 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 as always Mr Bob Cook and myself Jackie Jones and what we're going to be talking about in this session is nothing is what it seems in the therapy room. It sounds a bit twilight zone this Bob. Well it's a fascinating subject and I'm sure we'll talk a lot about it and I was just thinking that we could say that about most things in life really is anything what it really seems but as we're talking about it's particularly linked to psychotherapy and what happens in a therapy room. I'll talk about it specifically in that dimension. Well so when we look at it like that what do you think Jackie do you think that there's any anything that's really how will you start this one off I've got my thoughts but well for me I often talk about this with clients and I'm sure I've mentioned it in past podcasts that you know in the therapy room I've got all my baggage and the clients got all their baggage and there's kind of my mum and dad in there and my grandparents are in there literally everybody's in there there's that aspect of it and then also am I being my authentic self in the therapy room and that's up for debate I think. Okay so if we were thinking psychodynamically or if we were thinking transference and transference is the major sort of modality that underpin the psychodynamic theory yeah then we would be and I'm going to use TA language a little bit to put this across we would be coming from a place where both therapists and clients are enacting out their unconscious history or stroke script in the therapy room. Now if we follow that through that both people are enacting out their scripts or their unconscious past in the present in the therapy room aren't we really merely representations of our early history or a question mark that's a very good question yeah you think yeah absolutely if it depends where I am yeah I think if I'm in a good place and my state of mind is quite robust and I'm in my adult then I'm aware of my response and reactions to things if I'm overwhelmed or tired then maybe not so much oh so that that will mean then Jackie which I really agree with by the way we follow especially if we use TA language and for people listening what it means when we say you know in our adult eager state. Eric Byrne who is the originator of TA talked about one way of knowing when we're in our adult eager state is that we're coming when we're coming from adult eager state we're actually presenting the age that we are or think we're leaving the way we are you know so I'm 73 you're I don't know you know but you will be coming from that 73 year old rather than a different place yes yeah just saying that for people who perhaps will want to know what adult eager state means yes that's so what you're saying is when you're coming from your adult eager state and acting thinking and feeling as the age that you are then you will be coming from that age rather than a younger age or a breast age or a place that you might have gone to if you are feeling overwhelmed or triggered from the transference of the client yeah so that leads us to another question which is how do you know or how do we know that we are coming from the adult eager state that we may think we're coming from at that particular time that's a very good question I do we know because I'm sure when we're not we think we are well I know for a fact before my psychotherapy training if somebody had asked me how much are you in adult I would have said 99.9 percent of the time I know without a shadow of a doubt that I was not and I'm not in my adult 99.9 percent of the time no and I think to me it's been present it's been in the moment and in the here and now and responding in two things in that moment rather than reacting if I'm reacting to something emotionally then I'm probably not in my adult eager state okay so just throw that by me again will you say that you said something about two things and I missed it what did you say I've forgotten though probably being in the here and now and being present in the moment that is where I see myself being in my adult if I'm reacting to something as in being emotional then I'm probably not in my adult eager state okay okay I'm clear about what you're saying now now of course one of the ways that we can perhaps I'm saying make sure but at least give us ourselves a fighting challenge that we're coming from adult is that we've done a lot of therapy in ourselves and that we've done a lot of evaluation of our own script and that we've healed a lot of the deficits of the younger parts of ourselves so that we're able to actually stay in the moment or stay present the way you were just talking more of the time yeah I think we've done our own therapy and we can be aware of what could be the triggers back to the past we might be likely to stay out of our script and in present time more yeah what do you think I think for me personally I'm a lot more able to do it if I'm in a good place myself which is you know why I think it's really important as a psychotherapist that we practice self-care and that we we prioritise ourselves okay so that's us talking about us as a talk about the therapist role yeah if we can come from adult or at least the term I'm going to borrow from TA again executive adult yeah yeah at least we are more aware of what time zone we're actually in yeah therapy process see I think that's the most we can do absolutely yeah now we can't legislate where the client is going to come from now if we're doing our job well as a therapist one of the major goals of course will be to facilitate the client to visit their younger self or if we're thinking developmentally much of the trauma will be in the younger self and therefore probably in the therapy room with you they will be going back to a different self often a younger traumatised self yeah so the person in front of us may not be what they seem they are in other words if we think of ego states we're more or less going to be either if we're doing the developmental work I'm talking about meeting their younger self or their unconscious self many years ago or we might bump along or meet their grandfather parent significant other person which has come into the therapy yeah so that's what I mean when I say nothing's what it seems in the therapy process yeah because often the other role of the therapist is to be a what I call a decoder to help decode what the what the client is attempting to tell you but often is unable to tell you because they're not or don't have access to that or ego state at that particular developmental time yeah so this is where I think it gets interesting because if we're a decoder and we're decoding we've got to be really mindful of assumptions and again bringing our past and our history into things if we're reading between the lines potentially we can be quite biased about that absolutely and one golden rule of mine that I've developed as a therapist is as much as I can to move away from assumptions yeah so assumptions take us down the wrong roads usually so as much as I can do that I will and what I nearly always end the transaction up with to the client is if I make a statement or something which you might want to call assumption I'll say is this how you see it yeah I know they I know they can over adapt to that by the way however that's usually how I end up transactions if I'm going to make a statement about what I see reality is that doesn't mean I don't or I'm not aware that they may be adapting but at least I think out of courtesy out of integrity and also what you're talking about to attempt to move away from assumptions that's a good way to end a transaction with the client yeah yeah totally agree to check in or to check out with them that's what I tend to do a lot of the time or just something simple like is this what you mean or is this what you were thinking whatever it is yeah because you have hit on something which is almost vital in psychotherapy or effective psychotherapy I think is to is to and it's very very hard to do but to you know move away the therapist I mean to move away from assumptions yeah now when you I mean decoding yeah what I mean by is decoding their script or the enactment of their script okay they are often to such a young place that they're unable to have the access to their adult their older adult which they need to do to be able to get over to you what the hurt is all about or the trauma or whatever we want to talk about it so I have to check out and say is this is is this true or is this what you're saying to me or could it be this way or tell me a little bit more about that and do that repetitively yeah and sometimes that can take a while depending on where about they are in the ego states because depending on how early it is where they've gone to they might not even be able to put things into words it might just be feelings that they're having as opposed to being able to to put it into words and explain it yes absolutely the further you go down the onion layer or the years yeah you get to usually a younger place where verbal language gets in the way and then we're in the land of what I would call somatic responses yeah have you ever had a situation with a client where they're not sure whether it's a reality or a memory yes yes yes yes many times and what do you say to that oh I well nearly always say let's go with how you see it yeah that's kind of like what I say well I'm a bit more blunt than you Bob as you know I say does it does it matter whether it was reality or or a memory that you've got and if that memory isn't actually correct oh if that's what you're feeling right now then that's okay yeah absolutely see what you're talking about is false memories yeah false memory syndrome which well if we go back a few years there was a lot written about this a lot talked about this I think they used to be quite a vogue in sort of therapeutic parlors and there's a lot more noise about what you're talking about false memory syndrome I come from where you've come from by the way which is perhaps they don't say it doesn't matter but I could it's a good way to say it I wanted to be more but I will nearly always say well let's just go with your frame of reference and we'll sort everything out later yeah yeah something like that so exactly where you come from yeah I just find it really interesting that sometimes at that point clients will question themselves that is it is it a reality yes because often the reality is too frightening for them to bear yeah so they don't know that it's too overwhelming too frightening too understandable so it's they will come often from the place that you've come from yeah and also there's a desire that I think there's a conflict often between the younger self and where you are at the moment talk about false memory syndrome part of them doesn't want their memories to be true absolutely and then there's another part that knows from much younger instinctual place that it is true yeah and you have this battle going out and often if if we're talking about you know trauma abuse here things where false memories are often created or not may later down the road get played out psychosis in other words they don't want these memories to be true they're too then undesirable they're too painful they cannot inadvertent comments be too question mark and the other side which knows at some level that the these two this trauma did happen and then you've got this conflict going on then you might get a third part of the south which often is might be apparent or significant other that hasn't protected them or whatever in the first place which is also you know passing on destructive messages about it's a secret or whatever language you want to use and then as a way of coping of all that they are often become psychotic in other words if we take a definition of psychosis as a movement away from reality they attempt to move away from reality and create a more desirable reality rather than than than going towards this conflict we're talking about yeah yeah absolutely so it's a survival mechanism it's a yeah yeah i think psychosis by definition is a survival mechanism yeah yeah absolutely because i think once if if the client comes to the the decision or the conclusion that you know what the memories are are real then the next thing is they need to do something with it sorry carry that on and i'll come back yeah no well i was just going to say often potentially that's why they don't want to accept that their memories are real because it's kind of not real if that makes sense and if it does become real then the impact of that can be big well it's usually it's usually tremendously big in that yeah yeah and often will take if they they might go down that path after years and years and years of denial whatever flag we want to use here they often need a lot of protection support and long term therapy to take ownership of their real memories yeah absolutely and it's like you say it's kind of like opening a pandora's box because it's not just one thing that it happened then you know there's all the unanswered questions about why did nobody save me why did nobody listen why did nobody there's like a catalogue of things that then potentially the client needs to look at yeah so usually how this all pans out at a major or minor level is when the client walks through the therapist's door at the beginning they don't go straight to what we're talking about here no it's way down the line yeah they might come with something like well you know i i've been depressed a lot of the time and i'm never quite sure why i am but actually i don't know why i'm here because it's it's low mood really but i just thought i'd come to therapy and then you go down so people start off with a very different objective even if even they don't know why they come to therapy in the first place so this what you're talking about here you know nothing is what it seems a therapy yeah exactly into the realms of this podcast it needs us to Sherlock Holmes to sorry we need the therapist to be like a Sherlock Holmes character who asks lots and lots of curiosity questions and comes from a very protective supportive place to get to perhaps a place which is a different type of reality which should be much which could be miles away from what they presented at the beginning yeah yeah and i think that happens quite a lot is you know six months in something will come up and it's not what i've got a form that clients fill out you know what are you hoping to get out of you know seeing a therapist and it's never what comes up further down the line no and you know to get to the place we're talking about here it needs a specific type of psychotherapist which is trained in a specific way number one they need to start thinking developmentally because nothing is what it seems in the therapy room once you start thinking developmentally yeah it needs a therapist that which is prepared to go the extra mile i think it needs a therapist that will relieve and support the client in front of them and needs of therapist is going to have a lot of courage to go to where they need to client needs to go to yeah and it needs a therapist is well trained in all this you read my mind then because i was going to say it's not only having the courage to go there it's knowing that you've got the skills to go there or if you go there yeah absolutely and um that's why i want an assessment system at my institute where i can get the right therapist to go with the right client and all those things but being trained to be a developmental psychotherapist and then to know or to have the skills and know what to do then when they get to a different place that they're going to with the client takes time to just get trained in the first place yeah yeah and and then you know it's years of experience in it having the you know the practical skills and learning about it and absolutely another another aspect of this conversation which i'd like to bring in which is this aspect for the client the therapist is rarely rarely what they think they are in other words we live in the world of projections so the client when they enact out their script with the therapist will project onto the therapist how the therapist uh needs to be to fit into their script and how they see the world that's what i mean it's not just about uh the therapist staying an adult which we talked about a moment ago which hopefully it's half the story or more than half the story but the client however in adult the therapist is as we were saying on his podcast that doesn't stop in any form or shape the client projecting their script and making the therapist fit into their script to make sense of the world yeah which is really difficult because there's nothing we can do about that no we can respond to it when we know what's going on but we can't force or make anybody think of us in any particular way no but also can't i believe a developmental based psychotherapist and certainly i'll speak for myself here wants that to happen so if we take as read that the client needs to project onto the therapist that the therapist is a certain type of person right to support their script yeah then the therapist is halfway there because they're already thinking that way because if the therapist is always thinking that this is going to occur and that the transference is going to happen then the therapist is halfway there in creating that help in creating that narrative to find out what all this is about and the character the therapist needs to be or is to fit into this whole process that the client needs to play out to get to some form of resolution in the enactment it's very difficult Bob but i'm thinking what you're saying is that we kind of need to buy into their script and become part of it so that then we understand it and we can step out of it and potentially encourage them to follow us or something i don't yeah encourage the script to develop in the therapy room yes absolutely that's what i'm saying yeah i wouldn't say buy into but i like i know what you mean well i'll put a more clinical word word to it then that the therapist is able and skillful enough and aware enough to step into the transference yes yeah that the client has begun yeah that's a much better way than i put it but i kind of knew what what i'm saying yes yeah absolutely yeah now that takes a certain type of skill by the therapist and it isn't someone that type of step that what we're talking about here stepping in the transference oh god the first year second year third year training or training um therapist isn't likely to be able to do that so the first step is to train the beginning therapist to at least understand the process of transference and script enactment yeah and when they go on their beginning journey and working in placements or whatever it is with their new clients they are starting to think that way yeah and eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually they might think about whether they want to understand the transference let the transference play out or in fact step into the transference yes and that takes time yeah yeah to learn how to do that but the first step is to be aware of the process and that is happening absolutely i think the first step of anything is to is awareness but you know i think as well that there's you know the really important thing around all of that is agrounding ourselves as much as the client after something like that has happened in a session oh and that we need to take care of ourselves if we're doing that an understanding that we're stepping into the transference that potentially there's going to be an impact on us with that as well well you absolutely right but that leads us to that phrase i said earlier on the podcast in transaction analysis language executive adult yeah you know what i mean by this that we that we utilize our energy to stay in the adult age state you know from where we are today 73 year old so we stay there if you like but like we move and never you think of a stepping into another well though we stay grounded in the adult we from executive place we step into like you imagine making a step into their world but we're always grounded in the art executive adult so we can step back again yeah i know i say this quite a lot in a lot of the podcasts that we do but it is literally like the matrix in the therapy there are so many different levels and intertwining things and and it's yeah it's like the matrix well but if we if i'll go back because i think this is really important if we at least keep more than 70 percent of our energy grounded in our executive adult then we can all then we have that ability to shuttle backwards and forwards into the world of our clients in a protective supportive way and come back again yeah that's really important that's why i said more than 70 percent because that means at least one of the two people in the room is grounded yeah and able to help the client come back to in an integrated way as much as possible to their adult to be able to do the debriefing and making sure their adult eager state before the session ends yeah yeah which i think is really important i can remember on my training as well i might have the the statistics wrong on this and correct me if i do but there was something about the 80 20 rule about the type of clients that we take on do you know what i mean that we can't take on every complex client that there is we need to look after ourselves purely simply because of things like this that can happen in the therapy room well i think yeah that was winning a book called transaction analysis by woollams and was it woollams and brown i don't think maybe it was when they came out with that the phase that you taught that i think it's very important that we think if we're taking care of ourselves that we think about how much energy we have yeah and how much we will spend with certain types of clients and the more disturbed clients often take more energy if you want to put it that way so we need to think about ourselves when we're working with people so i know ending so i just wanted to get all right that's my assumption but i want us to say something we addressed this title nothing is what it seems in the therapy room and i believe that but or stroke and it's really really important that the therapist in the last five ten minutes make sure that the client as much as they are is in their own adult ego state and the therapist is in their adult ego state so maybe in the last five minutes of the therapy session and perhaps the first five minutes of the sessions therapy sessions were more what we think is happening is actually happening yes the bit in between maybe a different journey yeah yeah i think that's a nice way of looking at it that we're in reality at the beginning at the end and the bit in the middle could be anything yeah and be open to that oh oh because i think that i i don't plan sessions anymore at you i don't think you can but i'm much more open to going where the therapy goes now when i first started i needed a plan so that i knew what was happening whereas now i don't i think though i i understand what you're saying exactly but i think it's a good working rule to think that okay if we don't plan things but at least we know that the beginning and the end of the therapy hour is going to be two people coming from the adult league of states as much as possible yeah yeah and obviously that the session is in the best interest of the client and not just because i don't want to plan yeah well bob as always another wonderful podcast episode and what we're going to be talking about in the next one is the importance of continuity and predictability in the therapy process it sort of fits in in a way doesn't it i was just thinking that yeah absolutely until next time yeah bye 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