 Whereas intuition can sometimes be seen as a bit, a bit woo-woo. Oh, well, anyway. And do we trust it? Do we trust our intuition? We don't know what woo-woo is, but it sounds a-nust. Well, I like it. Do we trust it? It's just a bit, you know, you can't pin it down, can you? What is intuition? How do we connect with it? And how do we know what it is and when it is intuition? 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. So welcome back to the next episode of The Therapy Show behind closed doors with myself and the wonderful Bob Cook. And this is episode 53. We've done over 12 months now, Bob. 53. Gosh, it zooms along at such a fast pace. It does. It does. When you're enjoying yourself, Jackie, that's it. You know, when you're enjoying yourself, time just goes into a time bubble. It's like when I'm playing chess. Right? Now, I love chess and amongst other things, chess is probably the game where time just goes so quickly. I don't know where it goes. It goes through a time bubble. But when you're enjoying yourself, time just flies. 53. 53. Yes. I believe it. And we're getting some lovely comments on the YouTube channel as well. I've noticed that you're getting some comments on the YouTube channel. So keep it open. If anybody's got any recommendations for anything that they would like, your expertise and your unique take on things, then they can just pop it in the comments there and we'll get around to it. Well, I'm so pleased to hear that people are commenting. I haven't looked for a while and I hope they're saying nice things or at least questions or curiosity questions. So I'll go on and reply to a lot of these, I think. That would be lovely. I'm sure people would love to hear from you. So tonight's episode is a, I'm looking forward to this one, Bob. It's all about the importance of intuition in the therapy room. Wow. That's a good subject. You know, Eric Byrne, the originator of transaction analysis. And of course what you and I were trained in in our first trainings anyway. He wrote a book on intuition in 1957. Did you know that? I didn't. There we are. I was looking for today and I'm looking up the library here because I put it out and I can't see it in the library, but I was looking at it. I thought I'd look at it just before I did this podcast and hastily didn't. But I did read it about 200 years ago. You've got a hell of a memory, Bob. I can't even remember the title. I think the title is intuition in ego states, but I'm not quite sure. It might be intuition in the mind, but I did briefly read it. And of course he believes that intuition comes very much from the younger self or in TA terms when I called it P1 in layman's terms, let's say the younger self, really young. And he talks a lot about intuition. So intuition is very much the thinking of Eric Byrne. Interesting, isn't it? It is. I wouldn't have thought that would be because it's a very logical, you know, modality, I think. That's why I like it. Whereas intuition can sometimes be seen as a bit a bit woo-woo. Oh, well, anyway. And do we trust it? Do we trust our intuition? We don't know what woo-woo is, but it sounds a nice. Well, I like it. It's just a bit, you know, you can't pin it down, can you? What is intuition? How do we connect with it? And now do we know what it is and when it is intuition? Well, you see, I think that's an interesting question. How do we know when intuition is intuition? Now, I think if you talk to most therapists, and you're, of course, sitting opposite of me, and you are a therapist, so we'll be interested in what you said. But if you talk to most therapists, I think most of them will talk about the importance of sometimes following their intuition in the therapeutic process. So are you one of those therapists who would also say that? Yes. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. So what would you, and it's interesting, I'll never ask you this question. What would, do you know what the criteria would be for following your intuition? So in other words, what would make you following your intuition? Would you think about clinical treatment planning or thinking about clinical direction or would you just follow a feeling you've got? What sort of? I think that would always be in the back of my mind in whatever I'm doing in the therapy room. But often, yeah, I, when I was first qualified, I had a plan. I had handouts. I had all this thing and it was like, in this session, I'm going to do this. Whereas the more experience you get, that's where my intuition would come in, is maybe, you know, where it's going in the therapy room, but always having the treatment plan at the back of my mind. So you're saying that you think intuition is conscious rather than unconscious? Yes. Unless there's a feeling with it. If there's a feeling, then I think it's unconscious. I refer to it as like a gut feeling. Then that's emotional and a feeling and maybe that's unconscious without a conscious thought. Okay. So I think one of the big questions about intuition is what's the difference between intuition and script? Good question. Yes. So for people who perhaps aren't transactional analysts here, would you like to define script or shall I do it? You can do it and I'll take it. I love scripted stuff. Okay. I see script as a, and Byrne defined it different ways, but really the major definition in his last book, he called it script and unconscious life plan, which is originated in early in life and it's followed through. And we have our own scripts that we may follow throughout life. So that's why I asked that question. How do we know the difference between intuition and early script, the early decisions that we've followed early in life? So another question is, in terms of countertransference, people who perhaps hopefully are therapists listening to this and know what countertransference is, but it's your own stuff, which has been sort of a vote by the client's stuff. So, you know, if a client's depressed, for example, and talk about depression, and you've got some depression which hasn't been resolved, then you could end up merging with your client in a way because your depression and their depression can get mixed up. Yeah. Yeah, that would be an example. So for example, you might take the client towards CBT because you don't want to deal with the feelings of the depression yourself, for example. So that would be countertransference. So sometimes when we think or have a feeling we should go this direction and I think the clinical question is, really, what's the difference to an intuition in countertransference? And if there is any? And how you would determine that? That is the question. How would you determine that? Because we do all have a script and our script is in the room with us all the time. You see, psychoanalysts going back 120 years ago for young and people like that. Young did talk a lot about intuition, by the way, but the early analysts, they would preach for all the analytical training is that the therapist keeps out of the relationship and doesn't have countertransference if you want to put it that way around. Is that possible, Bob? Is what possible? For the therapist to stay out of the room, is that doable? Well, as I say, before, you know, I think ego psychotherapy in the 1950s, if you went into a book shop, if there was one, you know, on psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, all the books would be about the importance of the therapist staying outside the relationship and not actually talking about their own or sharing their sense of self in the relationship. Analysts tend to make a couple of interpretations most, you know, in a 50-minute session. But they're they aren't really calling that sharing their self. So psychoanalysts would talk about once you share yourself in the relationship, you're contaminating the field because it's your stuff. Yeah. I just don't know how I would go about doing that. And I suppose I don't understand how you wouldn't understand. But I'm in the room, my script goes wherever I go. It's part of the course, it's part of the course. So how can I leave that outside the room? Well, I wonder if you're correct at another level, you simply don't share it. Yes, yeah. I could do the not sharing part of it, but it is still in the room with me. Yeah, and if you don't share it and it stays in your head, then is it going to have any effect on the clinical treatment? Yeah. You think that if you're not sharing what you're thinking and feeling, yeah, by not sharing it, you're saying to me that still you still have an impact or effect on the treatment. I think so. Maybe not the treatment, maybe the relationship, maybe the therapeutic relationship. Tell me in what way, how? One, I don't overshare in the room, but if it's relevant I would share something. But if if there's something going on for me in my scripted stuff in that room, then my mind's going to be preoccupied with it. It's going to be in the room whether I want it to or not to a certain extent. Oh, even if you said to yourself, well, I'm going to ignore that and think about it afterwards. Well, yeah, but in order to ignore something, you've got to focus on it to ignore it if that makes sense. So what you're saying that you're saying that by definition, part of you may always be in the the therapy room and by that, you know, to the fact you're preoccupying yourself takes you away from the contact of the client and then that itself may contaminate the field. Yeah. It's a very difficult subject when you look at it that way. Well, analysts, I'm going to think about psychoanalysts. They're trained not to act out or preoccupy themselves with their own in the world. They're trained with thinking about interpretation rather than sharing material of the self. Because because of contaminating the field and because they may actually be coming from a script or counter-script position or counter-transferential position, which actually is nothing to do with the client but is to do with them. Yeah, but if we interpret things that's only our reality of it. So therefore are we in the room anyway? Well, I don't come from a psychoanalystical position because I think the early analysts will come in from a one almost like an expert position, which I don't agree with. I think that's why I didn't train in psychoanalysts. I trained in a much more sort of egalitarian, I'm okay, you're okay, humanistic position. So but I was just thinking in terms of intuition where we started off with. But if we just reactively share our feelings without clinical thinking then we might be coming from a counter-transference place. Yes. Or a scripted place rather than actually what we might think is intuition. Yeah. I'm surprised at what you said right at the very beginning of this that, you know, intuition is in P1. The younger self. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know about that. I found that quite surprising. I don't know why I just do. Well, when I think you know I think you know this Jackie, I mean because I know you know a lot about child development and but the younger we are the more likely we are to not censor anything come from a place where we just speak spontaneously. It's just as our critical part of self starts developing do we actually impinge ourselves before that we're much more likely to come from a much more spontaneous free position but as we get older and there's all these critical stuff coming in we stop ourselves. Yeah. And is that what intuition is? Yeah. Well, this is it. This is what I suppose a podcast about is intuition when we free ourselves from the critical parent or injunctions that we tell ourselves is it when we allow to actually get in touch with what's happening on the inside from an uncluttered uncontaminated place on our able then to follow our feelings without censoring ourselves. Yeah. When you put it that way. Yeah. Yeah. I suppose I don't know that there has to be some logical part to intuition to work out what it is trying to tell us. Well, what do you see intuition as that? Like a gut feeling or an internal satnav directing us down a certain route. Yeah. What I believe is that the very early on we start to we may follow that spontaneously and then as we get older, you know, two, three, four, five and we internalize the critical or the belief systems that come from our parents and significant others we start to inhibit ourselves in terms of following those feelings. Before that I think we spontaneously quite often just follow our feelings which often we could call intuition. Yeah. Maybe we should look up Oxford English Dictionary definition of what intuition is. Yeah. I mean, I think it's very important though question because I think a lot of therapists might follow their intuition when actually they're coming from a counter-transference or script position. Yeah. They think it's intuition. Yeah. And there's a danger in that, isn't there? Well, counter-transference in the therapy room, yeah. Because you're sharing your own stuff which actually has nothing to do with the client, really. It's intuition. But in fact it could be easily have etiology and script. Yeah. See, I was thinking when we were going to do this podcast and we were starting I was thinking about past clients and where has intuition played a part for me. And what I came up with, I can particularly remember one client that was divulging something in the therapy room and I didn't have a reaction to it at all which is quite unlike me. And to me that was my intuition saying that something wasn't right about what they were saying. It just didn't fit right. So that's when I was thinking intuition plays out for me in the therapy room. Does that make sense? The example makes sense to me. The query for me would be is that counter transfers? You know, it's like what's the difference? I don't know. No, I know. You've got this podcast. I'm just querying it to the listeners you see. Yeah. The difference between counter transfers and script and how you would know. You see, I like what you said right at the beginning of this. But you said that if there's a feeling attached to it or there's a feeling and there's not thought processes you would call that intuition. Once you have the thought processes to the feeling then you may think about, well perhaps there's something more around script here. I like that. But I like it and I think we're in a very interesting area. If we are going to train therapists to follow all their feelings willy or nilly we're in a dangerous area aren't we? 100% yeah. Because to be fair it depends what day it is or the week as to where your feelings are likely to be. So what is going to indicate intuition? Surely not. Linking surely to just feelings. No. You know and it may be you might say yes to that but I just think it's a dangerous ground to give therapy's permissions to share their feelings without clinical thought. On the sort of back of calling that intuition. Yeah. I suppose I kind of know myself quite well now so I know whether the feeling that I'm having in the room is appropriate to what's going on or if it doesn't feel right then to me that's my intuition. Right. So it's backed up for clinical thought then isn't it? Yeah. It's backed up by your own therapy if you like. It's backed up in knowing yourself. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. And I think one of the big things for me as a therapist is that I do know myself quite well and I think that's quite important. Well, thank goodness for that because if you're in the BAC where they don't ask for you to have any of your own therapy we might be having a different conversation. Yeah. And it's an ongoing process even now I think you know there's still parts of me that I'm sure that I've not dealt deep enough to explore but yeah. I think we have a conundrum with intuition and you hit it anyway when you were saying about logic you know it's a paradoxical if we're going to start using logic to explain intuition on a paradoxical road. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I said it's a bit woo-woo because you can't pin it down. You can't really pin transplants down can you? No. No. I think transplants is a very vague term as well. I can explain it clinically but maybe it's in the land of woo-woo as well. Yeah. Have you ever experienced transplants? Well every minute of the day I can remember specifically one. Seriously, I meant what I just said. I think it's in the land of transplants a lot. So you know Eric Byrne used to say well if you're an adult then you're not in transplants. Wow. Then the question is how do we know whether we're an adult or not and then we could say we're acting appropriate to the age we you know age we are, I'm 71 for example. So okay but or stroke and I think transplants is around all of the time and it doesn't mean I always am aware when I'm in transplants hopefully I know myself quite well like you I can spot when I'm in transplants quicker than I used to 20 or 30 years ago but I think transplants is always around in the clinical domain transplants is nearly always there when we open the door to our clients whether we act on it or know that is a different story. Yeah, maybe I don't know myself that well then. Well transplants we live in projections don't we? Yes, we live all the time in the land of projections and projection is the mechanism of transplants. Yeah I see when I think about transplants I see it as a I don't know a definite emotional response and reaction to it as opposed to just it being transplants and counter transplants I don't know for me the times where I've known I'm in it I've had a real physical emotional reaction to something and that's kind of like oh Jesus yeah that's that's what that is So your feelings have given you the absolute that you're not in you here and now you're in another ego state Yeah, this is my stuff 100% the feelings that I'm getting are definitely mine Yeah So if we go back to the beginning again I don't think it was beginning but you said you were surprised that I would put intuition in the realm of the younger self So where would where would you put intuition then? I'm not sure when I was saying I was I thought exactly the same thing to me there has to be a certain intelligence to work out that it's intuition I don't know the free child the free spirited without limits and everything else I don't see that as intuition I don't know why So the question is if you don't see that free uncluttered and contaminated part of ourselves which is certainly there in our younger self as the etiology or the beginnings of intuition it's like well where does intuition arise if we use TA in the ego state model the question would be is it throughout all our different ego states? Possibly yeah it's a wonderful debate to have I don't know where it would sit whether it would sit in one or not Well you have to go to definitions if we look at adult ego state the definition Bern talked about is that we're in adult we're in the here and now acting the age we are so therefore if we say does intuition is it in that part of our self I would say it could well be in that part but did it arise from that part of our self is another story Yes I understand that Yeah Is it apparent? No I don't think apparent isn't where I think intuition arises Again I think intuition has its etiology in the child the younger self there's an awful lot of good stuff in the child to be fair before the adult takes over and we kind of evolve into where we are I've got a four year old grandson and I love his free spirit and spontaneity and all that sort of stuff but he's coming up to that age now where he's starting to take notice of his surroundings and conform to certain things Well I was just talking to Richard Erskine he rung three minutes before this podcast started because I haven't spoken to him for a long time well I'm seeing him Name dropping there Bob Oh he's coming to our institute for three weeks time Is he? Yeah Bert or stroke and I was just thinking Richard's saying to me quite a few times that some of his best work is ever done this is personal communication as being when he's followed his intuition Now we never went further to have this conversation like we're having in the podcast you know but where does that intuition come from but I would also say so face safe myself when I've followed that intuition of mine I've clinically I'm talking about it's usually had positive results rather than negative results I do like to back it up with clinical theory but when I do follow it sometimes and somebody said why don't you go down that direction mostly I can explain it clinically but when it's from an intuitive part myself you know I usually have good results and I still think that's from a younger part of myself when I haven't had that cluttered parent ego state whirling around I've managed to shut it off somehow Yeah and it does make sense when you're saying it you know to use your intuition and that's there's no critical dialogue going on it's just taking you down a certain route I think it's taking down a freer route I'm absolutely convinced your intuition is in the freer part of ourselves Yeah I think it's freer from contaminated material energetically we come from much more freer sense of spontaneity I think that's where intuition is you know they're not young would have said about intuition but he said a lot and I'd better even talk about that in terms of archetypes you know our spirit is where intuition arises from but I do know it doesn't it doesn't live in the parent ego state it arises I think from a different part of ourselves the younger side whichever part whether it's our spirit whether it's our energetic side of us but it's a side which isn't cluttered with the parental interjects Yeah and there's something about the intent of it as well I think you know to use it with a positive intent in the therapy room do you know what I mean intuition to be is good juicy stuff it's not ever negative it's for the good of the client to go down that route with your intuition I think Yeah, you see relational transaction relational transaction analysis which was formed in 2008 even though the ideology of it was earlier that the book relational transaction analysis came out in 2008 now if you follow that style of transaction analysis it's based on using account of transfers and it's based on you knowing yourself very very very well as a supervision every couple of weeks using your sharing your account of transfers your sense of self all the time in the relationship now I'll go back I'm wary of giving training therapists especially beginning therapists to just share their feelings or what they think might be intuition without clinical thinking wary of that because what they might think is intuition of feelings might actually be counter injunction so the clue would be in knowing yourself very well I think yeah and that takes time you can't learn that that's three years of personal therapy yeah absolutely absolutely absolutely and I train a lot therapists over the years more and more I want when I talking about how come people did what they did in the therapy room I want to know their clinical thinking now if they just said to me oh that's just have an intuitive feeling fine and which part of the self did that come from yeah my next question because I wanted to distinguish between the two that's not such an easy distinguishing they might just say well I just don't know I felt like it now that might feel strange what I just said earlier in the podcast that when I've actually followed my intuition I've had positive results but that's usually when I've known myself quite well it's not beginning it wasn't in my beginning years of therapy no it definitely wasn't with me because like I said I used to plan every session I knew what I needed to do in the session and everything there was a lot of definitely not intuition going on in fact looking back on it half the time I probably wasn't in the room at all in the early days I was very much focused on what I should be doing and having the plan I think intuition is energy free what I mean by that is lies in the realm of free energy I really believe that I like that and when it pops up in the room it's noticeable often for me intuition can pop up in the world of meandering yeah it's one of those like I said it's woo-woo it's one of those things that it is difficult to work out a situation where it would come up or why it comes up because it is quite random it's like an insight yeah you can't force an insight no you can't force an insight but you see on an exam board you'll be deferred no seriously seriously seriously I'm not disputing it somebody said I just had an intuitive feeling and I followed that the next question from anybody on an exam board would be okay so tell me a clinical thinking about that now if you know we had a discussion like this on an exam board right and somebody was talking about intuition come from the younger self and all this sort of stuff we can get to a place where they wouldn't necessarily be deferred but they would need to be able to talk about seeing the difference between counter injunction script and intuition now if they can talk like that that shows a clinical nuance which is pretty advanced yeah if they can't that means that they could be taking clients down a road which actually they don't need to get out yeah it's a bit of a minefield then won't be isn't it well I think the way we're talking now is the way a person needs to talk when they're talking about intuition I mean a therapist because they can talk with awareness about counter transfer script and intuition and how challenging the whole process can be yeah definitely no I wish I'd have had time to read the book by Eric Byrne but I'm sure he would have said it comes from the younger self yeah without the internal dialogue all that sort of stuff yeah definitely and if we can follow that I think we can have great results because we're allowing ourselves a freedom which we often don't allow ourselves and if nothing else we can model that to our clients who are so usually full of contaminations and clutteredness they don't allow themselves to have that free energy yeah what a wonderful podcast Bob it's an interesting one isn't it it is there's a lot of food for thought for me yeah it needs to simmer a bit I think it's been a wonderful topic and if we ask the transpersonal psychiatrist I'm sure they have many different ideas and thoughts about where intuition resides maybe they say in the spiritual dimension ourselves but certainly not on the parent I can absolutely say that yeah yeah that takes us down a whole different road about spirituality in the therapy room maybe that's one that we should do at some point I'm sure it's on our list somewhere it quite possibly is yeah so on that note Bob we will be back for the next episode which I think kind of leads on quite nicely from this moment because we're going to be looking at understanding emotional triggers and why this is important in the therapy process yes what you just talked about the emotional triggers it's so important to understand that yeah I look forward to talking about that okie dokie until next time Bob thank you Jackie 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