You're at the Coaching Inn, 3D Coaching's virtual pub where we enjoy conversations with people who engage in the world of coaching. Welcome to The Coaching Inn. Today it's my pleasure to be in conversation with my friend, Jane Tillier, who runs an organization, a company called SoulBody Psychotherapy and Consulting. That's right, Claire. And Jane's also a part-time tutor and lecturer at Metanoia and does some of their training on TA, transactional analysis.
And We've been meaning to have a conversation, haven't we Jane, about empathy forever? Forever, ever and ever. Amen. So just give us a bit of an introduction to you as a human and then let's see where we go. Jane as a human is in her 60s and has surprised herself. So I've surprised myself by taking, what did I do? I called my own bluff really in my late 50s because Age 30, I started training for ordination in the Church of England, having had a career in academia languages.
30 years in the Church of England, more or less, and then called my own bluff because before ordination, I had thought of training as a psychotherapist. And there was something about that never having left me because of my curiosity about individuals. and relationships and human beings in general. So I thought, well, just do a foundation year. And one thing led to another, as they say. And here you are.
And here I am enjoying in depth one-to-one weekly psychotherapeutic work with individuals and also enjoying being invited to consult with groups or Yeah, I've got some fun gigs, as they say. Amazing. And then just recently being, yeah, starting work as a tutor at the Institute where I trained, drawing on my own experience of the learning journey to sit with students who are now doing that themselves. Wow. So some real giving back and some real circles.
Circles within circles, spirals are one of my things. I mean, I'm sure that's true for many people, but there's something about this learning and relearning, which, yeah, I love it. I love the aliveness of it. So empathy. Empathy, yeah. Really interesting. I've kind of thought about empathy over the years. I think... Earlier on, I would have thought empathy was much the same as kindness or compassion. I'd have kind of got, I realized it wasn't the same as sympathy. of, yeah.
So probably as a priest in the Church of England, as a pastor, was, I've been kind of known for being compassionate, warm. My nickname at theological college was Mother Jane of the Divine Compassion. But really in the last few years, I've been thinking about what's distinctive about empathy and why is it that empathy is so powerful? And there's a fabulous article about the history of the word and the concept. really? Which I'll send a link to and you could add it to the show notes maybe.
But it's quite a recent word in English language and it's a translation of a German word. And it's the sort of... feeling into something. Einfühling, I think it is in German. it's, it's a kind of, so it's the, where sympathy or compassion have a with route in them, empathy has an in route. So it kind of requires a bit of imagination to go perhaps into the world of the other and let the other come into your world. It's, it's more transactional somehow. And that's a two way connecting thing.
It is for me. It is for me. And it's not always comfortable. It's not always easy. It demands, I'm sure many of your listeners will be familiar with Carl Rogers and the kind of conditions that he, the kind of frames he put around unconditional positive regard and congruence. And there's a way in which empathy has both of those. If the congruence is missing, it's not empathy somehow.
There's something, yeah, it's a qualitative difference between saying, not saying I know how you feel, which is usually a lie anyway, or at least an untruth. But there's something about saying I'm prepared to let my imagination go into what you might be feeling. And I'm prepared to notice its impact on me as well. Whilst holding you in unconditional positive regard.
Yeah. The fabulous article I read a while ago with the great title, and I wish I'd written an article with this title, The Truth of Love and the Love of Truth. wow. So there's something about the truth of love, the unconditional positive regard, the warm, open connectiveness.
that allows the truth to emerge, coupled with the love of truth, speaking the truth, holding to the truth, holding congruence and in transactional analysis terms, which is the language that I've been learning over the last five or six years, it's allowing an adult adult connection, which has truth and presence in it. We talk in in transaction analysis about empathic transactions. And again, there's something about that being both stimulus and response, co-created.
I'm not letting you get a word in any way, That's okay. There's a cool sympathy fit. Sympathy is a very one way street, isn't it? It can be. It can be. there's a nuance to these things. There may be a moment when sympathy is absolutely, but if it's the only color on your palette, it's not as useful as having other colors on the palette. Yeah, sympathy can be almost more about making the one offering the sympathy feel better than about what might land. At least that's my experience.
I've worked as a parish priest, I've also worked as a hospice chaplain. and sat around the edges of death and dying in ways that have helped me with my thinking around some of this stuff as well. As you're talking about it, it makes me think about an invitation. Yeah. Yeah, that's fascinating because I'm doing some work at the moment on preparing to become what's called a provisional training and supervising transactional analyst, otherwise known as a PTSD in the trade.
And I have to think about my philosophy of training. my philosophy of teaching and my philosophy of supervision, as well as my philosophy of therapy and sort of, you know, unpack all these things. And in discussion with my supervisor recently around my philosophy of teaching, we decided that my style is invitational.
So it's clocking up, but there is something about, invitational allows for the autonomy of the other, rather than... I Over my years as parish priest, I think I was caught a little bit into some of the kind of helper energy, which can I put, I'm putting my fingers out and putting quotation marks around helper because there's something about, yeah, well intentioned though it may be, it doesn't always have the impact that you hope it will have.
And, and there we're onto another one of my favorite themes. again, others will talk about this in different ways, but Just if we can honor intention, impact and interpretation, something happens. Whereas if all we're interested in and concerned about and put our energies into is our intentions, we've missed a trick. Yeah. So, there's something about empathic energy allows for the fact that there's an intention, there's an impact, there's interpretation, there's imagination in there too.
It's like if somebody is talking with me about some really difficult experiences from their past, their life, I don't know what they're feeling, I don't know what they've gone through, but I'm prepared to kind of let my imaginal world... respond and feel. Such an offer and respecting the capacity of the other. Indeed. To do with it whatever they wish. Yes, yes and for me that has a huge resonance with my spiritual kind of training journey practices over the last 30, 40 years.
There's something about that capacity to be contemplative, to offer and to let go. Yeah, it's difficult to put into words, but I really enjoy working with a colleague, Geoff Hopping. We do quite a bit of offering training and we've got a couple of... a two-day workshop coming up next March where we're working on the interface between psychotherapy and spirituality. wow. And he's worked in many contexts as a psychotherapist over 30, 40 years.
And so we have this kind of, and he's become more interested in spirituality over the years as well and done that as his sideline. I've done spirituality and religion for 30, 40 years and had psychotherapy. as my sideline, and we've met and found we can have some quite creative conversations. yeah, so I was in conversation with him in preparation for this and thinking about empathy.
And he's worked in very demanding settings of high security prison with prisoners whose experiences of life are very distressing and distressed. And he said there's a limit to empathy because actually if you empathize with someone whose primary presenting energy is anger and terrible distress, that can have a shaming impact on them. If you're all, yes, I'm imagining my way into how difficult that is you.
Whereas actually if you can be congruent, you know, the love of truth, if you can truthfully say your anger, your... violent energy towards me is having an impact on me. That keeps you in connection more. So that there are times perhaps when, yeah, it's that seesaw almost of unconditional positive regard and congruence that gets caught in empathy, which was another one of Carl Rogers' words. And that person-centered wisdom, you know, there's a lot. richness in it.
And it's not where I've ended up finding the work. I found the work with Eric Burns transactional analysis model, because for me, it's a lovely integrative blend of the psychoanalytic, the humanistic, so more the psychodynamic Freud Jung type stuff. And the humanistic Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls, that kind of Gishtout person-centered and a bit of cognitive behavioural stuff as well.
I think what transaction analysis tries to do is be attentive to all those levels and layers and honouring the unconscious processes, but also thinking some things are about some thought and behaviour patterns that might need a bit of loosening up as well. So I've found it a really challenging and stretching modality to get into. And there are many coaches who find some insight there. to be very useful. Yeah, yeah. I'm not surprised.
mean, and I've met one or two and some people straddle both worlds of coaching and psychotherapy either explicitly or implicitly. It's kind of there. Yeah. And I think if nothing else, there's a 12 hour foundational course in TA called a TA 101, which is recognized throughout the world. you get a certificate at the end to say you've done the T8101 12 hours. And that I think is useful for every human being, quite honestly.
I I think it's a kind of an introduction to how to think about the parts of self and the parts of other and how they interact in a way that's very empowering. yeah, our daughter laughed because I bought her a TA, we bought her a TA-101 as a Christmas present. So she went when she was 19 to a weekend TA-101 and she loved it actually, really, because she was studying neuroscience and thinking about what makes people tick. And it dovetailed with that. So it sounds like we should all do the TA-101.
I'm really captivated by it as an idea. Yeah, I think it's a really useful and well thought through course that's been used over many years. think, yeah, TA is not perfect. No modality is perfect. And I remember one of my tutors in the first year saying, none of this is true, you but it gives us models for thinking and the models for thinking can help us when we get a bit confused and lost. And these models for thinking are important, I think. So yeah, and a 101 can give you that.
Things like people, mean, Some of your listeners will know, I'm sure, things like the drama triangle. That comes out of that TA world. So Steve Cartman, who came up with the drama triangle ideas, he was a colleague of Eric Burns. They were in something called the social psychiatry seminar in San Francisco.
They would meet every week and kind of wrestle with what makes human beings tick and relate to one another and fail in their relationships with one they'd have their flip chart and they diagram. One of the great things about DAs, let's diagram stuff to try to think about it. And I'm surprising myself with the enthusiasm with which I speak of this, because when I first encountered it, I was a bit boggled.
But actually there's something about getting a pen out and getting the flip chart with the person you're working with, not... Yeah. And in coaching, is such a good way of working. I always recommend that they hold the pen, not us. Yeah. Yeah. Cause then it's their stuff. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. There was a podcast. I'll put it in the show notes with Mike White about using models.
and, I'll put a link so that we can, anyone who wants to listen to that can go back to it because how you use that in a coaching session so that you don't accidentally become the parent or teacher. is a really interesting piece of balance, I guess. Yeah. And Eric Byrne's model of personality and self really that includes those three equal circles of parent adult child.
That's such a useful thing to keep an eye on as a teacher, as a coach, as a trainer, any of those things, because it's really noticing. Am I coming from my parent ego state at the moment? Am I coming from my child ego state at the moment? Is that useful and appropriate in the here and now, or is there something that's got a bit skewed out of whack here?
And can we come back into an adult-adult encounter, which is not to pathologize or demonize our parent and child ego states, which are an inherent part of us, parent being what we were taught. what's put into us from outside parents and teachers, the child ego state being the clever ways we found to survive. And then adult being our availability for here and now connectedness. Yeah. That's a beautiful way of describing it, Jane. Thank you.
Well, I find it really interesting because people sometimes, if I say I've been studying transaction analysis, they say, yes, I've done transaction analysis. And they might have done a 101 or a course and an absolutely great. And I think there's something about digesting it over a long period of time where It now feels that something I can talk about with some passion and some interest that is different.
There's a famous story of Eric Byrne sitting on an aeroplane next to somebody who was an astrophysicist and they were talking on the plane and Eric Byrne said to the other guy, know, what do you do? He said, I'm an astrophysicist. And the other guy asked, Eric Byrne said, I'm Eric Byrne. I'm the founder of Transaction Analysis. And the other guy said, yeah. I know transaction analysis, parent adult child, I'm okay, you're okay.
And Eric Burn said, yeah, that's a bit like me saying, I know astrophysics, twinkle, twinkle little star. It's kind of like that there is something really fundamental about how do you understand what makes a person tick. Intra-psychically inside themselves, historic and present and future states inside themselves. and interpersonally between people.
And I've been endlessly curious about that over many years and my study of languages, my study of theology, it's all been about meaning, interpretation, understanding. And here I am still doing it, but with new energy. Yeah, and I think there's an inspiration in your story, Jane, that actually it's never too late to change. direction and re-embrace something that's been your passion in the background.
Yeah. And then what happens as well, strangely, yet not so strangely, if I take seriously what I've learned over many years, I thought I was letting go of something big, which I did in some ways. I took retirement from my Church of England stipendary role. But actually, I kind of come back around to that as well. I thought I was letting go and leaving something, but I get some really interesting invitations to accompany people.
I can't go into details because of confidentiality, but that kind of dual, well, triple, the languages, the theology and priesthood and the psychotherapy, they all get used in some way that's, yeah, it's great. But you had to make your endings for your beginnings to emerge. I did indeed, Claire Patrick.
Yes, I And I say it like that in part because you and I journeyed through some of that, some of the witnessing of stepping forward, not quite knowing where I was going and not quite knowing what either the bumps or the joys were going to be. I've been thinking a lot about courage and endings recently. Having just made quite a couple of big endings. It makes you think about endings.
actually one of the things I thought was how often we don't make endings and things just sort of fizzle out or end or whatever. And how making good endings matters a lot. I resonate with that and I can see real wisdom in what you're saying and there's a kind of passivity that can kick in that allows an ending to happen rather than, I mean, to kind of fizzle as opposed to marking it.
It's fascinating in terms of the training of psychotherapists that I've been involved in as recipient and now offering, there's a lot. of emphasis put on the ending of a training weekend. give time, we give an hour at the end of the weekend for checkout, a kind of sense of this weekend has come, this unit is coming to an end and we honor that. The end of the training year, the end of the training program is given a lot of attention. And sometimes people say, are we banging on about this?
But there's some learning to be had as how we do it and do it well. And I've just been wondering whether that ties in somehow with empathy. There's something about allowing the feelings to be themselves, which is involved in empathy, I think. Whereas, tries to kind of quiet them down. There's something about empathy being able to sit with what is.
And that might be the reality of an ending or it might be the magnitude of somebody's... distress or anger or, but it's something about doing that with courage. Yes. And without accidentally slipping into something else. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I've probably said this endlessly on this podcast, but I absolutely love that quote from T.S. Eliot's poem, Good Friday, where he says, teach me to care and not to care. teach me to sit still. And that's what you were describing earlier, isn't it?
the unconditional positive regard and the other one, congruence. Yeah. Yeah. And the sitting still is so important. There's, yeah, that's taken me to a book by a man called Martin Wells called Sitting in the Stillness. where he talks about the essential okayness of every human being. And he's worked in psychiatric hospital in settings which are quite extreme again in some ways, but he writes very movingly of the recognition of the fundamental okayness of the other.
And again, that's a tenet of Eric Burns that I'm okay, you're okay. And that sounds so glib and yet it's profound when you sit with it. outworking of that as a psychiatrist back in the sixties or late fifties, sixties when he was working as a psychiatrist was his case conferences or his working with patient groups. He'd have a patient group in the middle, sitting sat in a circle, trainee psychiatrist sat around the edge and the trainee psychiatrist would observe the patients working with burns.
And then the patients would sit around the edge and the trainee psychiatrist would sit in the middle and the patients would observe the trainee psychiatrist working with Byrne. So there was a kind of sense of, isn't, he was trying to, I think, explore dynamics around power, oppression, I mean, of his time. You can read some of his stuff and think, goodness me, shockingly non-PC in a way, but. But he was playing with what does it feel like to meet another human being as a fellow human being?
Yeah. And in coaching, the idea of partnership is a long journey. was discussing it, partnership with somebody today, and they said to me, well, what does it look like? And mean, how long have you got? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we know what it doesn't look like. Yeah. Because we can feel it, we can see it, we can sense it. But actually, what does it look like is a journey I think all of us need to go on, isn't it? Really, honestly. Look in the mirror.
What does partnership look like when I'm at my best in partnership? And what am I doing when I tip over into something else altogether?
Yeah. And where that would be explored in TA is in an exploration of symbiosis and the kind of symbiotic energies that can get set up between parent and child or parent adult and child even and what gets excluded in the other if one takes on certain roles and there's a real wisdom about keeping that under review and contracting again in coaching but also in TA there's a lot of emphasis on kind of respect for the contracting is respect for the partnership in a sense.
Yeah. Yeah, negotiating where we're going and where we're not going and. Yeah, yeah. I'm recognising, I think within psychotherapy, it's recognising that there was a great debate in the British Medical Journal, I think, about whether informed consent is possible in psychotherapy. Because in a way, you set out on a journey together and it's a journey of trusting, not knowing where you're going. and exploring together.
So informed consent is quite difficult, but Bern introduced the idea of kind of re-contracting that it's a moment by moment almost checking in and keeping an eye on. I'm sat in my, what I call my soul shed and the rain is pouring on the roof. I don't know if you can hear it, but I'm sat with compost bins behind me. And if you'll excuse the profanity, I think the work I do is about Let's see who should as whose and let's see if we can allow time and space for ship to turn into compost. So, yeah.
And the fact that I've done a lot of work over the years, kind of attending to my own ship as it were, through years of therapy and my own kind of wrestlings means I kind of am alert or.
try my best with supervision and study and continuing reflection to be alert to whose shit is whose because it might be mine, it might be yours, it might be society's, it might be historical, it might be an institution that we're all involved in, know, there's kind of, it's like there's layers of it and it can, I guess, the Christian part of me from, you know, years of being formed in the Christian tradition, I believe redemption is always possible, I think.
shit can be turned to compost in ways beyond our imagining. But I'm not here to preach. I'll make a great title for a book. Shit to compost. Yeah, I think it was Carl Jung who first said it. I don't claim any special. I think that was Carl Jung's image originally. Yeah. Because he was, you know, he spoke a lot about the shadow of a self actually being where the gold is somehow. Yeah. So if people are a bit captivated by this TA101, how do they find out about the one at Metanoia?
Well, there are 101s held by various training institutes, but the best way, if it was Metanoia they were wanting, mean, there are, you know, other brands are available kind of thing. There's the Link Centre or the Burn in Nottingham, the Link Centre's down on South Coast. Metanoia's in London in Ealing and Some institutes run TO101s online, so there's an international capacity to join in a 101. The Metanoia one is currently running in room, I think, over a weekend.
So there's an administrator, Manos, at Metanoia, who, the website for the Metanoia Institute, you can go onto the Metanoia Institute website, find the transactional analysis link. there'll be an inquiry button there for finding out about the 101. It's a 12-hour curriculum delivered in various different ways by different trainers and different institutes. I am training to deliver it but not quite there yet. Okay, sounds brilliant. And other institutions are available? Indeed, indeed.
I did my 101 at Metanoia but I'm actually accompanying Jeff, who I spoke of earlier, I'm accompanying him while he offers a 101 starting online on Wednesday evening through the Link Centre. So, yeah, it's, we're all out there being interested in this stuff. And there's there's a UK Transactional Analysis Association, the UK Association for Transactional Analysis, which, UKATA, which is again a good source of information around all this.
And actually it's possible to do TA 101 through coaching organizations. But actually one of the things that I learned when I did my coaching supervision training, which was also for the supervision of therapists, is that going to a different tribe brings a different quality of learning. So although you might have to make some other connections yourself, it also means that you can't make assumptions about stuff and it gets you kind of exercising.
Yeah. So it gives you a different conversation partner in a way. And when you've got a different conversation partner, different conversations are possible, they? Absolutely. Absolutely. other thing about TA, which is interesting is it's applied in four different fields. So transactional analysis internationally is applied in psychotherapy, yes. Also in counselling, also in educational work and also in organisational work. So you have certified transactional analysts. CTAs, which is what I am.
You have CTAs who are in any one of those four fields or very occasionally in all four of them. So yeah, it's out there available for people. Well, what a pleasure to talk to you, Jane. How do people get in touch with you if they want to talk more about your work with SoulBody? There's a SoulBody website, soulbody.co.uk and there's a contact form on there. if people want to talk with me. Brilliant. Well, thank you for coming to The Coaching Inn. You're very welcome, Clare.
I've enjoyed myself a lot. I've surprised myself at how evangelical I've sounded. But I feel like there's an ongoing conversation around empathy. I don't think I've bottomed that one yet. We'll have you back. Thank you for coming and thank you for listening, everyone. Bye bye. Bye. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today, we'd love you to share the podcast with a friend or leave a comment on social media.
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