 And also not say, you know, you encourage them straight away to, you know, dismantle their other processes. But if they first of all start to see this normal in the context they're talking about, they can see that this is an unconscious process, they can see that that's how they survive. You know, they can move to some compassion and a different narrative, they might be able to see there's different ways of actually handling the situation or at least understand the connection between the two. Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, the actual clue for me is in the title, the unconscious defences, bringing it into a client's awareness that we all have defences that is like you say from the moment we're born, you know, we're trying to not be vulnerable and, you know, live and survive. So it's, you know, we all have defences of one form or another and understanding that that's part of us and being aware of it for me is the first step to then, like you said, not dismantle it completely, but to just understand that it's okay and it's normal to have them. 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 76 of the therapy show behind closed doors with myself and the wonderful Mr Bob Cook. We'll go back to that one. And in this episode, we're going to be talking about the understanding. Sorry, you carry on, we're talking about what? The understanding of unconscious defences in therapy. Oh, God, this is such a wonderful subject because it's basically without this therapy won't happen. Yeah. Really, seriously? Yeah. Well, it might happen, but you won't, you won't be able to talk about what you did and what it was about to understand therapy in the first place. So it's a wonderful subject, I think. It is. And we all, we all have defences and most of them are unconscious ones. Well, of course, if we go back to the birth of the human organism, and of course, the beginning of the psychological journey. By definition, from the time we came out of the womb, and we're coming into this world, we're defending against vulnerability and trauma. Yeah. And those natural psychological defenses. Should we list some of them? You go for it, Bob. Quite a lot, but we'll start off with, you know, things which without these defense systems would leave us in a sorry state, I think. So let's start listing some of the denial. Yeah. So this is a very important, necessary, but in terms of psychological survival. I know there's a whole unconscious process to this post to this I'm talking about. But without denial, we are often left so vulnerable to the harshness of the actual reality around us. Yeah. I was just thinking about, not many things about, let's just pick the Ukraine Russia war, which were caught observing at the moment. So you think about denial. There are a lot of those people on the ground in Ukraine and Russia, we have to deny a lot of existence and a lot of trauma to be able to continue. Yeah. And people that come back from post traumatic situations, whether it be Afghanistan or whatever we're talking about, to get by the most traumatic situations have to deny many things. Exactly like you say it's a defense mechanism. Yeah. We see it all the time. Yeah. You'll see it in your therapy room every day. Yeah. The denial of the vulnerable. Usually it's the denial of their vulnerability. Which in, you know, trauma is really important. Yeah. And just generally in relationships. Yeah. And we can go even farther field and climate change or we could talk about many things, I think, but people will deny things so that they can survive in a soothing way or a way which vulnerability doesn't come into their question. Yeah. And we're all really good at sticking our head in the sand when we need to. Yeah, so I was absolutely we could go on about many situations and denial is a very important, natural unconscious defense to be able to create stability, continuity, predictability for ourselves in a psychological way. Yeah. Or manner. Yeah. Yeah. I'll link in with discounting. That's an unconscious defense system, is it? When we discount somebody will probably might do that. Yes, I suppose it can link into it. What were you thinking about and when you asked that question? Well, I'm not sure whether it links into the vulnerability or not, but discounting the severity of certain things. Which, you know, he's kind of the same as denial, I suppose. Yeah. So we've got this discounting the existence of actual actions thoughts. Yeah. Yeah. Nile of the significance of actions thoughts and feelings. So we have different levels of discounting, which to me really are many ways different levels of denial. Yeah. And I know in TA they talk about four levels of discounting, you know, significance of existence, existence of issues. And I can't quite remember them all, but they can easily be thought of in terms of different levels of denial. Yeah. Another unconscious defense system, which we all do, by the way, is dissociation. Dissociation or definition dissociation is a movement away from a self. And you often, people often describe it, maybe I've zoned out. Yeah. Or I've blanked out. Zoned out is often a very common phrase. I've just gone away somewhere for a moment. Yeah. I don't know any of these sort of sentence constructions, but they're all movement away from the self so they don't have to think or feel or get in touch with uncomfortable things. Yeah. And you can, you can see that happening in the therapy room when somebody's zoned out or yeah, like you say they've gone to another place. Yeah. And they people learn that to do that from an unconscious place very early in their histories. And it's to move away from the uncomfortability of reality. Yeah. And of course, people have been abused, traumatized, ritualized, you know, all these things to survive, they have to move away from the trauma. And so they can express they actively psychologically those may those unconscious, they move themselves away from their body or psychological spirit. Now, you can teach people to dissociate other way. People who are in trauma situations and all these abusive situations just talked about will do that as a way to survive naturally. Yeah. I don't have to be taught that they do it. Yeah. When I go to the dentist, for example, and I hate dentistry, and I've got coming up to have, oh, 700 pounds worth of dentistry. Wow. The crown teeth and goodness knows what. So I look up there and above me is some grids and different patterns wallpaper and different things like that. So I can force myself to count the grids or to count the spots on the wallpaper or whatever it is, and I can move away. I can teach myself to move away as much as I can from the uncomfortability of the reality of the pain. Yeah. And that's become a really well known phenomenon dentistry. To the extent they provide these some of these dentists dentists do anyway. They provide televisions or the provide the things you can look up which have narratives or you can read a book or goodness knows what. Yeah. Yeah. And it's the same thing. They make say, oh, to distract you. But it's in clinical terms, it's a movement away from the pain of the reality the person is in. Yeah. And it works being able to consciously do that in certain situations. Definitely. And if you've been abused, then what's the best way? Yeah. Move yourself in the situation. Yeah. That's the positive side. And thank God, people do that other way to survive. The negative side or the cost later on in life is they continue to do it. Circumstances when they don't need to do so much. Yeah. They they taught themselves. They've learned how to do it. And any resemblance of the same process. Or anything that reminds me of that triggers with that. They can suddenly dissociate. And then they lose that they lose their self really. Yeah. Yeah. Which, like you say, it's understandable. It's a really good thing to do in certain situations, but then the impact on the present. If we're doing that unnecessarily is, you know, on relationships and connection with other people. Yeah. So people have been abused on many different levels. And they've had to dissociate to survive and cope. What can happen in later life when they get say get involved in a healthy relationship. And then sex comes up or intimacy comes up. Yeah. They may have flashbacks. They may get triggered back to their history. And it gets played out in the present. So then sexual relationships were very difficult. And then dissociation to occur. And then the person on the end of the dissociation feels that they're not there. Yeah. And then you've got intimacy issues, communication issues. And then they come to therapy. Yeah. But defense mechanisms are like you say it's for survival. It's, you know, and being vulnerable takes courage in the therapy room. You know, I do think the two come hand in hand in the therapy room in order to be vulnerable. And, you know, talk about and express these things. The client has got to be really courageous to change the patterns. Without a doubt. And I'm always reminded of that. I mean, I watched a television program called just come. It's been on for quite a while. It goes off and then it comes back again. It's a detective program. It's called Professor T. I think. Yes. Yeah. T or Q. I'm not quite sure. He places a guy who was in death in paradise. Yeah. The first detective. I can't remember his name. Anyway, places eccentric sort of. Professor consultant. And he solves these cases. But he also has tremendous intimacy issues. And he's just hired an intimacy coach. But what happens is that the, his past, which was very traumatic gets played out today. And we'll say healthy relationships, but he isn't able to reconnect himself. So he gets triggered back into distrust to fragmentation and intimacy because of possible. Yeah. He's gone into psychotherapy and I think the therapist has said, get an intimacy coach. So it's, so what's really important is what you've just said. That was an example of what I'm talking about. But what's really important is what you've just said. It's just to understand that these defenses are survival coping mechanisms. And they need to be honored. Yeah. Just dismantled. Yeah. I love the way you phrase that. They do need to be honored and giving gratitude and thanks because it's got the client to where they are today. Yeah. Absolutely. That's where compassion needs to come in. Yeah. Another unconscious defense process is splitting. Some people might say fragmentation. Yeah. It's on the same ballpark of dissociation, by the way, movement away from the self, but it's much more intense. Well, is it more intense, but it's where we split off from part of ourselves. And if you, if you're into thinking about things like multiple personality disorder, thinking about things like dissociative identity disorders, they'll talk about the mechanism of splitting. Yeah. It's off from parts of ourselves if you like. And that might be people who have felt really, you know, for example, really guilty about themselves ashamed of themselves disgusted about themselves or what if I know what now it is we want to use so they split off from that part of themselves and create another part. Yeah. You might call that adaptation, but it's a at a milder level. Yeah. That we adapt other people call imposter syndromes. They're all ways of, but they're all part of a splitting process. Yeah. And like you said, there's different levels and severity to it. Yeah, you know, imposter syndrome doesn't seem that bad as, you know, the splitting and fragmenting but it is the similar sort of thing. It's the same ballpark because we split off and create a full self. Yeah. And the therapy is integration of the two. Yeah. All self, real self. Yeah. Yeah. So splitting is an unconscious defense system. Another one would be depersonalization. Have you heard of that one? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, where we again, although on the same ballpark of splitting and fragmentation and moving away from the south. This is where we move away from the south as well. And we, we, I can explain we person who depersonalize will talk about what I feel when I'm in situations. And of course it has its triggers in a person's history. And which are traumatic for me or I feel vulnerable when I feel as if I'm moved away from the situation and I have no feelings. I'm just looking down at the situation. In that way. Yeah. And conscious defenseless we're talking about here are movements away from myself so we can cope with present day reality in a different way. Yeah. So why do we work with this in the therapy room? First step is to understand what you've just said. And I just said is that they're coping mechanisms. Yeah. We need to honor them. We need to stand them before we go any forward or before we go anything else. If we don't do that, we may encourage a person, for example, to dismantle their defense systems. And that'd be the worst thing it could do. Yeah, first and then would suddenly be in a sort of boat of their history without a paddle. You know, they'd have no idea. Yeah. Yeah. It would be the worst thing to do. So you need to find out what drives the unconscious processes, what the trauma was, what the, the history of history of injury was or whatever it whatever we're talking about in some of this history, we need to find out what that's all about first. We need to understand the context of where the defenses were established first, and we need to then help the person what I would call normalize the situation. So they understand that these defense mechanisms are a normal reaction to this. These awful things have happened to them. Yeah. And from that place, they may move to a place where they can get some compassion or different narrative than the one that tell themselves. Yeah. And from that place, they can start then integrating perhaps the possibility of new healthy coping mechanisms. And also not say, you know, you encourage them straight away to, you know, dismantle their other processes, but if they first of all start to see this normal in the context they're talking about, they can see that this is an unconscious process. They can see that that's how they survive. They can see that, you know, they can move to some compassion and a different narrative. They might be able to see there's different ways of actually handling the situation, or at least understand the connection between the two. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the actual clue for me is in the title, the unconscious defenses, bringing it into a client's awareness that we all have defenses that is like you say from the moment we're born, you know, we're trying to not be vulnerable and, you know, live and survive. So it's, you know, we all have defenses of one form or another and understanding that that's part of us. And being aware of it for me is the first step to then, like you said, not dismantling completely, but to just understand that it's okay and it's normal to have them. The whole story is bringing that into their awareness. Yeah. Yeah. And then from that place, helping them to, I can explain, desensitize really to see that there might be other choices to implement in different ways, move to some sort of integration, move to a more compassionate narrative, and to help them integrate different processes into life, everyday life. Yeah. And, you know, as always, it's a long process with things like this, you know, because there is guilt and shame or potentially guilt and shame attached to it and that negative self-talk about, you know, being aware that this behavior exists, they can start to be quite negative about it as opposed to being compassionate. You know what I mean? Why have I always done this? Why do I always ruin every relationship I've been in? It's my fault and all those sorts of things, which is part of the process of moving forward. Yeah. So I think you're correct. Awareness is the first key. Yeah. I think our analysts talked about awareness being the end of the whole process. Psychotherapy came along and said, it's not the end of the whole process. We now need to help the person integrate new ways of being in their lives. I'd like to put something in between the middle. Besides just awareness, I think compassion. Yeah. It's a new narrative. Having been able to have support in their lives will help them move to a different place. Yeah. Because, you know, compassion, self-love, you know, self-forgiveness, all those sort of things are for me really important in the therapy process. They are. And to help that happen, if you like, you have to, by definition, look at their internal eye, where the negative narrative came from. Yeah. Another sort of way of, people often might say, I've always been like this, you know, and then they start to look at how they've hated themselves and XXXX. And often you see part of the therapy is helping them understand that that is not actually those words or the narrative or the way they think isn't an eye. Yeah. It comes, these narratives come from somewhere else. Yeah. That's half the battle if they can move, you know, from an eye position to understand that these narratives are really from an outside source. Yeah. And it can be really difficult, you know, because it's like they're losing part of their identity when they're unearthing all of this stuff. You know, they, I thought this is who I always was. And when we start to understand, like you said, that that narrative comes from outside and, you know, it's not authentically who we are. One, it's a wonderful thing, but also it's part of losing and letting something go as well, which can be really, you know, quite a big thing in therapy. So it's massive. I mean, you're absolutely correct. And I think that I think it's a process. Yeah. Never be an event, can it? Yeah. And there's a sense of loss with it when we, we put something down and we, you know, move forward or like you say, we integrate and become a different person. There's a sense of grief and loss that goes along with that. Yeah. And of course, dealing with the shame and guilt is, which always raises its head. Yeah. All the time. It just, it does for me. It is a really other process, but I think the starting point is how can be aware of these unconscious defense systems and secondly, the normality of it. Yeah. And how they have to survive that way. And even though it might be difficult now, even though we might have to understand and hopefully change things. It was normal back then. And they're not crazy. Yeah. Because often people move to a place of thinking of themselves as crazy or eccentric or unusual or not normal, all these place things. But actually, that's actually really has come from somewhere else. We need to help them understand all that and help them move to a kind of framework about themselves rather than this harsh position they often take, which again, I just repeated this podcast is somewhere they've taken from somewhere else. Yeah. I often, it's surprising I was just thinking as you were talking there now often it actually comes up in in the therapy room is, you know, I often talk about the little you, you know, the little you did the best that they could with the resources that they had available at the time. You need to be, you know, show empathy and gratitude to that. But now, as an adult, you've got, you know, the way with all the more resources and the resilience to do something different. But you've got to, like you said early on in this podcast, you've got to honor that little you. You've got by a miss of the tremendous trauma and toxicity and personal injury that maybe as part of your life back there. Yeah. Yes, I mean, that's that's true. And I often find, of course, that when often when people either through visualization or aggression or whatever mechanism we talk about, are able to get in touch with their younger self. They usually, and I don't know if this is your experience, very harsh on themselves. Yeah. The more traumatic punitive abuse of history the person's had, the harsher they are. Yeah. Which means that the level of abuse is more extreme. Nothing that's really important for a therapist to take into account. Because then what you need to think about is protection for that in the child that the person is now starting to an earth. Yeah. So I use high nurturing channel when I talk to or help person get in touch with the younger self. I think it was a podcast either the one the last one or the one before when we talk about in a child. Yeah. But it's in the same ballpark that you need need to use a nurturing child and you need to provide protection. Yeah. I think it's a duty of a therapist to help the person come to that awareness. Yeah. And, you know, those defenses will show up in the therapy room. They'll be using all the defenses when we get close to them. Yeah. Actually, in TA we talk about drivers and trying hard and being strong and being perfect and all these things that people aren't aware that they're doing. But of course, they're driven that way to survive. Yeah. If I don't. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Well, it won't be anything different. Because we have to work with people who are not aware that they can't. But I'm sure that the people are not aware that they're doing. And but of course, they're driven that way to survive. Yeah. If I don't. I don't know if I'm not pleasing people. Then I'll get hit. Yeah. You know, so I'm going to make damn sure that I'm going to get on in a way which isn't traumatic to me. Yeah. And again, like everything, there's layers to it. things to, you know, placate us or keep us happy and, you know, veer us away from something that they feel uncomfortable with. So it's, it's like a barrage of defences all the time. Oh, all the time. And mainly there to keep us away. Yeah, with them. Yeah. In some form. Yeah. So it's slow and steady brings wins the race. It's not going in with a battery man. Yeah. Another defences and we haven't mentioned what I'm talking about. But I can bring up it is displacement. So. Well, it's in the area of destruction, but it's to move away from the subject. Yeah. We displace it on to the other. So the original trauma is about X, but then we put it on to the other person. We displace it. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Start talking, thinking, feeling about the other rather than talking, feeling, thinking about us. Yeah. So suddenly it becomes the other process, the other person's process or whatever it is. Blame. Yeah. Talking about so that we don't have to deal with or take ownership of the vulnerable self. When we project or blame or attack one of these displacement activities, they're all parts of surviving. Yeah. Ormatic situations. As human beings, I know we're very complex, but there's a system in place. Oh, yeah. Which is quite comforting, really. It's not a conscious thing that we have all these defences. We don't think, you know, consciously, right? I need to defend against this. We just do it somehow for survival. I remember talking to somebody, a client years and years ago, and he was describing a traumatic situation where he he got his was he driving a forklift truck, I think, and it was going too fast. And he courted the forklift truck or whatever it is on the fence and pulled the fence down and the forklift truck went over. And then the boss came over and shouted to see what you've done. And the guy looked up and said, was that me? Yeah. That's denial. Protect himself from the wrath of the other. And move away from ownership, of course, but basically is to protect himself from the perceived wrath of the other person. Now, if the person rushed up and said, are you OK? Are you OK to hurt yourself? Then there might have been a different reaction. I don't know because I don't know. He might have been reacting to trauma of the past rather than the forklift in the current situation. I don't know. But I do know that the denial was an instant survival reaction from perceived wrath. Yeah. A book. Yeah. Which you can imagine a young child doing that, do you know what I mean? If if we've done something wrong, whether it's an accident or whatever, we do everything we can to try and evade capture, so to speak. Or if your history has been regular occurrences. Of these types of punitive transactions. And when that supervisor rushes up and, you know, shouts at you, then it's it's a trigger to all these other trauma. Yeah, most this type of response. It's not necessarily the one current transaction. And it may be, but it usually isn't used style where those unconscious and conscious defense systems have been utilised many times over to escape the wrath of the perceived other. Yeah. We are a product of our upbringing and our past. And, you know, again, it is just what you said then about all the other sequence of events that, you know, that's. Putting it, you know, in a visual representation for me, that I would pass were past effects, I were present 100 percent of the time. So a client comes in the door and it's late five minutes. And you say to him, oh, there's many transactions. Say you said, I don't know. I can't imagine if they say that, but they might say it this way. They may say, oh, you're late, aren't you? Not in a particularly punitive way, but if the person, if the client's had many, many, many, many, many experiences. We should be imputed punitive and toxic by a. Another person has been out to hurt them. Then they will project that onto the comment from the therapist, even if it was from their adult ego state. Yeah. They will put a project unconsciously. The punitive parent onto the therapist and they'll act accordingly. Closed down, they'll withdraw, or do they do what they did in many situations before to survive the wrath of the perceived other? Yeah, that will then enact history for them, but will provide stability, consistent identity, stable level of stability of script and how life actually works. Yeah, it's interesting you say that because, you know, I would imagine if a client has got that history and they do turn up late, that they're already in that process before they even walked in through the door. Yeah, because they will be perceiving and projecting what the therapist and they will expect the therapist to go to a punitive parent. Yeah, like all the other people in front of them. He and said that when they walk in, even if the person's coming from an adult position, they will already be moving to an unconscious system. Which again is something, you know, as a therapist to just be mindful and aware of, you know, the therapy starts before they even walk in through the door with what's happened to them and, you know, the situation that they're in in that moment. It's starting outside the therapy room. Oh, absolutely. So it takes a long time to actually establish a positive therapeutic relationship and trust between therapist and client because of the levels of unconscious defences and projections that occur between the client and the therapist. Yeah. For a lot of the time, especially with the very disturbed clients, they don't actually have a relationship with the therapist in the here and now. They are having relationships with their projected parents. Yeah. And it takes quite a lot of skill by the therapist and patience to stay with that. Patience, I think, is a good word for it. Yeah. The higher level of disturbance a person has, the more redefinitions and projections that the client will have and the more patience a therapist will need. Yeah. And it's not a one hit wonder. It's replaying it over and over and over again to loosen the hold of the defence mechanisms. They're going to be laying traps. They're going to be testing. They're going to be doing this over and over, which, you know, that patience is needed. It's like at the moment, the race for space has increased again. So a lot of money has been spent on, you know, launches into Mars. I was just saw there was another one coming up and this that the other and they're going to put the man on the moon again. Now, if you can imagine this, if your client has come from the moon or in a completely different type of world, they will expect the world to be like the world they inhabited before. Yeah. So they will transact in a way, behave in a way and feel in a way that they did in their previous interpretation, why to provide psychological identity, to provide psychological stability, to provide a sense of continuity and to show themselves that this is how the world runs. Yeah. If they don't do that, then they start to feel very uncomfortable and don't really understand why this world is enacting in a similar way to the other world. Yeah. And like you said earlier on in this, that leaves them a drift because there isn't an anchor. There's nothing, there's nothing that they can hang on to to a certain extent. Oh, yeah. If you can stay with them, the therapist will become the anchor. Yeah. But it's a process. Yeah. And the therapist needs to understand or at least have the passion, motivation and curiosity to attempt to understand the other world that the client inhabits so they can provide the bridge between the two worlds. What a wonderful way to finish this podcast, Bob, there's a bridge between two worlds. Yeah. No, I really mean that. And it's something I've endeavoured to do throughout my practices and the decades of work I've done to provide a bridge between these two different, completely different worlds or in places that often people inhabit when they come to see me for therapy. Yeah. Then I can maybe provide, you know, a more healthy path for their being in life. Yeah. Yeah, it's a process, never an event. No, I use that saying a lot as well. That's what you've been doing for the last however many years. And I've only, I've been humble to do it. I've been a privilege in my life. Yeah. And it is, you know, to a certain extent, I suppose, as well as that bridge, it's been that constant object, you know, that they can rely on, come hello, high water, that you're not going to, you know, abandon them or be scared of them or they're not going to overwhelm you or be too much for you and all those sort of things that often clients think. Yeah. And I'll go back, I don't know, as this podcast is about unconscious defenses, I think you're completely right. If you help the person be aware of their unconscious defenses as healthy mechanisms for coping and surviving, then you will help them find the bridge or the be able to take you in terms of object constancy so they can find in a way out of their health. Yeah. And I'm sure you're held in a lot of people's hearts and minds, Bob, with the people that you've seen as the constant object and what will Bob say? What will Bob do? Yeah, I'm very humbled and proud in terms of my profession. And, you know, I suppose that has got me through the decades of the work I've done and you. Yeah, I love my job. I love what I do. Yeah. So thank you for allowing me to talk about unconscious defenses. As always, Bob, you're welcome. We have no idea what we're doing next time, so it'll be a surprise for everybody. I can say it again next next time we'll surprise people and we'll go back to giving them sense of predictability in a sense of structure and what the next two will be. But anyway, you're quite right. We don't know at this moment, but they will be fascinating things I'm sure to discuss. I completely agree. Until next time, Bob, thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye. You've been listening to The Therapy Show behind closed doors podcast. 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