 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 and following on from the last episode. This week in The Therapy Show behind closed doors, we're going to be looking at techniques within the therapy room. Sounds a bit strange that. I know we use techniques, but it sounds a bit analytical or something. But we're going to be looking at two-chair work amongst others. Yeah, now it's interesting where you started with this, which is the word techniques, because with the move to so-called relational psychotherapy, then some people would like you have started this podcast with, find the word techniques as not fitting into an inverted commas relational psychotherapy. So it's a good way to start what you've just said. Now, you don't have to use the word techniques. You could say tools in your tool bag, but I'm okay with techniques. As long as we have another sentence, techniques that come from the relationship between the therapist and the client and are to serve the best interest of the client. Yeah. But they come from the relationship. Yeah, I like that. So you'll use the, we'll call it technique at the moment, or whatever in your toolbox, from the relationship, not forced onto the relationship. Yeah. Yeah. That's a big difference. Or done at a certain time down the line. Yeah, it comes from the therapeutic work. It comes from the relationship. It's contractual, it's agreed upon, and it's part of the work towards the therapeutic outcome. It's not like hoisted on by the therapist. Some people listen to the podcast and I think about techniques in that way. I don't. I think of it in terms of what I've just said comes out of the relationship. Yeah. But I think it's a really important point to make. It's not kind of like we're on week six. So in week six, we do these techniques. There's not that sort of a process. No, not at all. And in fact, it's the opposite really. I think that you need to get to know the client first. You need to get to know their story. You need to find out all about the person before you start thinking of so-called techniques to help further the process. You need to know the person first. Yeah. That's the most important thing. And you know, following on from a lot of the previous tasks that we've got, if we're talking about imposter syndrome and the survival mechanism and everything, it takes a long time to get to know the person sometimes because there's so many guards up and barriers up and things like that. When you were talking then, I was thinking, I know that sometimes people are quite critical of therapy taking as long as it does, CBT and six or eight week courses that people go on. I often get asked the question, why does it take so long in therapy? And I think you've just said it there. Yeah. And I think you can do brief psychotherapy. Well, I think actually, I think that's a noz in terms of paradoxal use of terms, but I'll use it anyway because I've got a very good book I like, which is by a friend of mine who edited a book on TA in my brief psychotherapy. I think you can do brief psychotherapy, but it needs to be very specific. Yeah. And contractually outcome. No, yes, you are right. I am a long term psychotherapist. I think you need to know the self. And actually, I'll put another way around it because I was in the early 90s, 1990s, I was trained in and specialized in multiple personality disorder or the treatment of multiple personality disorder, which is a acute fragmentation of the self. And transaction analysis in a simplest form is a fragment is concerning the fragment fragmentation of the self into egos, as did Freud talk about. So in fact, I think we nearly always talk about selves rather than self. I know we say understanding the self, but in reality, I think it's understanding the, you know, the different selves we have. Yeah. If that makes sense. Yeah. And we all have different nuances of ourselves. We've all got different parts. Yeah. So how does that link in with the topic, housing techniques and, you know, looking at maybe two chair work? Well, let's start with two chair work. And I've said in another podcast, I think, I don't know if I said it's actually in this one, but I'm going to repeat it. And that is a lot of these so-called actionistic techniques, which are really aimed at helping the person understand themselves or helping the person understand the conflicts with different parts of the self come from the originator of, you know, psychodrama from the year about 1920s. And then people, you know, people like Fritz Perls and Gestalt psychotherapy used two chair technical or a lot to look at the parent-child dynamic or the two parts of the cells, which were lower dog and upper dog. And then TA therapists have used it a lot to look at the parent-child dynamic and the conflicts of the self, which get represented with the parent and child parts of the self. So in other words, instead of simply talking to the therapist, you can facilitate the client to explore different parts of the self by asking them to talk to different parts of the self. Now, there's several reasons why that I think that is very important. Number one, you get away from a cognitive approach in psychotherapy. Because if you just stay cognitively in a cognitive dialogue or discussion with the client, then not always does that lead to where you need to go to. So, you know, you might ask them to talk to different parts of the self. And through that process, you might get to the different levels of motion that go with the cognition. Secondly, I think that it names a therapist to hear the dialogue that goes on internally in the client's head externally manifested on the two chairs. Thirdly, I've added a third one actually, when you, you know, basically the organism our organism is energetically focused. In other words, we're basically energy thoughts or energy emotion is energy. So if you get people to move from one position to another, they're moving or you're encouraging them to move from one energetic focus to another energetic focus. And that can help people live out or get into these conflicts quicker than simply cognitive dialogue with a therapist and the client. Yeah. So going right back, when you're talking about two chair work, you are specifically talking about two chairs and moving from one chair to another. Correct. Yeah, some people use cushions. Yeah, but just for the people listening, it is exactly what it says. It's the client moving from, you know, just what you were saying then about the energy shifting from one place to another. The client actually gets up and moves and sits down in another chair and gets up and sits down in another chair. Yeah. The therapist needs to be like a film director. Yes. I need to be very directive and active in the process to facilitate the person to move from one chair to the other chair and back from the other chair to the other chair and help them and encourage them in a dialogue between the two parts of the self. Yeah. So for example, let's pick, let's pick someone who's depressed. So what you might say to the person, okay, let's put the part of you that is depressed on this chair and the part of you that perhaps used to be not depressed on the other chair. Now they might say I've always felt depressed. So you can say something, well, I've never actually met a baby who was born depressed. So how about I'll put on the other chair your imagination of the younger part of yourself when you weren't depressed. So there's lots of ways you could talk, but basically what part of you that is depressed and one part of you which many years ago wasn't depressed or have you want to frame this. And what does the part of you that used to feel more freer and spontaneous want to say to this other part. So the one part says, well, I was, you know, I had a great sense of freedom until I actually felt the world was so bleak and black. And, you know, I just, it just got to realize people were out to get me. So I just felt so awful about that. Okay. So how about moving on to the other chair and we'll apply back to that. We applied back to that, you know, and so you move on to the chair and you say, look, this part of you is really wants to say that, you know, one time they felt very free, but now terrible things have happened. They feel bad a lot. And what have you got to say back to that. So you encourage your dialogue between the two of them till you can really get to grips with the conflict. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, if you see the depressed part of the self coming out in the mannerisms and the way that they're talking and the words that they're using, you direct them to get up and move into the other chair. You have two chairs. Yeah. One's a depressed chair. One's a not depressed chair. So if they're it's sat in the okay chair, let's say, and the words that they're using and the mannerisms are seeming depressed, you direct them to get up and go and sit in the other chair. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So I, so they will move according to where their energy focuses. Yeah. Yeah. Because sometimes I do, I do need to, you know, experiment and use this because sometimes I don't think the client is aware of the language and the body language that they're using. They think they are being quite positive, but actually everything that I'm seeing is quite flat. Usually one part of the self is waiting for the other part of the self to change. Yeah. So I was always happy until X. Yeah. I was always felt free and relaxed till X. You know, until this happened in my life, I was, you know, the most happy person. And when this happened, I felt I could never continue in life. So in again, in TA language, you've got that triangle victim persecutor and rescuer. They're not real roles, they're psychological roles. But one, but often in this two chair technique, what you're going to find out that one part of them takes the hopeless, helpless victim part. And the other part plays another role, whether we rescue or persecute or whatever. But usually one person, one part of the self is waiting for the other person to change in some way, even if that changes is about saving them. Yeah, like for Christmas. Yeah. Now, somebody who's depressed often talks about having a black cloud over them. So you would ask them perhaps to go and play the black cloud. And what would the black cloud say to the other part? So you get to that narrative or that dialogue that goes with the whole process we're talking about. Yeah, which that in itself, I would imagine is quite therapeutic for a lot of people is separating that part out, giving it a form, if that makes sense, that it isn't just part of them. It can be a separate thing, whether it's a black cloud or a black dog or a heavy feeling or whatever it is, you can put anything on the chair. Yeah. So that but the therapist has to be active here. And has to be active in supporting the in TA terms will be the child again, you know, in often in relation to the parent. But in other terms, we might say the helpless vulnerable part of the self in being more powerful. Yeah. Against the other part, which they will perceive is attacking them or putting them down. So the therapist needs to take an active stance in supporting the vulnerable self against the other. Now, that's because the vulnerable self has given the power to the other part of himself. And I feel usually so helpless and young, they aren't able to say what they really need to say to the other part of themselves because they're afraid of the consequences. Yeah. Yeah, which again, is that drama triangle victim pursuers roles? Yeah. Now, sometimes if we're talking about a really part of the self which has been abused by another by of, you know, abused in some ways, and they feel so so the vulnerable part feels so scared to even talk to say anything back to the powerful images in their heads, then you would perhaps put the other part into a fantasy box or lock the other part up in fantasy. So the other person can have that space to say what they've never said before. Yeah. So it demands a quite a lot of creativity by the therapist. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, it's good because being creative in the therapy room in order to facilitate change with the client is really powerful. And it won't always work with all clients because some are quite logical and might not engage in the process. Oh, I think this is techniques works per se with everybody. Okay. Because it isn't about, it is not. So if, for example, if we go down the place where the person says, well, you know, I can't quite know what you mean, but if your intellectualizes the process and says, well, I'm not going to, you know, I can't talk to a chair or something like that. Yeah, that actually, actually that is, that's where two chair tech may not work, by the way, if that's what you're talking about. Yeah. Where the person actually can't imagine talking to the chair. Now, that's an interesting one because one, it can be a defense statement because they don't want to do, but the other bit is I'm highly dyspraxic and I'm also dyslexic. So creativity is quite high in me, but there are some people where, which I was thinking of Asperger's autism or different, where people are wired in different ways to talk into chairs becomes, you know, an absurdity or something like that. But so you're correct that for some people find that almost like an absurdity, then you probably have to find another ways for the person to get in contact with the different conflicts of the self. You see, I think that's fairly rare-ish. Most people in my clinical experience have been able to talk to the different parts of the self if you encourage them. Yeah. And again, it's a gentle encouragement. This isn't something that you throw on somebody in the, you know, second or third therapy session. No, no, this would be way down the line. Yes. Yeah. They must feel comfortable. Yeah. And you need to be trained in this. Yeah. Well, I'll just go and put two chairs and get two people. I mean, because of the level, because of protection. So that's a big thing I want to say on this podcast that people need to be trained in these types of techniques because if you just go and, well, I'll go and try that, that might be something magically that might work, but also it may not. And we need to think of protection of the client. And that's a really important thing here. So people need to be trained in the use of these techniques. Yeah. And if you want to talk about the training program, you would be trained. Now, it doesn't mean you'll go away and use them particularly, but at least you'll be trained in how to use them. Yeah. Yeah. And it was part of my training. It's just something that I've known you to do. And particularly, you know, I know I've spoke about it in the past since the pandemic. I'm still not seeing clients face to face. So it would only be online via Zoom. And I would feel very uncomfortable doing two chair work with somebody without being present in the room with them. Yeah. So I think it's much better. Yeah. This is done face to face. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you on that because it's such a powerful technique. Yeah. Yeah. So speaking about, you know, it being a powerful technique and things like that, how would you bring a session to a clause where you've done two chair work? Well, because, you know, talking about protection and keeping the client safe. Yeah. So again, you know, I was trained in TA and integrative psychotherapy. So, you know, I was trained in the use of this technique. Now in transactional analysis, you've got three parts of the ego. You've got the parent part of you. You've got the adult part of you. You've got child part of you. The parent is borrowed or assimilated from, you know, the internalized parents or significant other people, which tends to heavy, you know, it gives permissions or is toxic or you can go down that later. You've got the adult part of you, which is an age appropriate to the here and now. And then we've got the child part of you, which is more aggressive and the younger self. The conflicts tend to be between the parent part of the self and the younger part of the self. Right. So though this is called a two chair technique, most therapists would have three chairs. I just haven't mentioned the three chairs because we've called it two chair technique. Yeah. We call it two chair technique because it's aimed at resolving the conflict between the two parts of the self. Right. But there is a third chair, which we'll put a label on, which is called adult. Yeah. So you will put a third chair in the picture. Yeah. And as you bring this to a finish in a resolution of the dialogue, and you might have to revisit all this again, because, you know, the person might not have made a new decision, or they're on the way to making it. Yes. The person to go back to the adult chair. Yeah. In the service of grounding them. So they don't go away, regressed in a younger self, and they don't go away being their mother or father. Yeah. But they go away being who they are. And then you talk to the adult, them in their adult chair, and do a quick debrief. Yeah. Which I think is really important when you're doing really deep therapeutic. Yeah. Yeah. So in a 15 minute piece of work, then you would stop after probably, you wouldn't do much more than about, I don't know, 10 minute quarter of an hour of that type of action is to work, because you'd have to have an introduction into it. And you'd have to have a debrief after it. So the person could go away in their adult and not in their regressed youngest child or in some mother and father teacher abuser, interject. Yeah. Yeah. I just thought it was worth mentioning that. I didn't realise you did it with the third chair, but it was more about how do you bring the session to a close. Yeah. You did it with the third chair. Yeah. Yeah. Even if you didn't do it with the third chair, but I would be a debrief. The idea is that they do. You would, well, I would always ask them to go to an adult place. Yeah. So I would always ask them to move to another cushion or something to and make sure they were the age they are and do a debrief before I ask them to leave. Yeah. I quite like the idea of having that third chair. I think that's good. Yeah. Definitely. And the other thing I want to say is that very rarely does the new redecision, because that's where you're heading in terms of healing. Yeah. So there's an empowerment and a new decision made. Very rarely does that happen in one session. You have to usually go back many times and revisit that process again so that the new decision is integrated into the adult, let's put it that way, so they can have new coping mechanisms and behaviours which are more healthy than the outdated ones they had before, which wasn't so healthy. Yeah. Now we're talking about quite sophisticated nuances of therapy here. Yeah. I wanted to say that as I realised as we're talking, people are listening to this. I'm sure if they're therapists, this is quite familiar to them, but people perhaps aren't or even training in psychotherapy. I do want to say this is advanced methods, if you like. This isn't something you just go away and do. No. You learn usually in the fourth year or third year of training and you will have to become a therapist in it. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, I've not used the two-chair work in the therapy, but I have used something. I don't know whether it's scaled down, but when you were talking then about energy, I have got a client to get up and move when they've been overwhelmed in a session, when they've felt stuck and overwhelmed and there's just a lot of emotion. I have actually got them to physically stand up and move into another chair to get a different feel and to ground them. See that would be a technique. Yeah. Well, I do that quite regularly. That's a technique which might come from your transaction analysis training. Definitely. Yeah. Where they can help more adults or ground themselves. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's why when you said there's always that adult chair in the work, I think that's why I kind of honed in on that because that's how I see the grounding within a session is to go to a more neutral adult place. Yeah. Oh, yes. That needs to be the caveat for all psychotherapy training that they always have. The psychotherapist always has a duty of care to find and it's really, really important that the person isn't grounded in adults before they leave the room. Yeah. I mean, it's almost at the level of an ethical standpoint that there's a duty of care and the protection comes first and being an adult comes first. Yeah. Even if the person feels young, you need to do a debrief so that you can check out that they are in the hearing now and are functioning the age that they are. Yeah. Because it is really powerful stuff that happens behind closed doors in the therapy room, Bob. Certainly this type of work. And if we're going to have the techniques, I'd like to abandon some techniques, which I'm sure you do all the time, but I'll call it a technique and that's giving permissions and number one, and secondly, giving strokes to their techniques. Yeah. I'm sure you could permissions a lot though, you know? Yes, all the time. Yeah. So that techniques, because they are aimed, I hope, at enhancing health in some way with your clients, giving them permissions to be themselves, giving them permission to enjoy themselves, being given permission to have feelings, giving permissions to think and feel at the same time. Whichever permissions you give, you could call them techniques because they will be said at a particular time in therapy, and they will be developmental, and there will be a well thought out reason why you're giving them. Yeah. In other words, clinicals, not just, oh, I'll give a permission. No, I sometimes use permissions in a challenging way. Oh, yeah. But it's clinically thought out. Oh, yes, definitely. Yeah. Totally intentional. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's the same with strokes. Now, strokes might be, you know, a unit of social recognition. In other words, it's positive and it's negative views of recognition, but what I'm talking about is positive strokes, where you are stroking people, you might want to see this as a recognizer, if you want, or for things they do well. So they get some sense of accounting for themselves. And you're helping then, helping clients being able to change their narratives in their head to a kinder, more positive narrative, rather than perhaps the toxic one they've taken on board from their significant person, which actually doesn't help. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. There's another technique. But they're all techniques that hopefully you've learned in training and also, you know, are clinically thought out in terms of when you give them, and how come you are giving them? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No. Just a couple of other techniques, because, you know, on the subject of techniques, there's many of them, you know, dream workers, fantasy workers, how we're accessing the child eager state, all these different ways of doing it, they can be called techniques, but they all need to be clinically thought out and in the service of the client. I like that phrase. I was trying to think of that. Yes, these techniques are brilliant, but it is, I was going to say for the good of the clients, but what you said then is even better. Yeah. And we also need to think about that people may defend against them in many different ways, and that's okay. And you can keep on saying them and doing them because eventually you might get around their defences. But you know, it also gives you the opportunities, the therapist, to explore the defence. Yes. Yeah. So I understand that you think that I might be tricking you when I say that to you. Where do you think that might have come from in your history? So it's a way of exploring the survival mechanisms. Yeah. And again, I just love my job, Bob. I really do. But sometimes when you give permissions, or, you know, say certain things in a session, you can see a physical change on the client. Oh, yeah. A defence mechanism. If you say something positive or kind or not, whatever it is, sometimes there's a stiffening to it. There's a reaction that goes on that you physically see. Yeah. It's really powerful stuff. Yes. And they're important. It's important what we're talking about here because it's the bread and butter of a professional psychotherapist who will learn not only the theory in training, but will, in a decent training programme, have the time and space to practice what we're talking about. Yeah. I put a request in for the next episode, Bob. What's the request? You touched on it and I'm fascinated. You said something about dream work and was it fantasy work? Yeah. Dream work and fantasy work. I mean, it's very, very important for therapists, I think, especially around fantasy work, to work with the dreams and fantasies of the younger self and psychotherapy. I would love to do those as topics. Fine. We'll put them on the list. On the list, as in that can be the next episode, dream work. The next episode, if you like. But, you know, we've got a list of about 30 or 40 topics somewhere. We have. We've got lots. And I think dream work is on it. You can put them wherever you want to put them. Well, that's going to be the next one then. Okay. Yeah. Now, of course, just the podcast listeners. Freud was probably the first dream analyst or dream therapist of our times. And he wrote avidly about the analysis of dreams. So the analysis of dreams goes back a long way. So Freud probably up to young. A lot of the well-known psychoanalysts all did dream analysis. Gestalt psychotherapy. Very well known from dream analysis. So this isn't just a modern day occurrence. This dream analysis has a huge heritage. I'm really interested in knowing more about that, Paul. I don't know how many therapists actually are trained in the analysis and the analyzing of dreams. I was trained. I'll say trained. I don't know how many workshops I did from a Gestalt program I did, but where you can analyze dreams in a specific way. And I do know a little bit about how you, you know, analyze dreams from a psychoanalytical perspective and also a little bit from a TA perspective. So I can't talk about different perspectives of dream analysis, but it's all in the child eager states. That's being bumped up the list. Yeah, but what's even more interesting is, oh, I think if I keep talking, we'll be at wages. Yes, don't. That's the next episode, so if anybody's listening and he's interested to know more. The next episode then, okay. The next episode. So thank you so much, Paul. As always, I've learned so much from being part of these and I shall speak to you on the next episode. You will speak to me on the next episode. You can only dream about that, of course. You will be my fantasy. Now, but we'll turn your dreams into a reality. Thank you so much. Speak soon. Yes, speak soon. 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.