Welcome to another episode of Therapy Natters the podcast series where two psychotherapists crawl their way through over a hundred years of speculation and try to work out how much of it was priceless and how much of it was valueless. I'm Richard Nicholls. And with me as always is Fiona Biddle. Here we go again. Fiona episode 20.
really?
Yeah, this is the twentieth. Yeah, I we've been haven't we . It has. And we've covered a lot already, and yet we've still got so much more to talk about.
Well, the human condition will go on forever. We won't run out. Will we?
evolving our ideas about what makes us tick and how it fits in with, with our current culture and our current society it's ever changing. If you go back to. And we often talk about Freud as being, you know, one of the really early pioneers of our work. Some of his ideas are still around and some of them are ridiculed and thought of as just the strange dreams that he must have had. And why would you even think that Sigmund? What are you doing, man? Stop thinking about your mother.
What. But he did. Because his ideas were all about drives. Cuz Darwinian stuff and natural selection was quite popular at the time. So it was all about reproduction of the species. Was all about sex and then people piggybacked on that and went okay, I see what you've started here, Mr. Freud, but let's take it one stage further. Let's look at other drives. Then there were people like. Melanie Klein came after him.
Well, yeah, well, first far, yeah, I suppose she was quite Freudian cuz there was Jung, but Jung wasn't really Freudian. He developed his own sort of Jungian
He was to start with, but he branched off and found his own route.
Hmm. And Melanie Klein would, would definitely still be thought of as one of the was Freudian, but post Freudian,
And Neo Freudians, that's another grouping people. Who've taken some ideas of Freud's and extended them, which presumably, you know, that's got to be a good thing. Hasn't it? I mean, I think if anybody doesn't have, if anybody is a theorist and nobody is expanding their theories, I wouldn't be happy if that was me. But I'm
We'd still be sending Morse code instead of inventing all these extra bits of technology, we start somewhere and build upon it. And here we are 120, 130 years later still building on it. But some of those early. 1920s, 1930s, 1940s stuff, still, still kicking around and still makes a lot of sense, even in even our culture a hundred years later.
And I'm I'm thinking about this because we had a couple of questions, come in fairly recently that although, you'd think on the surface of it, they're very different questions, but should I read them out? Should I read these two out that we chose? Sarah or Sarah from Essex says, Hi, Richard and Fiona. This is a question about rejection. Richard made an episode on Patreon about rejection sensitivity once, and it really felt like he must have been reading my diary or something.
I felt myself nodding along as I was listening. I would love to hear your combined take on. And maybe what people can do to become desensitized. Thanks. And then there was a very recent one, Judy from Lancashire. Who messaged in to say I've been in therapy for around 18 months now and see my therapist every two weeks, we get on really well. And I trust her. She's always kind and supportive and above all else is reliable.
She has never let me down despite this at the end of every session, I feel myself going downhill a little. As the session ends. I feel this feeling that I'm never going to see her again. We've spoken about it and explored times in my past where I've lost people and it makes absolute sense that I feel it, but it still isn't going away. Do you have any suggestions? Well,
Yeah, two interesting questions. And to me, they are definitely linked because the idea of rejection and loss are just two sides of a coin. If, if indeed that, they're, they're very similar, feelings. I just want to refer back to, I think it was episode three, where we talked about. Trust and mistrust in terms of Eric Erickson's psychosocial theory. And we were using that at that point to discuss about relationship trust. But if you think of that part of the theory.
That it's the very early days of a child's existence, nought to one, according to Erickson where they. Learning whether people and the world, are trustworthy. it's very similar with people who fear rejection, because, you know, it's inevitable. We are all going to be rejected in some way or another, probably many times in different contexts. but it's how to, deal with that and how to stop it actually, you know, sort of ruining or ruling your life and the fear of loss.
It all, it's all linked in. Isn't it?
Yeah, I often go by the, the premise that with understanding where these things come from, that can lead to an acceptance of why you feel the way that you feel rather than a push against it, rather than an anger of why am I feeling this feeling? There can be an understanding and an acceptance of, oh, I get it. I get why I feel this feeling. And then with acceptance of it becomes easier to control.
And that's how it becomes easier to get desensitized to it because you're not adding extra emotion into the mix. One thing we know about memories and how they're consolidated is they're linked to emotions. The more emotional you are about a situation, the more the brain goes, never forget that. So when we're feeling a bit of an emotion, we need to make sure that we don't add further emotions into it.
So it locks in and becomes a core memory and then becomes part of our personality part of who we are. Oh, I always react this way. I always feel this way. And that's why I was thinking about Melanie Klein and the post Freudians because they were really the first Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, and then John Bowlby, soon after.
They were the ones that were saying, actually it's those early, very young childhood experiences that shape how we feel that we fit in in the world and how we, how we, how we see others as, as good or bad. if when we are really very young and our brains are soft and pliable, this message is being given to us that we are rejectable. Unworthy or that there are terms and conditions to attention or reflection.
That's gonna have a significant effect on a young person and shape who they become, especially if it's repeated throughout their childhood. And that's, that's a normal reaction when somebody's been even 25% mistreated, let alone some of the neglectful things that, you know, we hear about in the therapy room sometimes. So it makes a lot of sense. Doesn't it? Yeah.
It does make a lot of sense, but I think it's important there, there. To recognize the other side of it, that you can't be a perfect parent. So children's needs cannot always be met right now. when I was little, it was the norm to have the feeding every four hours and you were left to cry and you know, you didn't get fed. Sooner, in my model of the world, I was lucky in that my mother couldn't handle that. So, so she didn't go along with it, but that was the norm.
So that was sort of programmed in. And, you know, there are still people who advocate that sort of, child rearing, protocol. when my boys were little, Basically just found it much easier to feed them when they wanted. It was easier for me, seemed better for them. They've done. Okay. , it seems to work. It can't be perfect. And I, I, I don't want there to be any suggestion that we're, saying that parents have to meet all their children's needs or else.
Yeah, you've just got to be good enough.
yeah, which of course is Donald Winnicott phrase, the good enough mother, which of course in his time it was more likely actually in his time it was more likely to be the nanny in terms of the people that he, was working with. Uh, but it's the primary care. um, whoever, whoever that, whoever that might be, and we pluralize it now as well. Cause it's not necessarily just one person, but good enough. Uh, you missed out Mary Ainsworth in your little list.
Ah, yeah, of course. Following on from John Bowlby. Yes. Yeah, she did even more than he did. I mean, he really set the, I think we owe a lot to John Bowlby. Definitely. But before that, Donald Winnicott, we owe a lot to, he actually, he actually did a little bit about what we are doing. Thinking about it.
He presented a radio program for the BBC on parenting to help people with, um, I think it was the evacuees from World War II so that people who would never really had much experience at raising kids could, could get some advice. And he was invited by some BBC producer. To narrate these programs and spread the word about how to be a good enough parent. It's this was during the early forties. I'd love to hear some of that. I don't think any of it's really available, but be amazing. Wouldn't it?
Just to hear his voice.
Yes, I haven't looked, but I have read his book Playing in Reality. And I think he was probably one of the early ones who brought the importance of play. Into the mix. seen that in terms of um, around the world where children haven't had the opportunity to play the problems that that causes the lack of play.
Yeah, I think before he was promoting his concept, people just thought of babies as being just little adults, just tiny little adults. And no it's the other way around as adults are just stretched out kids.
in, history that children didn't have the same of time they do in our society to, to live as children, going up the chimneys and that sort of tell us more about Melanie Klein's I,
Well, Melanie Klein was, one of the first ones to say that, children. If we're not careful, if they're not, if they're not treated in the way that meets their needs can very easily develop this sort of black or white thinking good or bad. And sometimes the parents are good. Because their needs get met. The nappy gets changed or the food arrives, or they get the cuddle. The parent is good. The mother is good. The good mother, or as Melanie Klein sometimes called it the good breast. Why breast?
I dunno, cuz of food, I suppose. Cause it was all about the drive to to survive. I suppose
just to interrupt you a sec, that there is, , warmth and cuddles. And security associated with that as well. If you're feeding a baby, then it, it all comes that all
It's not just about milk. Is it?
It's not just about milk. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. That's probably what she meant more likely that than milk, but
I think it's both.
Yeah, So is it, is it a good mother? Is it a bad mother? And if it's inconsistent, then the, the child as it's growing, doesn't feel safe. Doesn't feel as if the mother or anybody else is going to meet their needs. And they're gonna be angry about that in the same way that you take away a toddlers to it's going to scream. Or you, you give it the wrong toy. It's going to scream. Well, it's just a toy. It's fine. They want something to eat.
So you give them something, not this, they weren't expecting that. And the, the, the juice goes everywhere. Right. This is what children do when the needs don't get met. But as long as we don't give them a clout or ignore them for it, or put them on the naughty step over the simplest of things and make them feel rejected and ostracized and valueless, then we are being good enough.
And what Klein noticed is that children that did have those sorts of experiences did see the world in a different way. The extremes would be nowadays labeled as either borderline traits or that horrible phrase of emotionally unstable personality disorder. And I know that's often reserved. More severe neglect in, in those younger years.
But once the ball starts rolling and our brain starts expecting rejections and our needs not being met, we get hardwired into feel it all the more because the brain is primed for it. So then the slightest rejection happens again a little bit later on in life when we are five or six, cuz it does. Somebody turns their back on us in the playground. There's another core memory, cuz we're emotional about it.
Cause we've always been a bit emotional about rejection and then there's something else when we're seven and eight and nine and 10 it becomes every day because there are rejections every day, every day somebody else is being spoken to and we are not. And if we equate that to being, I have no value.
Dare you talk to me like that or not talk to me, how dare you treat me this way over the slightest of things, then actually somebody's parents, they might have been good enough kind of, but still it sends them down a pathway that develops into this huge rejection sensitivity, which like
Sarah.
Sarah, Tara, not quite sure. Sorry, Sarah. Sorry, Sarah. Uh, has been experiencing and, and then again, those same experiences can happen even in therapy because there is a slight mini rejection at the end of somebody's session. So it makes absolute sense that the end of somebody's therapy session, when the therapist looks at the clock and says, well, it looks like we've come to time. I think we need to pick up on this again. Next time. I totally get it, that there is that sinking.
Uh, I'm not that important to you after all. Am I? And I don't have you I've seen that in clients, I've seen it in their face. Have, have you seen that? Uh,
Yes. And I felt it, , you know, cuz all, all, um, psychotherapists have to have their own therapy of course. And. Yeah. When you get to the end, I, I know that I've pushed that time boundary, see if I'm valuable enough to get a few more minutes and then as it's a paradox, because then I'm thinking, oh, you really shouldn't have done that.
Yeah.
but it is absolutely normal. A subtle difference there is sort of, is she losing, losing her with the phrase? I'm never going to see her again. But it's, it's along the same lines. It's just sort of a parallel route, a little root from similar experiences. I suspect in the past. I want to go back to what you were saying earlier about understanding what you're feeling, understanding where it's come from and then basically just accepting it's okay.
I think that was such an important thing that you said, and I want to, I want to emphasize how important that is, that our emotional reactions, if we can understand. we know why. and we can say, oh yeah, well, that's why I felt that why I do feel that makes sense. It's okay. That gives much more scope for moving on from it. I think it's the fighting. These feelings. That's the real problem.
It is. It absolutely is when for so many different issues and problems and conditions, people contact me and say, I have this feeling, how do I stop it? How do I stop this feeling? Whether it's, whether it's grief or anger, how do I stop my anger? Oh, My, my answer often is don't. You don't want to stop your emotions. Why would you want to stop your feelings? They're there for a reason, your body, your unconscious mind is trying to tell you something.
And if you ignore it or try to stop it or medicate it away as in whichever way shape of one people do, whether it's with recreational drugs, alcohol. Cannabis cocaine, whatever, or to medicate the way by going the GP and going, I've got this horrible feeling. How do I stop it? And the GP's only got one place to go for that, especially if it's quick to go, well, here's a prescription to try and stop the way that you're feeling and then things don't get addressed.
And although there is a there is a place for medication in therapy. Of course there is. Cause it gives you that stepping stone to go, okay. Now I'm in a better place to be able to try and understand why I feel the way that I feel I've had clients with quite severe depression that can't start talk therapy without medication sometimes because they can't think straight to talk straight.
And the session's probably gonna be a waste of time, but with some diazepam or something similar or whatever, and not our business, they can start to think. The fog can lift. They can think a little clearer and they can sit down and go, right. I've had a horrible week and this is why this is how I felt. And then we can play with it. Then we can pick it apart and go, well, it makes sense. You felt that way and it's not to be stopped. It's there to be understood.
And the ultimate point to, to get to is to feel it, accept it and let it pass. That takes practice, especially when it comes to things like rejection, because rejection is a, is. a deep, deep, instinct inside of us that we associate with pain. It's dangerous
Yeah. Being re being rejected from the tribe is.
Your dead.
Yeah. Yeah.
The lion's gonna get you.
It's not, it's not, a good thing, except that going back to what we said earlier, both of us have said it, everybody gets rejected. I was thinking when you were talking about that, about job interviews. Well, the, the, logic is that, well, certainly at the moment you've got dozens. If not hundreds of applicants for every job, Apart from the ones that can't be filled, but that's, we talked about that last time.
statistically, everybody's going to be rejected far more times than they're going to be accepted. So if one was to take that as, a personal rejection, that's gonna be painful.
Hmm. Yeah. And if you're already sensitive to it in the first place, it just builds and builds and builds until just somebody rolling their eyes at you or not replying to your text message fast enough. It feels the same as if somebody's just broken into your house and stamped all over your puppies. Genuinely. And it's a horrible thing to think, but that's the, that's the example I use with my clients and you can see the eyes widen and go. That is how it feels go. Yeah, it is how it feels.
I know. And all somebody did is just rolled their eyes or was talking to somebody else and, and just ignored you because you can only listen to one conversation at a time. The feeling of rage, absolute rage is the same as if somebody's broken into the house and stamped all over their pets. It feels that bad. And I think we all need to know that this exists in people. So when people are overly sensitive and they do overreact that we understand why, and we can say to them, I get it.
I get why you feel that way. When they send a hurtful text message back to go as is a typical trait, when somebody's being hurt, you're gonna abuse. And this is that this is why particularly women, men don't seem to get, get shot down for this for some strange reason, but women do because of patriarchy. women are gonna get labeled as crazy psycho, the psycho ex-girlfriend who just went mad at her ex over nothing, threw his clothes out of the window and then, and then set fire to his car.
You know, that's an exaggeration, but certainly threw paint all over it, I've heard, I've heard those stories. A lot. Those people who do those things are hurting. Nobody does that for no reason. They're in a lot of pain and that pain needs to be recognised by other people, even though they shouldn't feel that way they do. If you've got a, a genuine open wound on your arm, cuz you burnt it on something and it's genuinely took off most of the skin.
Somebody comes along just gives you a little slap on it. Just as a, I'm only joking, just a little slap, slap, slap. You're gonna scream the place down, cuz you've got no skin there. You've just poked an open wound. How dare you. It's going to hurt.
And for a lot of people, sadly, their emotions are that sensitive because they've had so many of these teeny tiny, minor rejections, maybe some big ones as well, maybe some abandonment stuff from when they, were little, but it's just built and built and built and built over the years.
And similarly losses, as in Judy's example, they, they compound, and it becomes the fear of it recurring. Becomes bigger and bigger. Um, and again, you know, we're all gonna have losses, but we'll talk about that on our existential episode, when we get to that one,
Yeah. I think that would be quite good. Do you want, well, should we do that next time? Should we talk about existentialism next time we meet
go on, then. Yes.
you've hinted that you've wanted to do it. Like every third episode you've gone.
I just drop it in
Is that really, your bag, purpose and meaning? I mean it's
It's it's, it's, one of my bags, if you like. Yes. I, I, I find it, um, really really interesting, with certain clients, but just generally in life, I think, you know, for anybody. Because of course, most of the time as a therapist, I'm sure you are the same. Most of the time we're working with people who have issues that they want to resolve rather than just the philosophy of life. And what's it all about, do get those from time to time.
It's not a dominant part of our practices, but just talking to people, friends, family, and acquaintances, whatever. the existential ideas to be. Yeah. Just something to, look at. So we'll do that. Yeah, we'll do that next.
Oh, look forward to it. If we were to offer any suggestions, any advice to people out there who have these little mini rejections or these little mini losses, and it feels bigger than it should. And they know, I, I, I shouldn't feel this way. My advice is to accept that actually you should, it makes complete sense that you feel the way that you feel there is no. Oh, I shouldn't feel this way. No, you should.
If we, if you looked at it, if you look at your past and you look at the experiences you've had, you probably should feel this Raises, should you feel this in the future so much now that you know where it comes from?
I think I'd like to take it away from? shoulds and shouldn't and just say you do. and that's, that's that? And you do, whoever you are, Judy or Sarah or whoever. You have some control as to whether you will do in the future, but I also want to just say, it's never going to be perfect if you've, if you've been suffering from these fears and rejections and so on. You can move along a continuum to make it better, but they're likely still to hurt. And that's okay.
Which goes back to that idea of, , accepting that what you're feeling is what you're feeling. And sometimes things can surprise you. even if you feel that you've moved a long way, you might suddenly get shooted back shooted shot. That would be a better word. I had an experienced just this week. I was playing bridge online and my partner who, I don't know. He couldn't see or hear me, but I could see and hear him. So the technology wasn't working brilliantly.
Anyway, I did something that he didn't like when I was playing the hand and I could see him sitting there shaking his head. Oh, anybody who plays bridge, there is very strict bridge etiquette. You don't criticize your partner. And then a couple of hands later, I didn't do what he wanted me to do. And twice he spoke up about the fact that I hadn't done what he wanted me to do. And I was bullied as a child and it took me right back to that also because I was I had no voice in that.
I couldn't say what I wanted to say, because he couldn't hear. Yeah. And it was a really, it was a really interesting process for me to, to look at what I was feeling and to, to take that away and go, oh wow. I had not expected to be taken back, but it was just sort of almost perfect circumstances to take me back to a voiceless. Of being criticized when I wanted to say, oh yeah. But yeah. And the first one to say, no, I didn't get that Wrong. The second one.
Yes, I did get that wrong, but this is the reason I got it wrong. Yeah. so it's, it's very interesting how you can be triggered back to something that you think is resolved. I don't want to play with him again. but by the next time I play I'll have taken that extra step to say he had no idea. Yeah. What, what the effect would be on me because the meaning a couple of days of thinking, no, I don't want to play with you of course, because I can, yeah.
Oh, I get that. I'm sorry, you went through that. I'm glad you understand where it from. Interesting. Yeah, it is. Yeah. I mean, I had a similar experience. Oh, it was a few years ago now. Uh, you were there it was, um, oh, I forget what training course it was, but I totally. I'd either forgotten. Well, I had forgotten if I was told, but I didn't know that I was supposed to do a presentation on something and everybody was sitting in the cafe beforehand to go.
So what's your presentation gonna be on today? Richard? I'm like what presentation today? Yeah, we all gotta do a presentation for 15 minutes. Do you remember like, yes I do. Now. I'll see if I can blag this and, and, and I tried to blag it and was just ripped apart. by a couple of people who were there. Well, it was one, one guy in particular who just didn't didn't yeah, it happens.
and I was just taken back to being this 10 year old, not very who wasn't very good at table tennis being told you're not very good at this. Let me show you how to do it properly. Straight back to being that 10 year old again. And I on the train on the way home, I was just, oh, I'm done in. And you know what? I never finished that course. I never submitted any of the essays for it. Any of the paperwork for it. and I I'll work on that.
I do. I do remember. And I think I know who that person was, but I won't. Yeah. You know, ask you publicly. Yeah. But I also think that I didn't have enough empathy for you because I saw the bubbly Richard, who was, oh, it's okay. And it was okay. You know, what you did do was okay. I think that other person who'd reacted to the, he hasn't prepared and he's still doing it, which would've pressed a button for him.
Yeah.
Because he'd have had to have prepared.
Oh my God. All these years later, I'd never thought of. All the preparation that he must have done, and I just wandered up there and with no prep at all. And he said, oh, I'm just gonna talk about my experiences of being a younger therapist when I first qualified. So off we go. Ah, that makes absolute sense. Why didn't I speak about this with my therapist at the time? Thank you, Fiona. That's wonderful. I'll do that essay now.
10, 15 later, we should morph these sessions into our own mutual therapy sessions. Should my therapist on across these boundaries. Excellent. Well, I I'll tell you something Fiona we've traveled today. Haven't we? Mm-hmm we've been on a journey. There's a lot that we've brought up today. That's really, really helpful. And, and I hope everybody listening get to get, gets their needs met through today's episode in some way, shape or form. So shall we love them and leave them?
Because time is ticking on. I think we shall, and we will be back next week because we are not going anywhere. We're not rejecting you. We're accepting you wholeheartedly sending further questions. The more the merrier, really, because we can group some of them together and some single questions can fill an entire episode quite easily. As you've noticed over the last 20 episodes. next week we'll do some, we'll do some mattering about existentialism and so on.
So I'll speak to some of my patrons and, and see if they've got any questions about existentialism. And I know one of the questions is gonna be what's that, and that's what we'll cover in next week's episode of Therapy Natters in the meantime, have a super week be kind to yourself and be kind to each other. See you soon.
Bye.