to see a therapist talk about the level of impact. Yeah. I hope it was a positive thing that happened. Yeah. So I think that it's okay for us to give ourselves permissions to express feelings. And I think the caveat is there, is that it needs to be with clinical thinking. Yeah. And also maybe even to take it to your own supervisor to talk about the process. Yeah. Absolutely. I think it is something that needs to be taken somewhere, whether that's like you said at the beginning of this podcast, whether you take it to your own therapy and go to therapy, or whether it's supervisory or, you know, discussions with peers, you know, obviously not breaking confidentiality and things. But yeah, we're not islands as a psychotherapist. I think it's even more important that our profession speaks to other people. Totally agree. I agree with that. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. It took me even longer to allow myself to express feelings at that level that I just talked about, that level of vulnerability or how I felt quite vulnerable. But I always did tie it in to the clinical process, which I think is the bit really. Yeah. Tie it in to talk about it with the client and what it means to, to, you know, the impact of the sharing that level with the client and what that client feels about that. In other words, a relational discussion. Yes. Yeah. And it took me a long time to not just learn that intellectually, but actually to put that into practice. Yeah. Again, I think we're all different and we're all unique. But for me, if I don't feel warmth or something from the therapist, I think I would find it quite difficult to to share my feelings if it wasn't a two-way street somewhere. If they were quite cold, I think I would struggle to connect with them if that makes sense. That's a perfect sense. But I do think the subject that needs to be talked more about trainings of psychotherapists and often don't think it is. No, because showing our emotions is kind of, it does lead to vulnerability and, you know, some of us don't like that feeling. Another podcast I hope we do is Touching Therapy. Yes. Another area where for me it isn't talked about enough. Yeah, definitely. I'm writing that down because I think that's a really important part of some people's therapy. I've been asked by your clients, you know, if they can, if I would sit next to them and you touch them, but I've never, I've never inquired whether it's what they want. They've asked me, yeah. Right, Bob, that was wonderful. Okie dokie. So what we're going to be discussing in the next one is how therapists market themselves. Oh, one of my favorite subjects because I've been known over the years, and I don't know if this is going to be blowing my own trumpet, but anyway, people say to me a lot, a lot, Jackie, about I'm somebody who, you know, advertises a lot, markets a lot, etc., etc. And that's true. And I bet I'll talk about this in the next podcast, but I do know a lot about the subject. Good, because I'll pick your brains as well. So until next time, Bob, thank you so much. Thank you very much. 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.