Hello there. Fellow humans and part Neanderthals and all the, um, what's the other one? Denisovans? Welcome to another episode of Therapy Natters, the podcast series where two psychotherapists give you a little bit of an insight into the world of psychotherapy to maybe help you understand yourself a little bit better. Good day, Fiona. How are you doing? Are you Neanderthal or Denisovan? Do you know?
I. I haven't, but my brother did. But I've no idea that was about location of your ancestors and we were very boring as we thought we would be.
I think all that's a bit of a con. I think they just, yeah.
was, it tallied with what we expected.
Yep.
We didn't do the bit or he didn't do the bit where it tells you about people that you are connected to. It was just the geography. But yeah, we, we just, I've tried looking into my ancestry and it just doesn't go anywhere. We're just really boring. I know we've got some French Hugenot in in my past, my father's mother's family, I think I would be like this when they escaped persecution in France, they got to Folkstone and stopped.
I think that would be like me, if I'd been one of the people who emigrated in the early days to America, I'd have got to Boston and stopped. I mean, what's the point of doing the rest?
Be nice to have a time machine, wouldn't it? And go back and just, just genuinely see, this is how people lived and this is what they were up
to Yes, it would.
But we don't have a real one. We've just got to use our
got an imaginary one. Yes.
You've been up too much.
this, this week it's all sport on the tv, which is, I mean, what am I supposed to do? Well, I mean, I'm not the only one cuz there's the Ashes, there's Wimbledon, there's the Tour de France. I mean, I don't have enough time. But it's exciting. They're all exciting. It's great fun.
Yeah. there might be people listening who go, I didn't even know any of those three were happening because they're just not interested. that's what fascinates me about what it is to be human. We are, whether it's nature or nurture, genuinely all completely different. There is nobody on the planet who is exactly like you or me or you there, dear listener, nobody.
There might be some similarities and there's things that we've got in common to quite a great degree, but we're all very, very different. Even identical twins, because they've had slightly different lives. They're clones, pretty much, but they're different. Their personalities are genuinely different. Their likes and interests. Fascinates me.
I remember saying to Jack once when he was little, I said, you are unique just like everybody else, which got a good giggle from him at the age of seven or whatever, cuz it is That is that contrast. Yeah. You're unique just like everybody else. It's wonderful.
Yet at the same time, we feel that pull to be in a tribe and the same as everybody else. We want to wear the same clothes, do the same things, have the same interests, and that might go against our values, what we actually genuinely feel that we are passionate about or interested in, and we end up following a path that wasn't the path that we were probably destined, if that's the thing, to go down. And then people get into their forties and fifties and go, so what am I doing with my life?
We did an episode about midlife crisis once, didn't
We did.
Because I, I think that's what happens. People just follow a path and go, well, this is what I'm expected to do, but it's not really what I want. But then it begs the question, so why did you make the decisions you did? And it always comes down to the same thing. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
We are making choices constantly. All day, every day we're making choices and very rarely is there a right choice and a wrong choice. So we are taking different paths all the time at little, tiny decisions like what to have for lunch, up to the major ones, like who to marry or what job to do. but yeah, just go back to the sport thing. Sport is a great way to feel like you belong to something without really having to do all that much. So it gets, it gets that feeling.
So I was watching Andy Murray play yesterday, and you feel part of it.
Yeah.
You feel part of that tribe, as it were. Same with the cricket, but then there's elements of things like the Tour de France where you don't particularly because they have their teams, but you rarely associate with a team. You might associate with one or two people, but there's so many differences and nationality has very little to do with it. And I rather like that, that it's not so tribal. It's just endlessly fascinating cuz I haven't got a clue what's going on Most of the time
Oh, I'm like that with Rugby.
I.
Even the, even the players don't fully understand the rules of Rugby. They have to rely on the ref. Who goes? No. Oh really? And because the rules are complicated, they trust the ref. That's why it's a lot more, I guess, respectful towards the ref in rugby than it is in football, because there's no argument. Oh, the ref knows better than me. You wouldn't get that anywhere else, I don't think. But you know, I still don't fully understand the rules of rugby.
I've only just figured out the offside rule in football. Anyway, there's a couple of things we wanted to talk about today. You had a, a list of topic ideas that you wanted to bring into the, podcast series, and I was trying to match it up with different questions that we've had over the last few months. there was a few asking about what it's like to be a therapist and some of the people's experiences of therapy and things like that.
And there's a a couple that jumped out at us as being quite important. Would be quite useful to share. Shall we have a look?
let's do that. Okay, let's start with this one from Lola from Northumberland and Lola says, I started seeing a counselor a month ago to deal with some frustrations in my relationships. I've been told I'm overly sensitive and am prone to angry outbursts. After two sessions a week apart. He said that I clearly wasn't ready for therapy yet. And suggested we don't make any further appointments until I was so-called ready. I stayed calm, but inside I was devastated.
I asked him what he meant and he said that I was clearly quite resistant, but wouldn't go into any further details. I just felt fobbed off. Of course I'm ready for therapy. Otherwise, why would I have gone? Can you shed any light on it? Because hell will freeze over before I go back to him. Well, thank you Lola. Um, yeah, and I'm, I'm, I'm happy that you are not going to go back to him because that sure isn't gonna work.
Yeah.
yeah, the, the reason that you mentioned Richard about it tying in with things on my list, there's still quite a few things on the list, which is, which is good. We were looking at, why it might be that a therapist could respond like this, and of course, We don't know. We are not there, we're not flies on the wall of that therapy room. and it is possible that Lola isn't ready and that she can't see that. I mean, that's possible. It doesn't, doesn't feel very likely because of her response to it.
But it is possible. So just to say that, but.
And you can have resistance to something and still be ready for therapy. That is part of the reason why somebody's in therapy is because they're struggling and let me have a little rant. Not a very big
oh, go on
enough to say, Hey, therapists out there listening, and I know some of you are, I think we need to be reminded sometimes that people come to therapy. Because they've got some mental health issues. I, I wonder if therapists sounds ridiculous. I think sometimes therapists forget that, daft as it sounds, that actually the people that are sitting in front of them have issues and it, and those issues will come up in therapy.
Uh, maybe there's a lot of people who are very solution focused and they're just looking at what do you want? And let's focus on that without recognizing this person might have had traumatic experiences throughout their life that lead them to have their guard up. Rant over. Not much of a rant, but that's as much as I rant
Could I just add though that they may have mental health issues? They may not. Not everybody goes to therapy, has mental health issues by.
Yeah. it's got some sleep issues
they've got,
yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
uh, even I would say somebody like Lola who says she's got relationship issues, that's not a mental health issue per se. It's a normal part of life. So, yeah, I think that's, that's sort of important. Not everybody that we work with has those issues, but yes. Some do, and sometimes they will play out in the therapy room. And as you said, resistance is normal. there's part of you that wants to work on it and part of you that really doesn't. And that's, just part of it.
So we were looking at thinking why might it be that this therapist has responded like this. And there's two possibles amongst many that we thought we'd talk about and these are ones that we often use in a therapy context, and we don't often refer to them outside of the therapy context, but they can be useful to think of wider anyway. So the first is a concept called projection, which we probably have mentioned before, but it doesn't hurt to revisit any of these things.
Projection is where there's something within yourself that is uncomfortable, you don't want to acknowledge, and so you see it out there in the world. Within somebody else. And so this is possible here, that there's something within the presentation that Lola is giving to the therapist that is pushing one of his buttons and showing him something about himself that he doesn't like. And that might not necessarily be something that is within Lola. This gets complicated.
But he's, he's seeing something in himself he doesn't like, so he puts it out on her and then rejects her because of it.
Hmm.
And his reason for rejection of you are not ready. Sounds like, um, an excuse to me. it sounds like an I am not comfortable working with this, and this could well be something that's in him and not necessarily in Lola at all.
Hmm. We have to remember therapists are just as liable to have cognitive biases and defense mechanisms as everybody else cuz they're human as well. Projection exists everywhere. I was saying last week about visiting Chichester, cuz my son's gonna go to uni there by the looks of it. And it was really nice. It was a lovely little uni. And I said to Dawn, you know, when Billy goes to uni, you are gonna struggle, I think. She went, oh, I'm gonna struggle. Am I, I went.
Yeah. Yeah. He's been such a big focus of, of, of your time and, uh, yeah. Well, I mean, you, you're gonna struggle, I think, to figure out what you're gonna do. And she shook her head and went, yeah, you keep telling yourself that, that it's me that's got the problem here and walked out. I thought, oh no, she's right. It's me. It's me. That's probably gonna struggle. I mean, we'll both struggle because it's our boy flying the nest. But absolutely that was projection.
There was something on my mind I wanted to bring up, and rather than admit the vulnerability of This is my issue, I put it unto her, but it wasn't a conscious decision. Afterwards I can recognize, yeah, that was on my mind because my unconscious mind was telling me that it's an issue, but my consciousness didn't wanna recognize that it was my issue, so it had to project it onto her, and we are all gonna have that sort of experience. We all project.
We all project and we all have things projected on us. And the easiest way to recognize projections is when something doesn't quite feel right. So, this is more about having something projected onto you as in Lola's case here, we are surmising, is that you just think what the no, that's not quite it. There's something off here. It happens, a lot in, a work environment where bosses project their weaknesses onto staff members. You are so disorganized!
Sitting there thinking I'm not, I'm, I'm completely organized. What, what's going on? And then it's hard to challenge of course, cuz it's the boss and you can't say, well actually I'm completely organized. You are the one who's disorganized, but you can look for these things. So when there's some sort of disconnect and it's just feeling a bit skew whiff.
Hmm.
Can have a little look and potentially find the projection that's going on.
Yeah, without too much judgment, I guess, without being accusatory and go. You're a liar. I'm not disorganized at all. You are making it up. They they are. They are making it up. But projection is, like we say, completely normal. It's completely natural. It's what we do, it's what our brains do. We wouldn't be human without these defense mechanisms. We'd be robots.
I think understanding that is really helpful for anybody with or without relationship problems because this is just part of being human and living life and having interactions with each other. Having the transactions that we have with each other on a daily basis. We all need to know this, but it's not taught at school unless you study psychology.
Well, even then, it might well not be because psychology is only focusing on certain aspects. I was just thinking then, about school reports. I wonder if anybody's ever done any sort of analysis of school reports of a given teacher. I wonder if they would find. Regular projections there. Cause I, I then thought that disorganized, it took me into this, the school typical phrases in school reports, like doesn't try hard enough.
I wonder if there's some teachers who don't try hard enough, who regularly put, doesn't try hard enough into their pupils school reports. It's an interesting thought.
I can almost guarantee that that would be the case cuz how could it not be? Because if it wasn't a human doing it. And I know there's a lot of drag and drop things with school reports nowadays just to speed things up. Do just look down the list. But those teachers will look down the list of things and go, yeah, that's what jumps out at me. And it's actually something that's inside them that's jumping out at them. Because they've seen something in that student that reminds them of themselves.
And that brings us onto a, another topic you wanted to talk about as well, transference.
Yeah. it's not the same, but it's along the same sorts of lines. Transference is where you see in somebody else, elements or characteristics of somebody from your past. So typical transference might be, seeing elements of your parents or grandparents in somebody that you are interacting with now. But it could be anybody. and then,
It's why Freud always said that um, boys wanted to marry their mothers.
well, he said that because of the Oedopis complex,
Yeah.
But yes, there's still there's the, the element that you, you might see some elements of your parent of the gender that you prefer in somebody out there, and that's then either appealing or not appealing. It might be that you want the opposite of that parent, but it's not necessarily that you're seeing the real person out there. You're seeing some sort of connection that might be real or it might not be.
Oh yeah, there are lots of times I've heard somebody say they meet somebody and they say, oh, I feel like I've known you all my life. I've just got this feeling that you are familiar. I wonder if we knew each other in a past life. No, probably not. But you knew somebody in your past that you liked and you felt safe with and you've transferred those feelings onto them because there's something in that other person that's similar to them. That happens a lot, and for the negative reasons as well.
There's something about somebody that just doesn't feel you don't know anything about them, but I don't like them because actually they remind you of the school bully when you were 10, for example.
Yeah, and it can be, a characteristic in terms of the way that somebody is behaving, but it can be how they look. It can be how they speak. It can be the job that they do. It can be all sorts of things. Could be the name that they have.
Hmm.
so we can, transfer feelings from one person from the past or the present onto a person that's there in front of us and respond as if we're responding to that other person. And it's helpful to recognize when you're doing it, but it's also helpful to recognize if somebody's doing that to you. And again, that tends to come from that feeling of something's not quite right here.
Mm, we had a. Another question, didn't we? That tied into that?
it, it, it does in that, yeah. Shall I read the question and then we'll show how we're tying it in. Yep. this is from. Rob from Stockport. The connection to what we've just talked about won't seem immediately obvious, but we will get there, I think. Okay. his question, Rob's question is, what are the ethics of therapists existing, interesting word, outside of the therapy room? I saw my therapist on a dating app and was quite shell-shocked.
Obviously she's allowed to have her own life, but I was really unprepared. Don't worry, I swiped left. It's, it's it's making me giggle because it's the, the ethics of therapists existing outside of the therapy room. I think, we, we can safely say that they mostly do, you know, they're human beings who live. And, he, he says then obviously she's allowed to have her own life. Well,
Yeah,
cheers. Cheers, mate. Thanks.
thanks for the permission.
but it makes sense that he was shell shocked, because that's not what he was perceiving his therapist to be. And this is where the, link to transference comes in. That he was seeing his therapist as a one-dimensional person, probably a transfer, not necessarily from another therapist, but from an archetype of a therapist. And that's another way that it can be done.
A cardboard cut out, if you like, from, your own perception of what somebody is going to be like, and to have that out there and relate to the person as if they were that cardboard cutout. I mean, this happens, if you speak to anybody who's famous who gets approached in the street, people will generally see them as two dimensional. And not recognize that they are a rounded human being with their own issues and lives. So going to his actual question though, the ethics of it.
Yeah. Therapists are allowed to have their own lives. depends on the code of ethics, depending on the membership body that they belong to. But the UKCP code states that. I can't remember exact phrasing, but that you need to have an awareness that behavior outside of the therapy room may have an impact on your clients. And that could be positive or negative, and that we need to bear in mind those possible consequences and act accordingly.
So, I don't think anybody anywhere would suggest that a therapist should not go on a dating app because that's a reasonable thing to do. But there would be things that it would not be advisable to do. Obviously breaking the law would be a fairly obvious one that that's not generally advisable, but there could be other things that, would be lawful. But would be considered a little bit beyond ethical
Yeah, it's probably not a good idea that if a therapist has very strong political or religious ideology, that they separately make a YouTube channel about it, for example, where they preach all about it.
Us two, as therapists, we are existing outside of the therapy room right now making this and our, our, our clients would likely listen to what we've got to say because it might compliment their therapy or they might want to listen in advance to see if we are the sort of therapist that they want to see. We are representing the profession here, And I tell every client in their first session that this is what I do.
So it's not a surprise if they stumble across me on social media, oh, there's a video of my therapist. That's weird. Well, now they know. And if I was on a dating app. I think I'd have to say just in the same way that we say, if you see me in the streets or you see me in a pub, if you wanna say hello, you're very welcome to, I'm not gonna approach you. That's your place to do that. I would also add into it, cause I do talk about the online world and I exist online.
You can interact with me if you like, but I won't acknowledge you as a client of mine. That same thing applies to the, the date to any app, whether it's Threads or Instagram or Twitter. Rest in peace. We exist
I'm gonna actually disagree with you Richard, about the, telling clients that you are on a dating app
Okay.
at the get go, because to me, that's giving, self-disclosure without it being for the clients' benefit. To me, it's, it's not really any different from saying, I like a glass of wine, you know, because they might see me in a pub. The fact that, dating apps are, a normal part of our existence. I mean I've seen twice I think, people that I know of on dating apps, and I just go, oh, that's interesting. And I don't see that it should be any different for a therapist.
We don't have to disclose what we, do, but we do need to be aware that these sorts of things could have positive or negative influences on clients just going to the glass of wine one, you might have, a client who's strongly teetotal for whatever reasons. And if they were to see you in a restaurant, cuz presumably they wouldn't be in a pub, but they might see you in a restaurant, drinking wine. That could potentially have a negative impact on them.
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't go to restaurants or we shouldn't drink wine. It means we should be aware of these things. I'll give you, an example, along the political lines, but without it being extreme, a colleague, just in general conversation said that they were thinking of standing for the local council.
And we got into a discussion about the ethics of that and she decided eventually that it wasn't a good idea because again, that would be significant self-disclosure about their own political views, which might have a negative influence on a client because they might disagree, but it also might have too much of a positive one if it tallied with the client's views.
Ah.
So it was just a sort of, oh, I, yeah, I, I think it's probably better not to do that. That would not be an absolute rule. But then going back to the, dating app thing, I understand there are apps for people who are in relationships already. I think that might be a problem if somebody was on one of those, because that goes against societal norms and could have a negative effect if somebody was to see a therapist on that. But we've got personal choice here.
Yes. So if a therapist is on, I only know of Killing Kittens and Ashley Madison, and there may well be more.
I think I was thinking of the cheating sites.
We were, uh, fair point. Yeah. That's a problem. well, of course. Yeah. Well, we don't have a, we don't live in a society that, that values that, do we?
No, I was wondering if there was anything along the lines of the, just stop oil protests, because you know, some of those, are illegal. Some of the behavior that those protestors do breaks illegal boundaries, some of them don't. I think what we're getting to is that this is a difficult area of which to draw a line, but.
Hmm.
therapists are allowed their own lives, and it is really important as a client to be seeing your therapist as a human being and not just some representation in a transferential sort of way from a past experience or past expectation of what they are.
because people, do they, they've already made their mind up beforehand what a therapy session is gonna be like, and when it happens, that might not meet their expectations, or the therapist might not. But they might still hold the idea of what the therapist should be like and is like, based on previous archetypes and ideas and history.
And they carry on with that projection because we filter our experiences, we see something, and that's something that we see is so often based on things we've previously seen. And then we delete the stuff that is unimportant or doesn't match. That's just normal cognitive bias. That's why people create the echo chambers they do. Or, and they either do or or don't believe in the climate issues that we've got going on.
Some people don't want to believe that there is some manmade influence over the climate, and so they just delete all the evidence that, contradicts what they already thought. Again, that's just part of being human. But nothing's a problem unless it causes problems. Is it a problem to see your therapist on the dating app? If he swipes left not a problem. Swipe right cuz you match even if it's by accident. Yeah, that could cause a problem.
And that would bring up a, a, a conversation in the therapy room that says whether it was accidental or not. I noticed you, swiped right on my Tinder profile or whatever. Ah, yes. And then you have that conversation about boundaries.
So what we've been talking about today is these two, ways of relating to people projection and transference and, and hopefully helping you to see how these happen in the real world, without us usually realizing that they're going on, but they're natural and normal and universal.
So just to reiterate, it's about when you recognize that something's just not feeling quite right, have a little, little, think, little ponder as to whether there could be transference or projection either from you or towards you, and see where that takes you.
Please do. And this is a topic that if you want to Google it, you'll get a lot of people talking about it. Projection and transference are just, like we say, part of being human. So it's, a topic that's been talked about multiple times over the years. lots of video essays and, and articles and things to read through. We're not the only people making this sort of content. Have a little wander around the internet. We won't, take it personally if you like other people's stuff. If we did.
What would that mean? That will be our stuff. Where are we getting that from? Anyway, we need to finish off. We're back next week with a guest. Is it Eve
It is Eve week.
Anxiety, yeah, tune in for that. That'll be next week with Eve Stanway. Be quite nice and I've not met her yet. She's a new one to me, so that'd be quite sweet. You've met her a few times, I guess
Yes, absolutely. She's, she's great. really interesting person and she's writing a about this topic, so that's why we're talking about it.
Oh, I'd like to get to know her, right. I'll leave you to it. Have a super week everybody. We'll see you next time. Take
bye.