 Well I think, I think he said in the last podcast that didn't record jacking, is that you know he said something about do I account for this in the therapy room? Yeah. And the answer is yes I'll say it again yes because it's not, as you're quite right, it's not just about rejection and being triggered back in the past but it's also about perceived loss or loss in our histories and it'd be very odd not to account for the significance of the day. Yeah because I think what I asked was would you bring it up or you know make a comment on that it's coming up. It's weird because sometimes I think that there's a fine line in therapy on how we direct it, whether we're going to trigger the client by saying something, whether it's our job to bring it up in therapy or just wait and see how it goes. So the conversation we had you know was me asking you would you mention it and you said a definite yes. Definitely. Yeah. 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 88 of The Therapy Show behind closed doors with the wonderful Mr Bob Cook and myself Jackie Jones and today we're going to be talking about relationship breakdowns inside and outside the therapy room because it's coming up to Valentine's Day. That's a good day to have this conversation then. It is, it is. We've actually recorded this once before only I forgot to push the record button so we're having to do it again. So I doubt we'll be talking about the same things as what we did last time but I'm sure it will be just as good. I thought I'd come clean with the listeners Bob we're not perfect we don't get it right all the time. At least Jackie at least yeah okay let's let's hit the button then oh we already hit the button so it'll be okay. Yes it's already hit thank you for reminding me. No we've got it recorded okay you know it's an interesting subject area because mostly when you see people in therapy unless it's couple unless it's couples therapy you're really dealing mainly with the relationship with themselves. Yeah because unless the relationship with themselves is healthy then the external one is likely to break down. To mirror that yeah definitely. So is it possible then for people to have a relationship break down with themselves? I think most people come to therapy that's exactly why they come to therapy. Okay I've never thought of it that way. They come to therapy because the relationship with themselves has turned sour or they've forgotten themselves or they've cut part of themselves off or they're fragmented. If they've got a healthy relationship with themselves they probably won't come to therapy. Yeah because they'll be feeling okay about themselves and they'll pick relationships which are okay. Yeah and over the last few months I've been doing quite a lot of stuff on my own things about self-care and self-love and you know self-growth self-awareness self lots of things about the self and people feel really uncomfortable with anything that's got the words self in it somehow. It feels selfish to people when I talk about self-care and self-love and self-worth and all those things. Do you mean it's like self-indulgent? Yeah. So they feel self-indulgent? Yeah and like if you know if we talk about self-love it's like blowing your own trumpet and thinking that you're wonderful and everything and it's not the case. Where do you think those messages come from then? Well we all know where they come from Bob. Leading up that road? Well that's it it's scripted stuff it's from our background everything comes from our past and you know the things that we hear when we're growing up we kind of absorb as our own beliefs you know and what I've been doing with myself as well as other people is to you know challenge those thoughts that are these my beliefs or are there some that have kind of been imprinted on me or that I've you know just adopted as mine as I've been growing up and that's it's quite a journey to go on. It's quite a journey now I just came up to do this podcast and my wife said where are you going and I said to do these podcasts and she said oh you are obsessed with the reality TV so I said definitely reality TV oh you've just been watching Love Island Australia you've got Love Island England Love Island goodness knows what you might right I do get obsessed with the reality TV programs because I think I'm always so interested in the psychology of all these processes but anyway so if we take Love Island as just one of the many we could pick yeah you have these characters in in in villas and they they they're supposed to get on with each other and you know sort of hook up with each other and the the couple which lasts the longest basically gets to $50,000 but it's not really that's the advertisement the ones which make some really but I like watching it and it's interesting it's how quickly you can see the the people on there that don't have very good relationships for themselves yeah because they're always having to face possible rejection on that show and many other shows like that so relationships with yourselves very very important I'm not surprised to hear what you've just said the people give themselves a hard time if they actually concentrate on themselves because as you've just said the message is like oh that's big headed for yourself I think not only comes from parents by the way but it's often is a cultural message yeah our culture sort of is that way isn't it that's it what you know what's socially acceptable and things like that yeah definitely I think it's worth persevering to have a good relationship with yourself I think so and I think you know everything comes from inside us but a lot of us me included you know we look for external validation to prove our worth which if we don't get it or if it suddenly disappears then that has like that can have quite a big impact on us whereas you know if we know it truly inside that we are we are worth the good things and we are you know worthy of being happy and fulfilled in our life then what's happening externally doesn't have as much of an impact on us that's right and Valentine's Day of course is a perfect one for maybe feeling rejected yeah yeah I can remember feeling really rejected as a teenager because I didn't get any Valentine's cards and probably about I think I was about 13 or 14 sitting on the back step of you know my house at home thinking nobody's ever gonna love me and I'll never get married and I was like 13 or 14 so we seek internal we seek external validation it's so important to us yeah and we seek it even more if we don't get it from a significant others that we desire it from our first two objects is usually our mother and father anyway so if we don't get the validation we need from them we we've not only feel rejected but we feel unhappy yeah yeah so you know this time of year with relationships it's it can be quite you know impactful for a lot of people if you know everything's changed with COVID and you know living crisis and everything that we're going through at the moment but you know what anniversaries or certain dates we touched on this on the recording that I didn't record about you know Christmas and New Year and you were quoting some statistics about you know people taking their all lives at certain times of the year and how increased they are yes if you go into A&E on Christmas day New Year's Day the statistics of people who self-harm or unfortunately at its extreme take their own lives at very high yeah I don't know what it is about on Christmas day but these these days where we're supposed to you know these days are so significant for people are often the days when people feel the most lonely or they feel alone or they feel you get back to difficult times in their own history just like you said there so many millions of people who get triggered by Valentine's Day who are remembering the aloneness of those days and the rejection of those days and often have a difficult day yeah for people that aren't around anymore maybe significant others that are no longer with us you know it can be a time of grief and sadness and all sorts of things well I think I think he said in the last podcast that didn't record Jackie is that you know he said something about do I account for this in the therapy room yeah and the answer is yes I'll say it again yes it's not as you're quite right it's not just about rejection and being triggered back in the past but it's also about perceived loss or loss in our histories and it'd be very odd not to account for the significance of the day yeah because I think what I asked was would you bring it up or you know make a comment on that it's coming up it's weird because sometimes I think that there's a fine line in therapy on how we direct it whether whether we're going to trigger the client by saying something whether it's our job to bring it up in therapy or just wait and see how it goes so the conversation we had you know with me asking you would you mention it and you said a definite yes definitely yeah absolutely I would um because most people have reactions to things like Christmas um Christmas Eve New Year's Eve birthday's anniversaries yeah all those those significant days uh need to accounting for yeah and then the client has a choice whether they want to talk about that at the time or say no I'm absolutely fine with it and continue but like you said at least you've you've brought the subject up and you've allowed them the space to talk about it if that's what they want to do yeah and just imagine Jackie if you're seeing a couple on Valentine's Day yeah if you didn't mention it wouldn't it it would it would really yeah and it's a good basis to bring like you saying about you know when we talk about relationship really down you know that's there's a whole heat load of things that come under that umbrella whether that children or partners or parents or you know work relations you want whatever it is it's not necessarily you know a husband and wife or or partners in a loving sense that way absolutely and I think that that's a very important thing to bear in mind that's when we talk about relationship breakdowns it could be all the all the uh examples you gave just there yeah and more yeah so what what do we do about well a really good example of couples in in a therapy room that are going through because I'm not sure whether we spoke about this last time or or in previous podcasts but one of the things I was always conscious of when we're when working with couples was that there isn't any guarantee that it's going to end the way that they think it will end going to couple therapy that there's always a chance it can be talking them through how to end a relationship appropriately rather than fixing a relationship if that makes sense oh absolutely and always with couples I'll get a contract for whatever it's about so when they come in I check about is this about staying together is this about breaking up is this about what have you come for yeah and that's very important so this isn't about the therapist take any responsibility to keep them together for example so in the contract usually most people say I want to explore you know the communication difficulties or whether I want to be with this person or whether I don't and I will always say well we'll go where we go this isn't about then staying together necessarily I hear there might be a desire by one of you to stay together but this therapy is to explore where this relationship goes to next yeah and if you eventually both of you decide that is about separating I will of course support that and you can have an individual couples therapy to achieve that task but it certainly isn't the responsibility of the therapist to think they've got to keep them together for some unknown reason yeah and relationships are you know they kind of mirror us in a way you know I I always say and I'm sure I got it from my training that you know it's a connection between two people and we're only 50 responsible for that you know interaction if you will the other person is 50 responsible so in relationships you can't give 100% because the other person has to give something back to you and often the communication between two people is the issue with relationship breakdowns oh it nearly always is and one of the things about couples work is invariably they'll go into a process of making you a parent and they want the parent to result to somehow wave a magic wand and make a okay or take the pain away or resolve things for them and of course it can never be that person no no and it's a painful process working through it you know in couples therapy because it's a safe space where people can talk and you're kind of a mediator in that respect that they each get time you know to listen and to speak and and those sort of things but often they say things that they've never said to each other before they've never felt able to or had the opportunity to I think couples therapy is very powerful yeah and I did quite a lot of it and it I was very honored to be part of the process and you know I think I think it needs a specialist training actually couples therapy I mean I know a lot of therapists who do individual therapy and then because of that they feel they can do couples therapy and to a certain extent that may be true but I think there's I think it's really important to have actually specialist training for couples therapy because it's just it's a different art and a different process I found it a completely different entity than what you know individual therapies when I first started I think we we did training on our four year training to kind of cover that but even that I didn't feel like I was you know properly equipped for it when I first started doing it even my chair position do you know what I mean I didn't want to be skewed more towards one member of the couple than the other so to try and make sure that I was central to both of them and you know that they each had equal time to talk and think it's it's a minefield when there's three of you in there yeah yeah and I think I think well I always get amazed when in supervision um the therapist says well I've started to take on a couple and I know very well that I've not had any training in the process so I have you had a training then you've been on a training course enable you to do that oh no it's the same as individual therapy isn't it really and of course we know it isn't no completely different yeah and I think it's uh I think what you said about being neutral is very important but I also think that there's a lot to learn which is different from when you train people to be individual therapists yeah because for me it was exhausting it was very taxing because you're not only looking at the individual's body language and you know what's going on there but you're also looking at the way that they interact with each other they there's like so much going on in such a short space of time it's it's exhausting it is exhausting and um it's also very rewarding I mean I preferred individual group work I could bring a group therapist or individual therapist I think before couples work I don't mean I didn't enjoy couples work or it wasn't something I um thought was for me however um I preferred individual being a group therapist I think um but going back to my point before um they definitely need to have some training I think yeah yeah because I mean or of anybody that does group therapy that's something that I've never I've never done um yeah that fills me with fear and dread because you know my my thought process is that you're constantly putting out fires you know and if I get overwhelmed sometimes with couples then I have no idea what I'd be like in a group situation but relationship breakdowns happen within a group situation as well no oh absolutely I mean um absolutely of course they do having said that in a group situation I didn't take um married couples on or I didn't take partnerships on um I'd send them to one of my other groups also somewhere else yeah so I didn't have the situation you were talking about what about if there's conflict within the group what if there's conflict within the group between people oh that's a different thing I mean if you're talking about you know people having conflict of course I work on what that is all about but I wouldn't take a romantic couple into a group or a married couple into a group no that doesn't mean people listening here may have a different view on that I'm just saying that was my a rule for me yeah and I think it's a sensible rule yeah yeah yeah so so but it's it's interesting because we're going back to the difference between the individual um you know couples therapy but you are quite right I would be dealing with conflicts and breakups and friendships and things in groups and we'd be talking about say or I'll be supporting someone uh through a possible breakup externally yeah but get back to where we started I do think the most important relationship is with yourself I wrote a uh I thought it was a good one of my best articles I didn't did it go to cosmopolitan years ago 15 or 16 17 years ago no longer gosh quarter of a century ago that's a long time but it was called um your most important relationship and it was all about you know be compassionate with yourself and yeah you love yourself because from that position are you more likely to pick relationships which are honoring and loving to you yeah and like you know we touched on it at the beginning I were you know relationships are modelled to us I suppose when we're growing up and you know having a fear of abandonment if I were you know upbringing wasn't that good um and things like that we will take that into relationships that we have with people you know you might find that one person in that relationship is quite needy or clingy and doesn't want the other person to ever go out on their own or do anything you know independent of them and things like that so you know working on yourself yourself esteem yourself worth and all those sort of things not only helps you but it also helps massively in relationships yes and I was interested to hear though it wasn't surprising for me to hear that the people you've worked with in this area uh found it challenging really challenging yeah it's I think it's more the fact that it's it's looking inwardly and doing all that sort of work rather than outwardly and getting validation for it you know we live in a social media environment now so the amount of likes and clicks you get on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or whatever you know strokes your ego and gives you a sense of you know recognition and everything but take that away and it's really difficult for people to to know their true self-worth without it being told to them by somebody else or something else that's right that's right and I think one of the most important things from childhood is to build up what I would call a stroke bank yeah magically so a stroke bank for people listening it's a transaction analysis term again a stroke is a negative or positive recognition so I'm talking about positive stroke bank here so that under stress we can talk to ourselves positively yeah yeah build that up um we can be pretty sort of um empty yeah absolutely and we've got nothing to say to ourselves yeah positive yeah and when things do happen like relationship breakdown we've got nothing to fall back on you know which it is you know it's catastrophic for some people when a relationship breaks down that you know one they don't know how to be a single person and independent on the wrong but it just reinforces all the negative things that they think about themselves and it you know it can be really difficult that's right so I teach people or work towards people being interdependent yeah rather than the dependent or symbiotically enmeshed yeah so it helps if they've got a good relationship with themselves though so they can focus on you know being interdependent well ended or symbiotic yeah definitely but they need to be able to have a positive narrative to themselves and they need to be able to treat themselves compassionately I think for that to happen yeah and I think that's that's a really good point is you know often we find it a lot easier to be compassionate towards other people whereas not necessarily with ourselves you know if we make a mistake or we get it wrong or or anything like that we're usually really good at beating ourselves up as opposed to you know yeah being compassionate and if we knew a better way we would have done it a different way I'm sure absolutely and another thing to look for when we're in this area is loss and loss and abandonment and neglect in childhood yeah I was just thinking of my daughter who was very attached to a her young friend and very early on I think let me talk about six or seven this year this friend that she'd attached to left and left the country now because their parents were from another place and Jessica got so upset and I think that if we carry those abandonments or we think in some ways we're fault for people leaving us we often find it very triggering yeah someone's gonna leave or we think somebody you know is going to abandon us when in fact they might not be at all but we put that situation onto the relationship yeah then it can become very unhealthy yeah and particularly when we're young you know and vulnerable the slightest thing can feel like abandonment you know if your best friend doesn't turn up one day for school because they're ill it's you know it's a big deal to some children particularly if they've only got one or two friends at school yeah yeah and if they're only children as well I think they don't um for a very early age they don't learn to do central tasks if they're important for relationships like sharing maybe yeah learning things that they would bounce off their sisters or brothers or other friends they play out fantasies in their own heads rather than they're learning these developmental tasks which are needed for relationships yeah so these are things as a therapist you go back to when you when you're exploring maybe relationship breakdowns which should be reported by the individual therapy yeah yeah and you know Valentine's Day and you're being in therapy is an opportunity to go back and to to revisit some of those things about the past and you know how relationships were modelled to us if you know if we've got parents that are constantly arguing and you know one of the things I used to say a lot with with my clients is often as children growing up we see we see the arguments we see the you know the the shouting and and all those sort of things I'm kind of talking personally now about my parents but I never saw the make-ups and the come back together's so I never knew what happened it was like we have a massive argument we don't speak to each other for ages and then suddenly everything's back to normal so I never really knew the process of talking and communicating and sorting out a problem it just was a problem and then it wasn't a problem yeah these are all things to explore I think in therapy when we look at breakdowns in relationships or relationships staying together another area is validation yes yeah so for example well let's take Valentine's Day I don't think you I don't think a healthy relationship is about waiting for one year to get validation exactly yeah I think a healthy relationship is when you celebrate each other each day or each week or at least every I think I was going to say monthly but I think I would I teach my clients to concentrate on celebration in the relationship regularly rather than you know having to wait a year for example which I think is very extreme yeah I can remember I'm you know my my daughter and my son-in-law are both in the military and before they got married they used to go and see Padre and they did I think it was a six or eight week course if you want to call it that on relationships and they used to go through different activities every week you know with each other because you know the percentages of breakdowns of marriages in the military is is higher than you know the general population or whatever and even now to this day one of the things they do every single day is to tell each other three good things that have happened that day and three not so good things that have happened that day they sit down and eat the meal and it's just a conversation between the two of them and I love that I think it's an amazing thing to do oh I think it's wonderful yeah because we don't you know it takes them five minutes if that to do it but it's just that time to connect and to regroup and you know get everything out from whatever's gone on during the day and just get back into being a couple again wonderful I mean as a therapist we're dealing with relationships all the time we're dealing with the relationship between ourselves yeah we're dealing with relationships that are externally we deal with fantasy relationships we deal with relationships that have gone and passed we deal with the loss of relationships we deal with the fear of relationships ending we deal with the projection people have on other relationships we deal with the jealousy we deal with envy we deal with competitiveness yeah I probably could go on and on for a lot longer yeah but these are things we do all the time so if you are listening and you're a therapist don't be you know afraid to watch the subject it's coming up to valentine's day and talk about relationships I couldn't agree more okay thank you for that bob so what we're going to be looking at in the next episode is different methods and approaches in therapy and we must remember to record it this time we must remember I will I set to automatic bob oh okay we haven't got to do that again it will never happen again right until next time Bob thank you you're welcome 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