 felly'r gwrdd, mae'n meddwl, y ffordd y ffordd yn rhaid i'r ystod yn gweithio'r gwlad yn ei ddalod i'r gweithio'r ffordd. Mae'n meddwl sy'n meddwl y mae'r cyffredin iawn yn fyw rhaid i'r gwell. Felly yn y rhaid i'r gweithio, mae'n meddwl yn meddwl. O, wedi'n meddwl, dyma, dechrau, dyma. Eric Byrnyd yn yr ysgrifftan transaswniol. Mae'n meddwl ysgrifftan transaswniol yn 1961. And if you talk to him I'm sure about endings, he would say it's the, it happens when the person has absolved their contract, in other words they'd have achieved what they came in for and then they otherido a recontract till they end and I hope they end from an adult place with celebration. 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 to the next episode of The Therapy Show behind closed doors with myself and the wonderful Bob Cook. And we're on episode 59 and what we're going to be looking at tonight is endings in the therapy process, which pretty much covers lots of things really. Many, many things. I'm in a good mood today. Manchester City are doing very well in the football. Oh, football. So are we more than happy to talk about endings? Don't talk about football. I don't like football. I prefer rugby. Especially Manchester City. Yeah, just any football. So endings in the therapy process. We could be talking about the client's ending or the therapist ending or endings discussed within the therapy process, lots of things. Yeah. Now, I have been running courses, seeing clients for getting on for 39 years, maybe 40 when I started. 84, 28 years. And for those 38 years, I've been saying hello and goodbye to many, many clients on courses as well, but clients particularly. I've lived in the world of endings and goodbyes. How are you personally with endings? Does that have a bearing on it in the therapy room? Oh, yeah. You see, I think our own processes, what's happening internally for the therapist is always having an impact on the therapy room. And endings is simply part of the internal process for everybody. If you took, I think, eight out of ten people in the street, talked about how are you with endings, they're all going to have their own process around endings. Some of them might say, oh, I'm not very good with endings. When I go to parties, for example, I don't really like to say goodbye. I just go out of the back door and I like to just go out and leave the party if I feel ready to go. Other one might say, oh, I have to make sure I shake hands with everybody before I go. So we all have different processes around endings and it's no different in the psychotherapy room. And it's the same for the therapist and for the client. The therapist per se will have history about endings and beginnings. And I think that impacts the whole process, actually. So I think it's very important for the therapist to know about how they are with regards to endings themselves because that will impact the process. Yeah. Totally agree with that. I'm not sure I'm very good with endings. No, I think people have their different processes. I mean, I certainly have. I mean, I think of my own history, there's a whole history about saying hello, saying goodbye in the therapy room, but also if you go back younger in my life, I have had lots of losses, for example. And when we talk about endings, we always talk about loss and we're talking about change. And that often is, you know, the counter-transferential position that therapists might find themselves in. So, for example, instead of going to deal with the endings per se that may include feelings, they may end from an intellectual place rather than a feeling place, for example. Yeah, that makes sense. So endings is a big subject. Of course, our clients do end of relationships with us and move on, but that usually mirrors all the difficulties or not their own internal history. Yeah, because when you think about it, endings in the therapy room can be quite positive. It means that the client has reached a point where they feel OK to go out and spread their wings on their own without your support. So in one respect, it's quite a positive thing. Oh, if you can get an end, yes, absolutely. I mean, Eric Byrne, the originator of transaction analysis, he wrote the first book on transaction analysis in 1961. And if you talk to him, I'm sure about endings, he would say it happens when the person has resolved their contract. In other words, they've achieved what they came in for, and then they are the re-contract or they end. And hopefully they end from an adult place with celebration. Yeah. Have you ever ended a contract with a client because you feel like they've reached that point? Oh, well, now you're talking about a really big subject which comes up a lot in psychotherapy. And that is a really big subject, you know, when the client may or may not get depended on you. Yeah. So the therapist can see the changes, for example, and they can see a resolution of the contract. Yeah. And the client still wants to say in therapy. Now, that may because they need to have other contracts to other things, but also they often need the therapist sometimes to say, you know, it's interesting we've achieved this, this, this, and the publicist may be time for us to move on. So the therapist themselves initiates the ending. Yeah. Now, I was thinking of my own daughter, you know, or in general, when teenagers or children leave home, teenagers, I mean, young adults leave home, that they may stay for a very long time. And sometimes they need the psychological permission of the parent to leave. Yeah. I think I've been in that sort of situation where I felt parental and had to nudge clients sometimes. Yeah. And nudge them with permission. Yes, definitely. Yeah. And let them know that I'm not going anywhere. Yeah. It's okay for you to experiment outside. And it's okay for you to come back if you need to. Yeah. You take my words with you and, you know, give them permission, the psychological permission to leave home. Yeah. Which is quite a nice way of putting it. Psychological permission to leave home. Yeah. Yeah. And you are really important what you said with the knowledge that you are going anywhere. And you can come back if you need to. Yeah. For me, that's just the safety net. That, you know, it's not like I'm disappearing or ending completely or anything like that. But how do we know whether, you know, real cure has taken place unless the client is okay with going out and living their life. And experiment that. So say the contract was to have a more robust sense of self, for example. Yeah. And we have the parameters for that within the contract. Then it's important maybe we make another contract or the therapy is terminated. I mean, by both pine, both sides from an adult position. And if they're still in the child state, they may need work to do around endings or they may need psychological permission to leave. Yeah. See, I think that's one of the things that I found quite easy when I was working from the Manchester Institute. You know, as a when I just done my competencies and I was still doing my training because we saw low cost clients for a set period of weeks. And we both went into it knowing that, you know, there was a time scale to it. So we knew when the ending was coming. So it kind of took some of the weight and that off both me and the client to a certain extent. Yes, that's true. And of course, in the NHS. Yeah. So that's what we do. We don't generally contract for a fixed length of time. There is no fixed term to it unless it's contracted at the beginning. No, no, that's that's to his private cycle therapy. And again, Eric Byrne talks about this and says, well, there is no fixed term to it. Unless it's contracted at the beginning. No, no. That's to his private cycle therapy. And again, Eric Byrne talks about this and says, well, there is no fixed term to it. And he says, well, you know, a contract is a bilateral contact working towards a specific outcome. Yeah. The outcome is reached by both parties. Then therapy may end. So for him, transactionalised has contractual theory at its centre. Yeah. And it was the completion of the contract. It should be a signal for the work ending. Yeah. And I suppose that's when both parties agree that that contract has been completed. That's right. That's two. And I think it's a very good point to talk about where, where it's time limited. It takes that. You said pressure that responsibility or that structure. You know, it's set up. Yeah. Middle and end, which is different from the therapy, which in the private sector and many of the. Therapeutic processes could go on for quite a long time. Yeah. Of course. You know, the endings may. Evoke some child responses where there was so, you know, so much significant loss. Or so much significant. That healthy endings never happened. Yeah. So that actually could, you know, that could actually bring another piece of work, particularly around loss. And endings in itself. Yeah. And I can 100% see that happening that once an ending is spoke about, it might evoke some sort of a reaction or a response from, from the client around that. That's right. I mean, I think it brought up a very good point earlier on, which I'd like to get back to a moment. And that's the, well, two parts to it be brought up. Once the therapist countertransference about endings, let's deal with that. Let's take a scenario where psychotherapists had problems in their own histories about loss and endings. So they unconsciously. I mean unconsciously play a part in the client staying far too long in therapy because the feelings of the rupture and the attachment of the client. May be hard for the therapist to cope with. I don't think with intent, but unconsciously, you know, may encourage again unconsciously for the client to stay because they don't want to feel the ruptures of the endings themselves. It's not the ending with the clients. The ending way back in history, the therapist is defending against or might be defending against. Yeah, because we're not immune to all this stuff. We're human just like everybody else. And like you say, if we've got, you know, things in our past that we haven't processed or dealt with, then that is going to be in the therapy room with us as well. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about when we talk about endings, lost change, which talk about deep back substantial issues. Are with us for birth in many ways, and the more sort of losses we have, and especially if they haven't been grieved for in a healthy way, then endings may evoke particularly difficult feelings. Yeah. That client or therapist strive to keep away from. Yeah. I think I think that one. No, I was just going to say, I think for me it is something that I started working on when I was doing my training because I was very well aware that I wasn't very good with endings. I've usually say training, for example. I've usually part way through one training and I've already got the next training lined up so one just takes over from the other so I don't actually end one thing without having the next thing already started if that makes sense. It was at that point where I started thinking, what's that about? Why and not celebrating endings either is something that I tended to do in the past. I would just get a qualification or a certificate and put it in the drawer and not really pay much attention to it and just crack on with the next thing. You hear it a lot. People come into the clinical room and you know TA might be called to be strong driver where they just go up one part of the mountain, then they go to the next part of the mountain, then they go to the next part of the mountain, then they get to the top. But what they've left out is enjoying the actual process of getting up the mountain in the first place so they're not stopped to look around at the plateau and the green grass to celebrate the old journey. 100%. And I don't know if you remember the year that I graduated, I came with my full cap and gown because I'd never graduated anything in my life before. I made a big who heart about it because I wanted to stop that process and actually enjoy the process and congratulate myself for seeing it through and graduating and I didn't sign up for anything else for quite a while after. There we are. What you said earlier on again is a very good point to the positive side. You didn't say this but I'm going to refrain. When you end in a positive way you can then say hello in a really healthy way. I like that, that's a really good point. Of course Eric Burnham wrote a book in 1969 called What do you say after you say hello? I think I've got that one up there as well. You probably can get it for me for about five or something but it was a very nice little book. What I liked about it was that it was accessible to the reader but mostly it was around script. It was about how we actually may sort of just carry out our script after we say hello or after we say goodbye and I think that's very true around endings. To get to a healthy place where you can say a healthy hello, it may take some time between the therapist and the client when you end. According to what the therapist you talk about, they may say oh yes, in any endings with my client I take at least a month. So we can sort out if there's any sabotage processes which might stop the client saying a healthy hello. I do think that's a lovely way of saying it because endings aren't always, we're not talking about a death or a fracture or a breakdown of a relationship or anything. Like you say sometimes endings are just connected with changes, making a change and saying goodbye in a healthy way to the old us and welcoming in the newer version of us. There's lots of interpretations as to what endings and beginnings are. There's a lot written about it and rightly so because endings, loss, change, hello are existential issues at the very core of our being. 100%. The other thing I wanted to touch on, because obviously we're psychotherapists and maybe talking with psychotherapists that are listening is about a living will as a therapist, whether that's something that people have thought about. Oh yes, I mean a lot in the UK CP, which is the major regulating body for psychotherapists as United Council of psychotherapy. They stipulate that psychotherapists should make what is called a living will. So, for example, if a therapist suddenly dies or whatever, that their clients, who takes over their clients and who's going to be responsible for the practice and who's going to take over the contracts which the clients have been working towards or working for or working in general. That's what you mean by living well, don't you? Well, yeah, yeah, and even on a, you know, that is the definition of a living will, but even on a scaled down version, if you're in private practice and you are suddenly taken ill, then who notifies your clients on what happens and how does that work, rather than, you know, if we're talking about working with clients that are going through quite, you know, deep stuff and suddenly we don't turn up one week. The impact that that potentially could have on that client. So it is about having a planning place really for certain eventualities as a psychotherapist. Yeah, and the United Kingdom Council of Psychotherapy stipulates that. Yeah. So if we're going to certify people to work at a clinical level, the UK CP talks about living wills exactly the way you do and says all practitioners need to have sorted that out. Yeah. She's one of the things, you know, when you're setting up a suppose, or maybe people that are in practice, it's not something that you think about. No, but insurance companies to. Yeah. I think of benedyn, and so I built in, and also the Scottish Psychological Society, I know, various, oh, towergate, perhaps. It'd be interesting, I haven't gone down this line to check, but it might be part of the insurance, this process. Yeah. The therapist gets living, the therapist get living wills. And we fail and I don't think it was ever brought up on my insurance when I took it out. Okay. I can't remember it being. Supervisors. Yeah. Need to bring it up. Yeah, definitely. So yeah, it was just another thought that I had when I was writing some things down. It's very, very, very, very important because I think to be an ethical psychotherapist, then it's important to have this in place. And it is to the integrity, you know, ethical processes and a duty of care towards our clients. Yeah. Yeah. And I think for me that was the main one is, you know, a duty of care to clients that, you know, somebody knows how to get in touch with them if anything happened to me. Yeah, all that. So it's a very important point. I don't know if many people talk about it, but I think the supervisors need to check up on it. Yeah. If you work within an organization, it's completely different to if you're a one man band and you're working on your own. Theoretically, the organization would pick up the clients if anything happened to you, like the NHS or whatever it is. But if you're working in private practice and there's just you, then there isn't anybody else that's going to pick that up for you potentially. No, very good point. And I'm glad you brought it up for people listening. Yeah. So if you haven't got one, explore the opportunity and, you know, do something about it now. No, no, that's true. I have somebody in the other day, and this is very common, what I'm going to say now, who came in because they were so burdened down. The many losses that had in their own life. That they wanted. We're talking about bereavement counselling, really. Yeah. Somebody who could help them work with the losses and endings so that could say hello to life in a different way. Yeah. I really do like the way that you put that. Yeah. But if we're burdened down with endings and, you know, grief and the past and all that's entailed in that, we're not truly living life. Are we? No, no. So, you know, I passed that on somebody who could work in that way. And I get many clients who come in specifically for these processes. Not all therapists are good at this, working with bereavement grief endings. And it's largely because of their own countertransfers. Yeah. I think that it's really important to have supervision when you're dealing specifically with people who need to do multiple grief cycles if you want to put it that way. Yeah. And on another level, another thing about endings is people who've come in who have had such severe traumas, like talk about sexual abuse or people who have had ritual abuse or multiple abuse, whichever you want to put around this, are people who have shut down parts of their self, which is an ending in itself, and they need somebody to help them who, you know, a psychotherapist to help them say hello to parts of themselves again. Yeah, which again would be long term stuff to, you know, to reconnect with those shut down places, because it's all out of our awareness, isn't it? It's discounting and not really knowing that we've done that in the first place. Yeah. So that's another sort of form of ending and helping the person move towards a more vibrant sense of self and saying hello to themselves again. Yeah. We are talking about very, very big issues here. Now, Urban Yellum, who's one of the most famous existential psychotherapists, he's American, he's written many, many books. His books is called Staring into the Sun. And it's about death anxiety. I mean, that one. Yeah, in that book, his central premises is that from birth, we would always have a sense of or low grade sense of death anxiety. And as, and as life involves itself, and maybe we have traumas, and maybe we don't, but as life goes on, we may get in touch with that death anxiety even more. And then certain losses, traumas, may mean that death anxiety becomes more prevalent, so the person starts thinking about death. They start fantasising it's about death. They start to be paranoid about losses and changes. And in this particular book, which I really like, by the way, there's a 10 point plan on how to deal with death anxiety. Sounds like my kind of book I like a plan. For somebody who has suffered from death anxiety because I had a had a heart surgery two and a half years ago and, you know, it really affected me at these existential levels. And after it, I had a lot of anxiety about death. And I found the book very useful. My dad was the same. He had a heart attack and he had quite a few problems after that. Yeah, with, you know, anxiety panic attacks, those sorts of things, feeling like it was happening again and whatnot. So yeah, I'll definitely look into that book. Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf? Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf. Betoeth, betoeth. Rhyw gael. cemetery most days which is huge cemetery and I often think about death bus because I walk past the cemetery and walk and when I come back I walk past it. You know just thinking about it while you're talking. I never did, interesting I either came by a car or bicycle while I was with the clients and then I had the heart surgeon stop working with the clients so I haven't walked past the cemetery and then gone to see clients but I wonder if I had have done you know if I had a walk past the cemetery started to think about you know certain aspects of death or loss or change or whichever and then I go and see a client. I never did that but there's the counter transfer straight away. Yeah it's often what we bring into the room may have a really really big bearing on the content or even the lack of content which is shared between the therapist and the client. Yeah and again like you say I think you know our own personal life events or you know the events that the client is going through are going to evoke certain things around endings and you know like you say saying hello it's every day is a different day. I was doing some work with clients and a group around the ages and stages by Pam Levin and the cycles of power and I quite like that way of looking at things that everything is in a cycle you know we think of life as being very linear and there's a beginning a middle and an end to it whereas you know there is a wonderful way of looking at things that everything is in a cycle and it's the way it's meant to be. I couldn't argue with that which I quite like. Cool cycles of power. It is it is I love that book yeah. Pam Levin she's a TA therapist or was I think she's still alive and it's a great book. Yeah and the fact that we're constantly recycling you know so every ending and every beginning is just another cycle that we go through in life and I kind of do agree with that. Well yes of course I mean if we look at yes on a much bigger scale we see cycles in everything really yeah I certainly agree with you on that. So it's an important subject it's the one that I don't think's talked about enough and certainly you know I think therapists need to especially if that a lot of lost themselves and they feel they haven't dealt with it um you know may come from a counter-transferential position and they need to I think reflect on that. Yeah and as always like you said supervision take things to supervision if you've got any any issues yourself to work through. So what a wonderful place to end that one Bob and we'll be back for the next episode where we're going to be talking a little bit about self-esteem issues. Oh wow upwards and onwards. Upwards and onwards I'll see you in the next episode. Certainly will. 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.