 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 111 of The Therapy Show, behind closed doors. I know we were one, one, one. And what we're going to be talking about today is a therapy by Roat, the inexperienced therapist. I love that title, Bob. Yes. I was saying off, you know, I'd have to go back 45 years or whatever it is since I began. But I fell for a lot, quite a long time that I was doing therapy by Roat. Me too. Because I didn't feel very confident. Yeah. And what I mean by therapy by Roat, it's a bit like, it's a bit like, I played chess for a long time. And recently I've stopped because it takes too much time up anyway. And when you play chess, what you do, there's three parts, three, it's like three games within one chess. You've got the beginning game, which is opening moves. You've got the middle game, and then you've got the end game. And one game leads to the one game, one leads to another game. And psychotherapy, of course, when you first start, you know, usually with your placement clients, you're taught competencies and, you know, in your training. And so you've got some sense of competencies. So that is what you start, it's a bit like the opening moves. You cling on to those things like staying behind the clients, getting contract. Yeah, we have certain things that you're taught. And because of lack of confidence and experience, we cling on to that. That's what I mean by that. And I'm not saying that won't work at all because staying behind clients, getting contracts, therapy being, you know, paced at the right speed, awareness of attunement. They're all very important things to grasp hold of. And therapists that just starts out, or counsellors just starts out, they really have those cornerstones to hang on to. Yeah. Of course. In those early days, I think that it's important for the early beginning therapist to have these cornerstones to hold on to. And they may be the cornerstones that actually develop the therapy. And though it minimizes spontaneity, it takes away risk, but at least it provides security and safety. Yeah, absolutely. I remember in the early days feeling that, you know, therapy was very disjointed for me. I'd have lots of notes and I'd have lots of things planned and prepared. You know, I didn't really pay much attention to this is going to sound terrible. I did pay attention to what the client brought in the room, but I planned for my own peace of mind, if that makes sense. So it was like, you know, if they don't come with anything, what we're going to fill an hour for. So I would have a plan of how it was going to be. That's what I mean by therapy, by voting. Yeah. Yeah. And very important. So by the way, because you're then minimizing your own anxiety. Yeah. Well, it certainly helped me. It's a way of dealing with your own anxiety in the process. And important to have these cornerstones and structures and early plans of the way we see things. And even what you were saying then about, you know, having a beginning, a middle and an end, I can remember sitting there thinking, you know, dividing the 50 minutes up so that it's like 10 minutes to start off with or whatever. And then the 20 minute chunk in the middle and then another 10 minutes at the end of it and how the actual time were and watching the clock to round it up. And yeah, it was very, very structured when I first started. I think it is for most people. And that's what I mean by therapy, by voting. And there's nothing wrong with that, especially if you're beginning. So you say structures to minimize your anxiety, to feel soothed. And in a way, you'll start eventually to move from a less anxious purse place. So you can actually hear the content of what the client is bringing. Absolutely. Yeah. And when you say it like that, I didn't hear a lot of what, well, yeah, I didn't, I wasn't in the room a lot of the time I was in my head more than anything. It's kind of like when you're learning how to drive, everything is disjointed and it's, you know, you know, looking in your mirror and pushing your gears down and doing all of that. And there just comes a point where it's, it's just more seamless. Yeah. It was a fair while, I think, before my therapy was seamless. I'm not even sure whether it is all the time now. No, it'd be odd if it doesn't. But I wanted, I think it's important for the podcast people to think, listening to us. Just to think about if you're still carrying on that process. You see, hopefully as you get more experienced, you'll feel more able to take risks away from the sort of road to all the structured sequence. Yeah. Allow yourself to go into the world of intuition. Yeah. The activity or even spontaneity, if you're going to keep clinging on those, so those cornerstones that I was just talking about, you know, pacing, achievement, involvement, all these different ones, then creativity, intuition, intuition, spontaneity can all fall by the way. There needs to be a sometimes, a sometime in your experience. I think this is a process, never an event where you start to take a risk away from the structured sequence of therapy, which you've been so used to. Yeah. Now, when does that happen, is the bit? I think that happens, as you become more experienced and you even perhaps, you know, develop some of your own style. Yeah. I think that's, that's important is when we start to develop our own style. Absolutely. Yeah. I can remember feeling really exposed when I was starting to try and make my own, because you, that's one of the reasons why we did this podcast behind closed doors, because you don't observe other people giving therapy. So we don't know how we're meant to do it a lot at the time. And there's never one way, but what happens in the training, people, and this is, in some ways there are many ways to train therapists, but this is how I was trained, I suspect you were trained, you learn different theories, different treatment plans, different ways of doing things. I was remembering in my early days of training, that book came out, Personality Adaptations. Yeah. Looking at the different adaptations, schizoid, paranoid, you know, historical. I've actually got that on my desk as we speak. I love that book. Yes, to you today and Personality Adaptations are my two most favourite books. Okay. I do not want you to hear what I'm going to say as a minimisation of this book. That's really important if it's one of your favourite books. So you have these different adaptations and different personality styles. And in that book, particularly, they talk about the best way to work with each particular personality style. So for example, a schizoid, somebody who's schizoiding and withdrawing, you would go a certain way and follow certain channels. And there's three different channels as the open door, the target door, the trap door. You're smiling, I suspect, because you know this book so well. You're describing me to a tee when I first started doing this. I would read that chapter on how to work with that personality type. Absolutely. So a client that sees the world through feelings is histronic. Therefore, you need to make sure that the open door is through feelings and then thinking XXX. And if you follow this path that is said in this book, this will happen and the person will get better. Yeah. And they're great structures to hold on to. Yeah. And I did hold on to them. And to know them and they may work. And that's, and what I don't want to happen, though, is the therapist follows those ways of being or that type of therapy for the next 30 years. No. It's okay to have it in their heads. Yeah. But I think to actually develop their own style, as well as sort of having the security and safety of following these particular processes is also important. Yeah. So even though that might be your favourite book, I know for absolute certainty that you have developed your own style and, you know, it isn't like that. That's what I'm just talking about. No, no, but I can't. Well, as you were talking, I can remember literally reading those chapters on how to work with all the different personality types in my early days. Yeah. And it was a security blanket that if all else fails, you know, to me, and I've got this knowledge, but you do learn to use your intuition and go with certain things that, you know, knowing what personality adaptation the client is, he's always helpful, but then using that, the way that I do it. Yeah. It's a wonderful piece of theory, as is so many other pieces of wonderful pieces of theory. Yeah. You know, the different modalities. But if it becomes your own, if it becomes a black and white safety blanket, you're trapped in your own process. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And everybody's different. Everybody is unique when they come in and to just do the same thing with every client, day in, day out. It's not, there's something that kind of came up for me when you were talking then. And I'm thinking, I actually miss part of it. Being an experienced psychotherapist now, I have just realized that sometimes I lose touch with a client who's new that's coming in, that it's new for them, that they haven't experienced any of this before. And I think I'm thinking though that I miss an opportunity to put them at ease. And I need to start doing that with new clients. Because me being a new therapist, when I was seeing a new client, I think we met on the same, do you know what I mean? Just familiarizing ourselves with the space and the room. And I always offered them a cup of tea or coffee now if they're a new client, but just to give them time to acclimatize to being in the room. I don't think I give them the opportunity to do that anymore. Yes. It's interesting that you can pick up on that and think of yourself, well, this is the loss perhaps. Yeah. When I moved to this sort of experienced place, that you're sort of feeling the loss of perhaps those early days. Yeah. I haven't thought about my early days for a long time, but I think, I think, you know, in the assessments I do at the Institute, I do a lot of them, where I assess, I make an assessment in half an hour of, you know, what they want and we talk between each other. And then I pass them on to a therapist of their choice. Quite often, I say, as they're telling their story and everything, I often say, you know, in the psychotherapy business, two and two doesn't necessarily make four. Even though we can look at like this, this way, sometimes makes five. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I've said XXX, when you go to your new therapist, just take that as a hypothesis. Yeah. A black and white process. And again, I know it's very important for people who are trained to be a psychotherapist to learn these theories, to be able to talk about clinical, you know, clinical work and to a clinical theory into practice. And I know it's a whole process, a bit like that, what you talked about learning to drive. Yeah. And she would do that. And, you know, hopefully in the end, we are able to go beyond these theories. Because one of the things I want to go into this podcast is sometimes if we follow everything by rote, we lose the person in front of us. Yeah. We lose the relationship with the client because we're more concentrated on these theoretical structures. Yeah. I think, for me, one of the things in the early days, and I can actually remember taking this to my supervisor, was a huge fear of mine, what if I get it wrong? That really was my biggest fear. What if I cause more damage in that room and get it wrong? Yeah. They can't fear when we start seeing our early clients. And what did your supervisor say? I think she actually said that you can't do any more damage to them, rather, you know, more than what they're coming with, if that makes sense. You know, you've had the training, you've got all the information, you know what to do. And I think it was, I just needed some sort of reassurance, but that was my biggest fear is that I would, yeah, I would do more damage. I wanted to get that reassurance. I agree with your supervisor. It's kind of like my son, I can remember he was in the military, as were you, Bob. And I used to worry about him and he used to say to me, I've been trained how to do this, Mum, I know what to do. And I think that's what it all comes down to, is having the training. You know, that's the backup that allows you to know what to do in that room. Yeah, I was watching a program on television about the training of the Marines. And when I was in the army, it was the people were those sort of crackers, I thought, forward to actually want to be commandos or whatever it is, at the high level. And I was watching the program about what commanders in their early training to get the green beret have to go through. They're green berry and my God, there are four days of, you know, really physical things that they have to do, as well as using a lot of other things. But what the person said at the end of it, as they gave the green berry to these people who have gone through all these physical trainings and everything else, they said, okay, now you've got the green berries, it all begins, you know, life begins. However, you will have had this training repetitively over the last year, which will be you will integrate. I don't think you said that word, it's mine, and hold you in good stead when you're actually in the field. And in this way, it's the same raw training. That's exactly how it feels. You're out in the field and you've had the training. Yeah, absolutely. So the training is the structures. And then eventually, you will, I hope, start to integrate, you know, your trainers, you develop your own style. And I hope, move away from that by road, or at least if you are going to continue that way, to develop your own style and, you know, maybe take some clinical risks with your supervisor's advice and develop levels of spontaneity in your own way of being in the therapy room. Yeah. But your training is the starting point, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. And it is, it's having that grounding that you can always fall back on, that you know the stuff. Yeah, you're not making it up. You've done the training. Well, Scopied came out. Well, perhaps I won't go down that road. But I think it's very important that training isn't just six weeks or six months. You know, I think to be a competent psychotherapist, you need four or five, six years. Yeah. You need, because of the reason we're just talking about here. Yeah. Yeah. When I look back, there was something I saw on Facebook the other day. I think it was, you know, NLP training in a weekend and cost you $7 or something. And it was, it was scary to think that people would use that and then start potentially to see people. Now, the more comprehensive training, the more competent training, the more you'll have the platform to be able to use your imagination, creativity, spontaneity and all the things I've just been talking about to develop your own style and have your own originality in the world of therapy. Yeah. That might be an interesting podcast about how do we find our own style? What, you know, what, how do I, because I, I often say, you know, to clients, I'm a bit like Marmite. Some people get me and some people don't. And I'm okay with that. I know I'm not for everybody. I think one of the ways, by the way, is having the courage to take risks with clinical support, you know, with the soup. So you, you can talk about the clinical risks or the risks that you're going to do with the supervisor, but you actually take that step. Yeah. And it's always for the good of the client as well. It's not your ego or doing, you know, some random thing in the room. It's got to be for the benefit of the client. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so that's taken as well. I hope, but you are right, there's many narcissistic therapists, unfortunately, who they keep their ego in the room and lose sight of the client. But in the service of the client is a very important sentence. Yeah. But yeah, I think it's good to find our own style and our own unique way of, you know, doing the wonderful training that we all get at MIP in Manchester. And you know, if you see therapists or things, can you tell that they've done your training or where they've had training? Oh, interestingly, now I can. So when I used to go to conferences, well, still go to conferences, you know, go to TA conferences, take that, or integrative conferences, but talk about TA conferences, because I've been in a lot of them. When I, the most important thing isn't, you know, about, well, the most important thing when you're talking about TA therapist is just so somebody says they're a TA therapist. It's like, where did you train? Because wherever they trained will be the style of TA that they then incorporate. Yeah. So at MIP, it's a very relational, integrative psychotherapy training. Which has TA as its bedrock. Whereas you can might go somewhere else, where it's much more redecisional or it's more a shorter or whatever, but it has a different style to it. So yeah, the answer is yes. I could usually tell the way they talk about how they work. Because that's a bit, if you're going to come here, you're going to put relationship, relationship top and you're going to think about integration as the, as the goal for cure. Yeah. And you'll, TA will be the bedrock for that. Whereas that might not be the way to another training institute. The one thing I do know though, psychotherapists have four or five, six years of training before they get, say, UPACP registered. They get a really good comprehensive training to be able to learn and practice and develop their style. Yeah. And again, you know, one of the things that I always sing, you know, the Manchester Institute of Psychotherapy Praise is that, you know, we passed our competencies at kind of at the end of year two, but then we're still in training for another two years. So we're handheld for the next two years, which I thought was absolutely amazing. I feel sad when people go through, say, two year training or one year training, because they don't have the support of training. I think training support, if you like, they left alone, defend for themselves. They haven't, they haven't got that backup of training. Yeah. I think that's so important when we're talking about developing our own style and being able to encompass, you know, therapy by roads, as well as our own unique, original style. Yeah. Absolutely. So you've got your own style and I've got my own style and we're both trained in transaction analysis. And it's, it's a process and never an event. What I'm talking about here. I use that quote so many times, Bob. It's a process, never an event. I've said it for 40 years, but I think it's very apt in the world of psychotherapy. Yeah, absolutely. And I just want to say to, you know, any newly qualified psychotherapists that are listening to this, that, you know, you've, you've got the training, you've, you've done the work. Yeah. That's absolutely true. Yeah. And it, you know, there is, I can remember moments of imposter syndrome and thinking, I haven't got a clue what I'm doing. You know, and that's okay too. It's about taking it to supervision. And it's about, you know, knowing your own limitations. I can remember referring on, you know, if I had a client that I knew I wasn't capable of working with that I would refer them on. So it's, it's about knowing your limitations in the early days as well, I think. Yeah. And I think throughout the whole of my reign of being a clinical psychotherapist, supervision and my own therapy were pivotal in giving me that sort of ability of self-reflection, security and confidence. So I didn't, I wasn't on the road by myself. Yeah, absolutely. I had somebody with me who was part of the process. Yeah. And having your own personal therapy, it's a form of self-care as well. I think it's, you know, it's, it's good, it's a good modelling role to your, you know, clients. Oh, it's, you know, it's absolutely essential. Yeah. Everybody should have therapy, Bob. Totally agree. Yeah. Now another podcast that we did, I think, three, I don't know, a month ago or something, we're talking about was therapy a middle-class profession? Yes. Yeah. And money. So I think you're completely right. Everybody should have therapy. And then there's the whole process of how do people get therapy who, you know, haven't got that affordability, appelless. Yeah. Absolutely. The waiting lists are so long at the moment as well. So I'm not sure what we're doing next time, Bob. I sent you another big list. You've sent me another big list. I've got a few ones here. And one of them is working with loneliness as a clinical condition. Yeah, that's a good one. Another one is loving hating therapy. Let's do both of those. One of my favourite records of all time, the probably, perhaps was why I picked this title, but it's up to therapy, was by Leonard Cohen. And the album was called Love and Hate. And it was all, all the songs were quite, I don't know what they were, but they were about love and hate in life. My dad always said that there's a very thin line between love and hate. And I never understood what he meant until I was an adult. I thought he was spot on. You say it in the therapy room a lot. Yeah. I thought that would be good. So I certainly like to talk about that. And I'd also like to talk about, you know, the concept of loneliness in the therapy process and how it's presented. It comes up and what we do about it. Yeah. Those two good ones. Okie doke. Right. So until next time, Bob, thank you so much. Yes. Goodbye, everybody. And of course, to you, Jackie. 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.