 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, episode 103. And this one, Bob, is on how to promote resilience in the therapy process. Another fantastic topic that you've given us. Yeah, because you know, surely, surely, that's one of the end goals in any relational dialogue of any client-purpose process that happens. In TA terms, it might be, you know, developing robust adults, some people might want to talk about it, but I like the word resilience. And, you know, usually people come in to therapy with degrees of either robustness in their adult or eager state, strength in their adult or eager state, or even fragility in their adult or eager state. But usually, people want to move to a more healthy place where they feel stronger inside themselves. And we could use the term resilience here. It's a very good term. And it's often something which is part of any contracting that TA therapists might make. And I especially, I expect you've made many contracts where resilience is part of the process, would you say? Yeah, yeah. Where people come wanting to be more resilient or, yeah, handle life's lessons in a better way, maybe. I don't know. So what do you think is resilience? Would you describe resilience? Oh, just to be able to stay in the here and now, not to get lost in their vulnerable past or to move to a place where they're stuck in their parent-eager state, bearing down on themselves and telling themselves off or having that toxic script or the child which is overthinking or anxious or depressed or more. But be able to be in the here and now and a degree of feeling strong in themselves from a healthy position. Yeah. Because some people think it's kind of like Ben's backability or just keeping going. Yeah. Something more than that. Well, I don't know. It's kind of like, you know, resilience is just keeping going and, you know, if you fall down, getting up and, you know, still going and everything. But one of the things I say to clients sometimes is that resilience is understanding that maybe we're on the wrong path and we need to change paths. It's not always keeping going down the same route. Sometimes we need to understand that that's not the way that we should be going and we need to pivot and look at something else. That can also be seen as resilience. I couldn't agree more with you on this. And I think one of the pivotal things about resilience or to help a person develop a resilience spirit, if you like, is that they have a friend on the way. Yeah. In other words, you know, and all my assessments that I do with clients or new clients that come in for assessments and I pass them on nowadays. One of the things I'm always asking is in real life, how much support they got in terms of friends and people who would look out for them. I'm very interested in their support networks because the more alone they are, the more lacking resources they are, all they're left with usually then is their toxic script, the narratives in their head, which often isn't very useful. And when they are stuck in that lonely position, they've got no one to turn to. No, not only lack of external friends, but lack of an internal friend, psychologically I'll speak. So I think one of the really big steps to help somebody who wants to move towards psychological resilience is, besides checking out all those support networks I'm talking about, is to help them get on board a psychological friend. And of course, that psychological friend usually, well, first step really, needs to be themselves. They need to start getting to a place of compassion and love and caring and accounting for themselves. Now, that's, of course, a very big step. It's not straightforward about all that, but it will certainly help on the road to resilience. Yeah. I think what you've said there is a massive thing for an awful lot of people, is to be compassionate with themselves and to show self-love and all those sorts of things, because it's seen as being selfish sometimes. If we prioritise ourselves or that sort of thing, it's seen as quite negative in itself. It may well do, and I think you're right, Jackie, and it also, if they follow that road, if they stay alone psychologically, if they stay in a spiritual wilderness, if they haven't got psychological friends to help themselves pick themselves up, if they haven't got part of themselves, which will take account of their vulnerable self, they are going to find it very difficult to develop healthy resilience. Yeah. Now, you guys, I completely agree with you what you're saying. Many people might see resilience as, well, go along and go along, we'll fall up, we'll get up again, or go along, we'll fall up, we'll get up again, we'll go along, we'll get again, and eventually we'll get there in the end. But of course, what happens, they get there in the end, and then they find another mountain to climb up, and they go to the top of that, they go to another mountain, and eventually they'll end up completely unhealthy, lacking oxygen, lacking oxygen, and they then start the repetitive cycle again. And that's what I'm talking about. That's just like a survival process, where there's no quality of life. There's no any happiness, it's usually like a hamster on a, you know, a wheel. There's no fulfilling of your spirit and any form or shape. It's interesting, because I run a membership, a monthly membership that's like based on therapeutic principles, and one of the things that we've been discussing this week, which kind of touches into this, is that unless they've found it really difficult and challenging, and pushed themselves to the actual limits to achieve something, they don't see it as a success. They've kind of got all these benchmarks and ideas that, you know, they have to do X, Y and Z in order for it to be a success. And it's like, well, no, it doesn't need to be hard work. Oh, here's a perfect example. You know, on the social media platforms often frequently, someone sent me up and said, look, a challenge for you to every day for this month to walk 10,000 steps, which is four miles. So I said, oh, okay. And yes, the person said on the other end, who is a friend of mine. Yeah, I've got many, many, many, many other people doing the same thing. And of course, we'll, you know, we'd like you to get people to donate 10 pounds towards cancer. So I said, okay, I'll take that up. So I started that process. And interestingly, as I start going around every day, and I live near the mercy, and I walk around this four mile sort of process at 6.30 in the morning, I started that process, like you were just saying in a way, well, I've got to get around that if I go to that place, and I go to the next, and I get to the next, and I get to the next. And there was this sort of dialogue going in my head, which was about, well, I've just got to achieve it. But actually, as I started to change this way of thinking, because I thought it was a pretty drudges 6.30 in the morning, in this survival route I'm talking about. And I started to look around at the trees and hear the birds and look at the river, and gave myself some compassion when I felt tired to stop if I wanted to, and to think about some nice things and things that I'm grateful in life about. Not only did I enjoy the route much happier, or in a much more fulfilled way, I felt enriched when I finished. So it's how we are on the journey, not if we're focused on just getting to the end, then we might as well just not do in the first place. You know, I think they were talking about weight loss and exercise and doing all these things, and that maybe if they missed one day out of the seven, that they'd throw the towel in, and what a waste of time, and I'm rubbish and all this sort of stuff. Instead of looking at it, that actually six days out of seven, you achieved your goal, and it was brilliant. They'll always focus on the one bit where maybe they didn't feel successful. That's right. And the process used to be as around your parent eager state, which isn't helping you. Because they've got histories, and often cultural histories, when the parent eager state is about being strong, carrying or whatever, x, x, x, x. Not a parent eager state system. Oh, it's okay if you stop. We can have a day off, we have a treat day off, we want to say to ourselves. And we need a parent which is different, I think, to support the vulnerable self. And as we go down that road, so we have a more positive parent helping the vulnerable self to have purpose and enjoy life in a different way, then our adults and our being in the here and now will become more resilient to things that might happen, which are more difficult in the past. So, for example, you know, as you know this yourself as a wonderful permanent, I think it's in TA today, that book at the end. With the whole poem about we're going down a road and we fall in a hole, you know, pit of darkness of life, and we can either stay or stay in that, but we get up again, and we eventually go down a process through compassion using a visceral, where we go down another road instead of going down that road. I love that poem, yeah, absolutely. We only do that by positive support and compassion. Yeah. Otherwise, we'll keep repeating the same process and fall down the hole and get stuck in it. Yeah. Now, one aspect of resilience, I think you talked about earlier, is the ability to get out of the hole quicker. Yes. But you can only get out of the hole quicker if you have a compassionate dialogue with yourself. Because if you don't have one, you won't see the hole in the first place. Yeah. Or you'll spend that long beating yourself up that you've fallen in it again, that you'll stay in it for a while. That's a bit like that. A bit like that hamster cycle. Yeah. I think therapists always have to take on the parents, you know, enable to allow a younger self to develop a resilience with support rather than adversity. Yeah. Yeah. So when you say that, you mean for the therapies to take on the client's parents? Yes. An internal dialogue and all that sort of stuff. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I must do that at least once in every session, I would imagine. Yeah. And you'll do that in many ways. You'll do that. You could do that by modelling a different type of parent. You can do that by challenging the pair, but that's another story. You need to need to do that in a different way, but you'll do that in many different ways. But usually you'll do it, I think, by modelling and supporting the vulnerable child. Yeah. Perhaps providing a different dialogue for the person to hear. Because remember, all their life, they've heard a toxic dialogue. A dialogue which is often built in, you could do better. You know, good boys don't cry or you have to be strong to survive around here, rather than positive parental dialogue. Yeah. Yeah. So you're building up a different parental voice, which perhaps they've not had before. And I think that's one of the clues about resilience is that the person has a different type of parental dialogue in their head, which is supportive, protective to allow that resilience to grow. Because resilience will only grow in the light, not the dark. Yeah. That's lovely. Only grow where the sunshine, not darkness. Yeah. So the therapist has to provide the fertile ground, if you like, for lightness to appear, not stay in the shadows. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Because being resilient doesn't mean that we don't get it wrong sometimes or we don't make mistakes and all those sorts of things. It's about how we deal with the mistakes that we make or all those sorts of things. And again, I think you touched on it, that modelling that in the therapy room. When we talk a lot about the younger self and one of the things I'll often say to clients is, you know, how would you deal with that behaviour if it was coming from a child? We're a lot more compassionate if we think outside the box and think about it being a younger child that's made that mistake. But yeah, we don't do that to ourselves. Unfortunately. Yeah. You absolutely correct. Even something as simple as I'll say to them, you know, if you're trying to teach a kid to do a role in polling, they don't get it right first time. Would you berate them and say, oh, you're stupid, give up, you never get it right? Or would you encourage them and, you know, get them to have another go at it? That's what we need to be doing with ourselves. I couldn't agree more. So resilience will only grow in that type of fertile land. Yeah. And I do believe it, and I'm repeating, I realise I'm repeating this several times in this podcast, but I do believe that for most people, they need reprogramming in their own internal narrative. And you might actually have to say a different narrative for them to reflect on that. Yeah. And next in that process, again, they can hear your voice. There's a wonderful book by Milton Erickson, who probably was one of the most foremost hypnotherapists of his day, if you want to put it that way, well known in the NLP world, but, and of course the hypnotherapy world. And the book, and I can't remember when it came out, many moons ago now, I was titled Take My Words With You. That sounds like a lovely book. I might get that one. It's the idea that the therapist's words are given, or integrated, or implanted, whatever one's used, or imparted, probably is a better word, or the client to take as a gift. So when they're in the sort of world of stress or repetitive, destructive behaviours, they can hear their therapist's words, which will be so soothing to the vulnerable child, or the unconscious part, that they develop a resilience to find a new way to be. What a marvellous process that would be. And I believe that's what happens in therapy. I believe that we unconsciously, and sometimes consciously of course, we take the words of our therapist and hear them outside often in the world of stressful times, and we start to follow or take those permissions and do things in a different way. And that process leads to integration, and eventually we've integrated a new way of being so then we can let the therapist go. Now that happens over quite a long time, if you like, but I think it's what leads to a different script, what leads to real resilience that will stick. I love that, and I absolutely agree with you. So that's a good book, and it would be 30 years ago, it must be some, oh gosh, I bought that at least 30 years ago, Milton Erickson, a very famous hypnotherapist, and take my words with you. And it's the idea that we have a supportive, so that's why I started off this podcast talking about a supportive internal framework that will provide the fertile land and the sunshine to grow and build a resilience that will be there for our journey through life. It's such a powerful thing to have possession of resilience when you think about, do you know what to mean? Yeah. We have to build resilience, and in the therapy client dialogue, it will start with you. So when you talked earlier about in your, did you say members should club in you? Yeah. About these things and giving them different gifts of narratives. So when they leave, go about their life and stressful times come or don't come or whatever way you want to look at this, they will reflect on those words and hear those words and may give them the support to do something different. And that is the fertile ground of continued resilience. That's where the sun shines. I went on holiday recently or I was just thinking. And I got some sunshine on my back and I felt the sun on my back and that's where resilience grows in the light. And that's fantastic. That's why you hear this, the compassion, the love, the care of the other, and that will breed resilience. I think it's underestimated actually that, Bob. I think we should have that as a bumper sticker that resilience grows in the light and not in the darkness or whatever. It sounds so simple when you say it, but it's such a profound thing that we need an environment where we can grow and flourish in order to have resilience. We need to feel the sun on our back. We need to feel the warmth in our souls. That's been a bit of a deep one, this one, Bob, but I've enjoyed it. That's quite emotional actually. Well, that's where the resilience will grow. And he knows not resilience like plaster's the fall-off. There'll be resilience through the whole journey of our lifetime. And what will happen then is we'll pick people externally that are supportive and protective with us, as well as our internal protective self. Yeah. Following on from Milton Erickson and his book, Take My Work With You, I think for me, whether this is just my thing or not, if it resonates with me on a visceral level, if I'm emotional about something, then it kind of goes in. You know that bullseye that you were talking about? I don't know whether it was in the last episode or not. That to me is a bullseye and that'll stay with me forever. That's real resilience. Not resilience that just drops away in the twilight of time. It's a great substance to this. Yeah, absolutely. And you can build on it layer upon layer upon layer. It's not just like it happens the once and you're resilient for the rest of your life. It's feeding that and watering it and keeping it going. Yeah. And here's another example for you. So another place I went to recently, in the mornings around my walks, you know, it wasn't to do the 10,000 steps actually. But there was to get to this other layer. So here's the sea and the sand and then to go up to the actual ever sort of, actually, it was along some dunes with 70 steps. Wow. That's a lot of steps though. To get up the stairs with 70 of the bloody steps. So the sort of pathway if you like to the dunes that I was going to. And anyway, the first day, I was there 14 days, the first day, I ran up or attempted to run up and I did run up to the 70 steps. Yeah, I did. And I had to stop for two minutes. So I stopped the recording of the steps and things. Anyway, I was there 14 days, so it was 14 times I did these steps. But, you know, not only did I want to do it, so I didn't, you know, whether I said two minutes at top or three minutes at top, but the achievement and purpose, I needed to really have support internally and say things to myself to enable myself to actually continue on the journey and enjoy it. Yeah. Whether I took three minutes at the top, take my breath or five minutes, it wasn't so much that. It was more that I got to a place where it wasn't telling myself off on the journey. So one thing that's absolutely certain, anyway, is that resilience will only grow in lightness, not in the toxicity of a dark narrative. We have lightness on our soul. I really believe that. And we're also there from there. We will find friends and companions that will do the 70 steps with us. Yeah. I think that's important as well, finding like-minded people that are on the journey along with us and kind of are compassionate to themselves and others and, you know, kind of build up a tribe of people that are on the same journey. It's important. Yeah. Different community. Yeah. Different community of people. Because if we stay in that community of darkness and toxicity, we'll never even get at the steps in the first place, or we'll force ourselves and we'll get to the top and then we'll have to start again and it'll go around. And there'll be no enjoyment, no purpose, no love, no compassion. And life's a bit miserable from that place. Yeah. We need a community of well-supporting people. As I said, I wrote a book 30 or 40 years ago, which is about our best friend, if you like, is the friend within us. Yeah. Because they're always with us, we can't get rid of them. We can't rid of them. So I'm sure talking about resilience is, and I think, you know, the therapy space, if you like, is a space to be able to, and your membership club, by the way, sounded like it was a similar space, to start building up a sense of resilience and supportive resilience. Yeah, absolutely. Sounds like a good spatial membership group. I love it. And I'm always saying to them that they give me as much as what I give them. It's a very mutual two-way street in the membership. It's lovely. You sound like a good job. Yes. I wouldn't change it for the world. So until next time, Bob, where we will be discussed, I'm really looking forward to this next one because I don't know whether it's an age thing with me, but I do this a lot. Dealing with your own emotions in therapy. Well, have we not done a podcast on that yet? I don't think so. If we have, I don't know. I'll check it over. If we have, we'll just change it to another title. If it happens, well, I mean, that is a big subject. Well, if we have, I need to go back and listen to our own podcast then, Bob. Share with you, by the way. I've come up with another 50 topics. Lovely. That's another 12 months worth of podcast, Bob. I've enjoyed it. I've been, you know, as I've been going on in life, I think, what would I like to discuss now and jotted these things down? So so many things come to my head. But when we run out of some, just let me know and I'll send you this list there. Send it through. I'll put it in me, but I've got a little book, Bob, and I write it all down in my little box or send it. So if it's just, if we have done it, then we could even do it again. But either way, that's where we're going to start next week. Okay. Okay. Until next time, Bob. Thank you. Yeah. Take care. Bye bye. Have a week. 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.