 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 Close Doors podcast with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome back to the next episode, episode 139 of The Therapy Show, Behind Close Doors with the wonderful Mr. Bob Cook, as always, and myself, Jackie Jones. And what we're going to be talking about this time, Bob, is when intimacy and closeness can be unsafe in the therapy room. Oh gosh, that's a big subject. I'm glad I put my birthday jumper on for it. My wife bought me this lovely jumper I've got now for this cold weather we've got. And it's one of my favourite jumpers. And when I'm thinking of this subject empathy and nurture, and this jumper's very warm. But just say the title again, so I've got it again. When intimacy and closeness can be unsafe in the therapy room. What a wonderful title. Yeah. And happens a lot what we're talking about here, because I think therapists and counselors and people listening to this podcast may vastly disagree with me, I don't know. But I think that therapists or counselors who believe that empathy and nurture is all that's needed for a successful outcome. I think they're very naive. Yeah. And I think therapists or counselors who believe that empathy and nurture is the prerequisites for psychotherapy, maybe. But you know, better way to look at all this, I believe, is that all the clients that come in the room will have their own unique histories. Yes. And in somebody's unique history, being vulnerable and allowing themselves to perhaps action their desire for closeness and intimacy might have been very dangerous in their history. Yes. Yeah. And they may find it so hard. And rightly so, given the context I've just explained here, to be able to show any new vulnerability that might lead to any closeness and intimacy with the therapist, because the way they survived was exactly the opposite. And it's our understanding of what intimacy and closeness means as well. Well, that's a little bit more because I think this is the key. Yeah. Well, intimacy can be potentially, we can have sex and we can be intimate and things like that. Or being intimate is showing vulnerability of our upbringing and our past and being open to sharing and things like that. And the closeness aspect of it, bringing another person into our world can be seen as being intimate and close. Or not. Exactly. Or not. Yeah. Because it's too dangerous. When I do that, I get hurt. Yeah. So the therapist or the naive therapist who thinks that every client that comes to the door has the capacity for intimacy and closeness, I think is going down the wrong street. Yeah. Yes. And in fact, can lead to a therapist closing down completely. Yeah. Because again, depending on what personality type they are, some clients dipping in and out of contact, never mind intimacy and connection. Just the contact can be very hit and miss sometimes with some clients. Yeah. Let me tell you a story. It came actually from a colleague of mine who I've known for many, many years. And we were discussing artificial intelligence. Oh, I love that. In about seven months ago, I was driving along in the car and Channel 4, I think it was on the radio or something like Channel, it must have been Channel 4, was talking about the advent of artificial intelligence. And was talking about using robots with artificial intelligence to take the place of counselors or psychotherapists. And why that hadn't happened extensively was because they were struggling with what? Developing what they called is the people, the tech people, empathy chips. Yeah. Okay. Now let's go forward to where we are from last week when I was talking to my colleague. He's from Canada and he was talking about fact that in a certain part of Canada, which part of he was talking about, they actually had started to replace some of the counselors with artificial, with robots with artificial intelligence and had developed a so-called empathy chip. Wow. And he was talking about this story about a robot stroke counselor who was working with somebody who was depressed and, you know, was displaying all the empathic transactions, if you like. And then the robot had a malfunction. In other words, it stopped. Yeah. And it wasn't because they had the empathy check, it was just because of something else. And then all of a sudden, the client was left without anyone because the robot had malfunctions. Yeah. And this client who had had weeks and weeks and weeks of nurturing and empathy, suddenly, had a diet of starvation and they went away and killed themselves. Wow. Yes. I think that's one area where I don't think robots or machines can ever take our place. I think our jobs are quite safe for the future. Well, therapy is not all about empathy and nurturing. No. And I think, you know, confronting, setting boundaries, helping a person develop a new script on the road isn't always about empathy and nurturing. In fact, it may be the opposite. Yeah. I think it's important to have a template of empathy and nurturing. Of course I do. But if you were just always going to give empathy and nurturing, there's something that you don't anymore for whatever reasons. Empathy and nurturing for me is quite triggering to be fair. You want to say a bit more about that? Because I didn't have it in my upbringing, so I find it really uncomfortable. I don't actually know how to be around somebody that's really empathic and nurturing to us. So it can be quite triggering for me. Therefore it could be quite unsafe. Yeah. Because it would take you to a younger place where perhaps things weren't so good. Absolutely. It can be quite, it feels quite manipulative to me when somebody's being very nurturing. It feels manipulative. Another story for you. I think about 30-odd years ago. I was, this is before Mamitz. This would be 35 years ago. But I remember a colleague of mine, another therapist, I was a young therapist, came to visit me and I had a house in, still in Manchester then, in Fallowfield. And we walked up to the curry houses in the curry mile. And we had to go through some back-end streets, if you like. So we were walking up there. It was nighttime. And suddenly out of the blue came at least three or four black Mariahs. Do you know what they are? Yeah. They're police fans. Yeah. And it was just like a war zone in some ways. The dashing around and police was dashing out of their blue Mariahs. And they managed to grab hold of these two youths. Both of us was frozen in the spot, looking at all this lot. And then one of the police and bundled the young lad into the black Mariah. And the lad started to fight going in. So the policeman said, do you want to go in the hard way or do you want to go in the soft way? And the guy said, I want to go in the hard way. Because at least I know what I'm expecting then. Wow. Yeah. So when we talk about nurture, we talk about empathy, the way you're talking about it, the usual response for people who have had that, the type of history that you're talking about is what's the trick? Yeah. In other words, all this empathy in nurture, it's just I'm going to expect, I expect the worst. I'm going to prepare myself for the worst. This is just maybe a trap. Yeah. Absolutely. So when we're talking about it, you know, when intimacy and closeness can be unsafe in the therapy room, it potentially is it feels unsafe to some clients. Yeah. That's the point I'm making. Yeah. And can reinforce even more their defensive coping mechanisms, more concretized, and therapy will take longer. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's kind of like the not the physicalness of being close to somebody, as in the proximity, it's what that closeness represents for us psychologically. Yeah. Absolutely. If you've been, if you've been brought up on a meal of starvation, yeah. Yeah. Hard then to get a full meal. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. You won't believe it or your stomach is strong. That's it. You won't be able, you won't be able to handle it. Absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, the other side of it is being, you know, having the intimacy and the closeness physically in the therapy room and protecting ourselves against that professionally. Yeah. And so it's okay to have a prerequisite or template of empathy and nurture. But there's a lot more to helping a person with their developmental deficits, their neglected history, their toxic structure. You have to have different ways of attuning and involving yourself with clients. Yeah. Because you touched on earlier on, I think you used the word vulnerable, being vulnerable and things. And I think, you know, if a client is being vulnerable in the therapy room, often it comes with shame. So, you know, they might have a session where they've opened up and they've been really vulnerable and everything. And then the next, they come in and they're completely shut down and closed. I was listening to a, the new Robbie Williams documentary, which has come on, I don't know if you've seen it or not. Yeah. Yeah. I watched the first three out of the four episodes and he was talking about shame. And he was talking about sometimes when he was on stage with 60,000 people in Nebworth or wherever he was. And he was having a panic attack or palpitations. He would feel, well, not with the audience, usually after he would feel a lot of shame. Because he triggered his own history. In fact, all the nurturing and the vibes and everything else at one level is very good. But when he's looking back at his history, often shame comes up. Yeah. And guilt. Yes. Yeah. And when you're talking about nurturing empathy and all these sorts of things, which are likely important in the world of curative health, we must also remember that all individuals have unique histories. And you start a podcast in a very good way, which is, what do we mean by intimacy? And what do we mean by closeness? And for one person, it might mean X. Yeah. And for another person, it might mean Y. And we haven't even talked yet about the therapist's character transfers to intimacy and closeness. Yeah. Well, you don't mind now, right? I have a reaction to it. There we are. There we are. And what they mean by intimacy and what they mean by closeness and what they mean by vulnerability. Yeah. I think I always tend to check in with the clients as well, when we're, when we've gone to a deep place where we are kind of crossing the boundaries of, you know, vulnerability and things like that to just check in and make sure and not have an expectation that they're okay with it. Absolutely. You must, that is really, really important that you don't live in the world of assumptions. Yeah. If you live in the world of assumptions, then therapy will invariably go down the wrong road. No, it's true. Absolutely. If you live in the world of assumptions without this checking in that you're talking about and the phenomenology of the inquiry, therapy will invariably go down the wrong. I tell you which road it will take. It'll take the road the therapist wants the therapy to go down rather than a bilateral, tuned, involved therapy. Yeah. And then all of a sudden the therapist is working with one contract and thinks they're working with another contract and the client is somewhere else completely. And again, you know, I know I probably say this every second episode that we have, it's like the matrix in the therapy room. There are so many different levels and things that, you know, there's you in the room and then there's the client in the room and we've all got our own histories and everything. You know, when you were talking about AI earlier on, all that I was thinking about was how can a robot read between the lines? Because often I think that's what I do in the therapy room. You know, what they're saying doesn't always match the body language. I think it's so important that we realise what you've just said because you're right. It is a bit like the matrix in some ways. There's lots of listed avenues we can go down, a lot of traps that have been set, a lot of testing that's been set. You know, we've got multiple cells in terms of parental interjections and younger parts of the self and all this is going on at the same time. And somehow we need to stay connected as much as we can and involved as much as we can and enquire as much as we can so that we can stay at least in the same dimension with the client. It actually takes a lot of skill. Yeah. I spent my first training for a very long time in transactional assets, years and years and years. I don't know how long, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, probably at least 15 or 16 years before I learned the tools of enquiry, involvement and achievement and thank goodness I did. Thank goodness I started to learn, you know, these tools to allow me to go to the developmental places I needed to go. Without them, I'm not sure where I'd be in the matrix. I do know something though. If I live in the land of assumptions, we'll go nowhere. Yeah. I think that's a really valid point that, you know what I mean? As you were saying that, I was trying to think, I qualified in, well I started seeing clients in 2014 so it's nearly coming up to 10 years now and I'd probably say that it's only the last couple of years that I've been okay to go deeper with clients. I think for the first two or three years at least, I only wanted it to be surface stuff. You know, I found it difficult to go at deeper levels with them, confidence wise I think. Oh, I can certainly think that's true and I went a long, long journey of a psychotherapy training process and a trainer until I met somebody who really showed me how to work at deep levels. So, I think it sort of takes a long time to work out in the matrix where we both are. Yeah. But no empathy, well, where we started right, you know, about empathy, nurturing, intimacy, closeness. It's not that they can be on the safe traps, but I think it's really important that we see each client in front of us as a unique spirit with their own particular stories where intimacy and closeness was the last thing they desired or wanted. It might be what the therapist wants, which is a different story altogether. Yeah, because I suppose at some point, does our ego get in the way that we do want the client to be intimate and close in a psychological way because then it makes us feel like we're doing a good job. Yeah, also we might believe that's where a client needs to go and is a sign of health. Yeah. I mean, one of my belief systems is about contact and how do we contact a person and how do we look for interruptions to contact. Why that's so important is I believe that contact or lack of contact is a bit like oxygen. Without contact, TA words will say positive strokes or negative strokes, people will go psychotic or they won't have a particularly healthy process in life. So is that equal to intimacy and closeness? No, I don't think so. I think I like to think about contact and how people find it hard to contact people or they may contact people through negative process rather than positive processes. And that's how they survived or didn't survive in life. And we need to look at how we can contact people in an attuned involved way, which they can bear rather than turn away from. Yeah, I think that's a really key point that it's not overwhelming for them. Yeah. Because if they start to feel overwhelmed, they'll shut down. Yeah. And you might not even know they've shut down. Yeah. And I think as an exposter carrier, that was one of the things that I became consciously aware of quite early on. You know, a lot of the looks after kids that we had, it was layers of protection. You know, they didn't want to be intimate or necessarily have a connection because one, they thought they were betraying the parents if they made a connection to me. But also it was unsafe. In what way? Again, it's that thing that if you make a connection or you show a vulnerability that it will be taken advantage of. Or you'll be tricked. Yeah, it's a trick somehow. And these are really important things for therapists to think about. And I think, you know, for me personally, I do respect people's protective mechanisms that they've put in place, you know, throughout their life. I don't want to go in ramshod and try and break them all down. Oh, no, I think that's probably the worst thing that a therapist or counsellor can do. Yeah. Because first of all, who are you to have the right to even do that? Absolutely. And secondly, it'll be against all the contracts you will have made. And thirdly, nothing will come of it except that you will help the client repeat history. And this, I want to say, ladies and gentlemen, is why therapy takes so long because we all have so many layers of protection that need to be surrendered. I don't know what the word is, but we need to work through them somehow. Yeah. Yeah, for a developmental relational psychotherapy, the way we're talking. Yeah. The therapy will take time. And when I mean time, I don't mean days, weeks, months. I mean, more like years. Yeah. Yeah. But it's worth it, Bob. Priceless. Yeah. Absolutely priceless. And I think what we're talking about in this podcast is priceless. Yes. Actually, very important for therapists and counsellors to think about when working with clients. Another wonderful one. I'm really looking forward to the next one, Bob. Oh, gosh, what is it? What is it, Jackie? This is a surprise, but it's not an induction in the therapy process. Oh, Jackie, another wonderful title. I'm doing things about them. No, most seriously, I know I put this title in because, well, I won't take the thunder away from this podcast, but there's a lot to talk about. Yeah. And I'm really interested in this. And what's the second one? The second one or the week after will be the importance for the therapist to think developmentally. Oh, well, of course, that's a perfect podcast for me and you to talk about. But I'm looking forward to the not induction one, basically, because it was part of my training, well, my third training, actually, and I found so much importance in it. So it's a really important podcast that I'm going to, I hope both you and I find talking about this useful as well as the people listening to us. So I'm looking forward to that. I'll have to go to the recesses of my mind to see what comes up with the hypnotic induction bit. So until next time, Bob, take care. Yeah, take care. 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.