 you know, for me, I can be quite empathic, but if they're saying something that is sad or, you know, a trauma and I've not had a reaction to it, for me, there's something just not right about it. Yeah. And you might well confront that with cards. Yeah. Yeah. For example. Yeah. But that's how I feel my intuition is in the room is when he just doesn't sit right with me. Yeah. No, it's that behavioural. So it's an interesting one, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And again, it's another tool to use in the therapy room along with everything else and to be aware of it, you know, that it's okay to be intuitive. Excellent. 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 74 of The Therapy Show behind closed doors with myself and the wonderful. I'm going back to that one, Bob. I'll stick with that one. Is that? Yeah. The wonderful Mr. Bob Cook. And in this episode, we're going to be looking at intuition and important consideration in the therapy process. Yeah. Wonderful subject. I mean, as I say, I burned the originator of TA, wrote about intuition in 1957 in his book, but many people have written about intuition. Which book, Bob? Can you remember? I think it's just called Intuition. Is it? I need to look that one up. It's years ago. It was 1957, still about 78 years ago. But many people have written about intuition. I remember one of my therapists talking about magic encyclopedia for a long time, ever before I started to train. And after 40 odd years, I think I still think really part of therapy is about, I'm not talking about woo-woo land here when I say magic. I mean, just things such, if you like, it are cognitively more challenging to explain. Yeah. I can remember when I first started training and was very, very enthusiastic with the family and particularly my kids. And I think it was my son that said, don't do that voodoo stuff on me. Literally, that was how we referred to it. If I was kind of, you know, analyzing him or going a bit deep or something, he says, you're using that voodoo stuff on me again. But it does seem like that sometimes. Yeah. And I think for the therapists themselves, they might feel those things. I have an interesting position in some ways. And it might sound actually contradictory when we're talking about intuition, but I think intuition needs to be linked with some intention of clinical thought. Yeah. Because otherwise it can just be part of script. So, you know, when is intuition not script and when is script or intuition is an interesting question. But when I followed my intuition, and I don't know, suggesting some intuitive experimentation to do with, say, helping a person move away from a stuck place or something. And it works. I do take it to supervision to attempt to understand perhaps the grain of truth or some clinical aspect towards what actually happened. Yeah. And I've always found that useful. Yeah. Most often the supervisor and I do come up some clinical thinking and tracing it back. And sometimes we don't. It's really interesting because how do we know whether it is intuition? That gut feeling about something. What do we do with it? I've had it in the therapy sessions and it has played out. And, you know, yeah. But there was a lot of self-doubt with me. I thought there was something I'd missed or that was wrong with me that I felt the way that I did. That's right. And one of the sort of, what's the word I want? When we're training people to be psychotherapists, they often get so hooked up on. And often I think it's the trainers or could be the trainers style or zealots or whatever we look at this. Well, the trainers believe in getting things right and wrong. They sort of eliminate intuition. In other words, the search to get right and wrong, you know, what they're doing right or what they're doing wrong and hopefully do things right by the book or whatever it is, takes away their experimental and intuitive capacities. They're so anxious about being a right therapist. And I think some ways psychotherapy trainers buy into that, certainly at the beginning of the therapeutic training. And also those that psychotherapy training where there's exams at the end and there's evaluations and all sorts of things. So the therapist is very anxious about doing things which are the inverted commas being the right transactionalist. So intuition gets taken away or the risk taken that might think in their heads about intuition. They don't do so much. Yeah, I took mine to supervision and it really helped. My response to something wasn't my normal response and I couldn't get me ed around why that was. So I think it's important to often follow intuition and also do what you did. Which is taken to supervision to attempt to get an understanding of the etiology of the intuitive process. Yeah, because we all have it, you know, evidently it's been said and I'm not sure who says it. You know, as children, we're very intuitive, but we tend to logicalise the older that we get. So we don't really pay much attention to it when we get older. And does that not sort of parallel the psychotherapy programme? Yeah, yeah. Or can do, doesn't mean it has to. Yeah. You know, and it's often the same, well, you've said it, as we grow up and we get socialised and you get normalised and all these things that go with it, we can leave our intuition out of the window. And quite often, I think there's a lot, by the way, the clients to come or the trainees that might come in the training programme who have not perhaps been so socialised or they allow themselves to be more free in their intuitive processes often gets seen as what I started the podcast off on. Some are there in this vague woo-woo land. Yeah. Any thinking? I love that woo-woo. You know me, I'm a very logical person. I like diagrams. I like, you know, this is the process and this is what we do. That fits well with me. So when intuition hits me, I doubt it. I really struggle with my own intuitive parts. I need proof. What's it about? And things like that. So, yeah, it is, to me, woo-woo sometimes. And yeah, in that woo-woo land, often it's such a grain of creativity. Yeah. Yeah. I like to think of myself as a highly creative and unfortunately, I sometimes can, I can justify it away by saying, well, I've dyspraxic or dyslexic, which means I'm creative. And at the same time, I realise I'm sort of still sort of seeing intuition as a inadvertent company, a wrong process of the little bit. It took me a long time to be proud of my creativity in the therapy process and be to take risks in the creative process. Yeah. However, that is when my therapy skills have been really excelled when I've used creativity. Yeah. And I think I've become more attached to my intuition. Like I said, I took this particular event to my supervisor and she was very supportive of it was intuition. You know, and that we need to trust our intuition sometimes. You can't explain why it's just intuition. Yeah. So, I'm great for no intuition and I also like what you said earlier on. You took it to supervision and attempt to put some clinical meat on it. Yeah. And gave me permission as well that it's OK to have intuitive thinking and thought process in the therapy room. Well, without it, I think we'd have a more sterile type of therapy. Yeah. And I love the way that you said to be able to take risks as well. For me, it felt often some of the creative experiments that I did, often for me, intuitive plays and I thought things like, well, the process will sort itself out. We can learn from the process. So that was part of the permission giving. Yeah, without that, I think my therapy style would be very different. Yeah. I know one thing for certain, it'd be far more cognitive. Yeah. And actually less contactful. Totally. Yeah. But this, you know, for me in the early days, I didn't have the confidence to be a risk taker in therapy. I think the more I did it, the more open I was to. I don't want to say throwing the rulebook out of the window because obviously I didn't do that, but just be open to trying new things. I think intuition creatively, then the same ballpark. And I think it's in the TA examination evaluation sheet that you mark people when you listen to their tapes of their clinical work. And yes, it is. And I was also glad that intuition was there. But it was linked in with intuition and creativity. Yeah. Which, again, we have touched on, you know, in recent podcasts about the different types of therapy that you can do, you know, because if you keep slogging down the same route and it's not working, there has to be some creativity in how to make that connection and that therapeutic relationship and do something different. Maybe that you're not training and just try it. So it's a wonderful world intuition. So I always give my supervisors permission to take those risks and come back and tell me how it got on. Yeah. Because again, you know, if you've got the therapeutic relationship, you will know whether it's paying off or not if you're taking a risk. But like you said, there's always a learning experience from it and to experience something new for us as a therapist and, you know, the person receiving therapy. Yeah. I think I did get quite experimental at one point. I used to have some rocks with different images on and different sayings. And, you know, if ever we were in a stuck place, I'd get them to look at all these rocks and see which one resonated with them and just do something completely different and see what happened. And often they were the best sessions because it opened up a whole new avenue for discussion. Yeah. And often we bypass cognition. Yeah. And often it's the cognition, which might be a great strength, but also a great weakness. Yeah. You know, I would say enjoyment of class are made to have got high cognitive skills, but that's not why they've come to therapy. They've usually come to therapy because they want to find a different way of connecting the cognitive. Yeah. Being brave in the therapy room as well was a learning curve for me. Yeah. Being more potent, so to speak. I had one client that used to use this derogatory term that she described herself as all the time. So I banned it and said she wasn't allowed to use that word in the therapy room anymore, which for me was quite a stand. You know, I'm not usually that forward in therapy room, but it seemed to work with her. So we explored different words that she could use to describe herself. Oh, great. Good experiments. Yeah, it was and it worked out well. But for me, it might not sound like taking a risk with anybody listening. But for me, that was quite a big risk, you know, because it could be quite shaming. But, you know, we spoke about it, we laughed about it and it's banned from the room now. Great. Good. I like those sort of clinical experiments. Yeah, because it doesn't need to be a massive experiment. We don't need to radically change the way that we're doing anything, but just to, you know, go with our intuition and try something new. Because for me, every time they were saying this word, it was just reinforcing the negative way that they see themselves. Good. So I think courage, being brave, risk taking and just exploring different methods of contact is hardly useful. Tell me a little bit about what you meant earlier on when you were saying is it script or is it intuition? How do we know the difference? Well, I don't know if, I think, I don't know where, if you mentioned, talked about in that book, thinking perhaps he did. But, you know, when I say script, you know, we all know what script means. Well, perhaps you don't people someday. But there is an unconscious plan, learning history, that we play out today, we enact out. Yeah, if it's positive messages and positive scripts, if you like, or healthy scripts, we don't often see those people in therapy. It's when they're following or they made decisions, which were survival decisions at the time, but now actually doesn't help them. So they need a different set of permissions and different decisions, rather than the outdated ones. So they've got a, you know, a new script, if you like. But if they are actually coming from a place where they were perhaps surviving in a way that was, you know, so important for them all those years ago, you know, and then help the men, but doesn't help now. It's like, when you start following intuition, oh, so I'll go step back. So the original decisions were not protective. They seem protective at the time, but they certainly perhaps weren't or they haven't been, they haven't been learned protection. So what might see is it might be seen as intuition, might be not particularly protective. Right. So that's what I'm saying. What's intuition and what's excessive risk taking or what might be really part of somebody's script. That's what I mean. Right. That is really a person's, what seems to be intuitive functioning, coming from a place which actually isn't healthy, say, you know, they've not learned to protect themselves or something. Yeah. Does that make sense? I think so. Yeah. Explaining in a way which has some clarity to it. Yeah. But what may appear in intuition in terms of creative expression, whatever it is, might actually be something they've just had to decide how to be in a way of surviving, but actually is unhealthy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For the client, it's healthy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. See, I think script analysis is really important in terms of looking at, you know, what were the decisions they made in terms of their coping mechanisms all those years ago for surviving, which actually got them through sort of. Yeah. But today doesn't help them. Yeah. And again, I know we've spoke about it, but for me, you know, a lot of it is it was the best that they could come up with at the time and it worked because they're still here, but it's not necessarily helpful now. Yeah. Yeah. Keep following that process, which they may mistake as intuition. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Yes. Yeah. It doesn't help them. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the thing I've picked out that there can be other examples, of course, was the excessive risk taker that can be seen as creative and often whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It actually isn't. Yeah. There's something they learn to do because their parent applauded them all, or they never taught the parent never taught them protective skills or protective boundaries. And they enact that out today. And perhaps that's called intuition, but actually it's not. It's part of our script process. Yeah. I was just thinking of somebody who who's into bungee jumping. Yeah. And into, I don't know if this is the right word, excessive sports, but doing dangerous things. It's a word for it, high stimulus. Yes. Yeah. Now, you're just into excessive this or excessive that. Extreme, isn't it? Extreme. That's the word. Yeah. Now, he might say, and he's not here and he hasn't come back from the bungee jumping yet, but he might say, oh, well, I was just following my intuition. Yeah. Example, or something like that. But it's not, but if we trace it back, maybe that he was, you know, not actually modelled any protection skills, for example. Yeah. So that's what I meant when discussing, considering what script and what's intuition. Yeah. Yeah. Living life on the edge. Yeah. Yeah. Intuition or is it something that's been modelled down? Or they've decided it's a way of keeping away from social contact, for example. Yeah. Because it was home, you know, whatever you want to look at. So it's an interesting situation to talk about, isn't it? Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. And, you know, a topic of interest because, yeah, it might be quite a while before it comes out in the therapy room. You know, like that somebody taking part in excessive sports or being a risk taker. Well, they may have had to do that or believe they had to do that to get strokes and admiration on a parent. And if they didn't, maybe they were being ridiculed for being boring and XXX. So they decided that this is the best way to survive in response to the parent-child dynamic. Nice to enact that today. Yeah. Which, again, links into what we were talking about earlier, when, you know, if the complete opposite message and strokes are coming from the parent, that it's all, you know, think about your actions before you do it. It's all cognitive and it's all, you know, logical and the intuition and the risk taking is completely gone. Yeah. Be sensible. Think about your actions. Think before you speak. All those sort of, you know, slogans that we, I'm sure it's not just me that's heard those, but yeah. So that's what I meant by that. Interesting. I think interesting. It is. Exploration. Yeah. Now, it's, I don't, I think, and you might do it, you know, back to that 1957 book by Bernard Intuition. I'm not sure I ever read it. I think it was written at a time when he was talking about ego states and how you spot when a person moves from different ego states. That's a TA terminology, different parts of the self. Yeah. And whether you do, and where intuition comes in versus behavioural observation. See, that's really interesting. Yeah. So for example, often you hear people say, oh, well, you know, human beings, if they allow themselves to follow their intuition, they can make a decision with within five or six sections about where they like people. And they link it into the sort of animal kingdom about lions or whoever make these, these, these animals make decisions within a split second, whether they're going to, you know, be whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And I think in this book, he was talking about behavioural observation versus intuitive functioning. I don't know why. I was quite shocked when you said it was in 1957 or 1958 that there was a book written about intuition. Yeah. Yeah. He, he, before he, and this was before he really wrote his first book about transactional analysis proper in 1961, he was thinking and talking about intuition with regards to, I think, behavioural observation, because he'd just come out of the army. And in the army, one of the jobs he had was around, because he was a psychiatrist, about making judgments for insurance companies, who wanted to know whether they were fit for work after coming out of trauma places. Wow. And he made, he was making observation whether they were an adult or, or that level of fragility around trauma. And I think he was talking about, well, I'd have to read that book. So my sense was, do you make these decisions intuitively? Or is there some behavioural observational skills around the door? Yeah. Like you said, first impressions. Yeah. Back to read the book. But even if he didn't talk about it that way, the book he obviously did somewhere because I've read it. Well, that's it. Yeah. And that was the, the meaning. And it was a long time ago. Yeah. You were talking about these things way back. Yeah. Time. Yeah. Many people have written about intuition, but I haven't read that many. But I do remember, I've got it upstairs in my bookshelf and I wish I had time to go and get it and reread it. But I think it's interesting the discussion concerning intuition and behavioural observation. Yeah. Because for me, that's when my intuition comes into play is when maybe even the body language and the, you know, the spoken word just don't fit together. Yeah. They're in common. One thing in the body language is saying something else and it just feels wrong. Yeah. And often is. Yeah. Or, you know, for me, I can be quite empathic but if they're saying something that is sad or, you know, a trauma and I've not had a reaction to it, for me, there's something just not right about it. Yeah. And you might well confront that with clients. Yeah. Yeah. For example. Yeah. So I feel my intuition is in the room is when he just doesn't sit right with me. Yeah. Now is that behavioural observation? So it's an interesting one, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And again, it's another tool to use in the therapy room along with everything else and to be aware of it, you know, that it's okay to be intuitive. I think I've got that book on eBay for about 50p. Wow. I'm going to look it up because I, even though I say I'm very logical, I do like things like that, you know, how the mind works and what we do naturally as human beings. And, you know, when we get that feeling or I will her stand up on the back of our neck, what's that about? Because it happens. Yeah. Now, of course, some, some line of thought might be, well, whatever it is that makes your hairs bristle is really something in the environment that is linking you to a past evocative process in your own history. Yeah. Now, that's one line of thinking about this. So it is so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. One of the phrases what my family uses, I don't know where it comes from or anything is when you get that shudder and they say, oh, somebody just walked over me grave. And it's, it's like, it's a thing. It happens. But I don't know why it's like deja vu. That's something else that you can't explain when it just feels very familiar. Well, you might be, yes. See, that's interesting. What is that? Am I to gone off on a tangent now? No, no, no, no. I think, you know, let's take deja vu as opposed to implicit and explicit memories, implicit being held in the body in a somatic way and explicit being older memories. So are you just getting in touch with really implicit memories that have been hidden a long time ago? There are conversations we could discuss and maybe podcasts, but they're so interesting when we're talking about intuition. Yeah. That's what gets my old grey matter going, you know, with things like that. Yeah. So intuition is an important consideration in the therapy process. We've decided that. Yeah. We have decided that. We have. We have discussed it. I don't know, but we've come to that conclusion. Definitely have. And I'm definitely going to look up the book on Eric Byrne about the intuition because that I just am gobsmacked that it was written so long ago. Yes, 70 years, right? 80 years ago. Okay, Bob, thank you so much. And again, the next episode will be a surprise. Oh, yes, because I've gone off things off the list. It is next time I'll, when we do these, we'll have a couple in front of us. So people who like structure and like to know what they're going to be listening to can have that pleasure of anticipation. Yes. But I like that, yes. Because some people like to know what's coming up and some people like surprises. Some people don't like the unknown. Definitely. Or all different, eh? We are. We are. And maybe we'll just mix it up sometimes we will and sometimes we won't. Yeah. We'll push the script a little bit. Okay, Bob. Script a bit. Yeah. I care. Lovely speaking. Bye-bye. See you next time. Bye. 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.