Richard
Hey, hey, hey, podcast fans, it's time for another therapy natters episode, the podcast series where to psychotherapists hop onto their microphone and natter about all things therapy, talk therapy that is please don't ask us about your fungal nail infections. Well, you can ask, but don't expect an answer. How are you doing Fiona? anyone asking you about your interest in all things, fungal nail infections,
Fiona
No and we could get into why that came into your mind, from the psychological perspective. I have had people phone me up and ask me if I can help their bad backs because they get confused with physiotherapy. But yeah, not lately.
Richard
I've had a few people asked me over the years, what is talk therapy? And I think it's because they hear, they hear lots of different phrases bandied about like energy therapy, and aromatherapy and hypnotherapy. And they don't really know what all those things are. And so if anybody says, Oh, he No, he's a talk therapist, they think, okay, so he's just going to talk at me and that's the therapy is it. Now hypnotherapy can be half of the session a bit like that sometimes. But talk therapy is a it's a two way street, we hope
Fiona
And usually more the client talking than the therapist. Yes, of course, in hypnotherapy, you could have a part of the session where the therapist is talking to you in hypnosis, but even then, ideally, they should be using what you've told them to construct the words they're saying back to you.
Richard
Yeah, that's the sneaky secret about hypnotherapy that I think clients probably do get, that we use their words back at them, whatever they've said in the first 20, 30 minutes of the session. We just kind of turn it into something therapeutic and then feed it back to them in in under under hypnosis. I don't I really don't like that phrase under hypnosis.
Fiona
They're not under anything. They're not under the table. They're not under anything
Richard
under anaesthetic No. No, under. That's not what happens at all.
Fiona
If anything they're over. Senses become heightened. So you're better to say that they're over things and you get a sort of meta position, don't you? Looking over your life and seeing it from a different angle. But certainly not under.
Richard
No. And yet we still it's still there in the language. It's still there in the terminology. And clients will say, How will I know if I'm under hypnosis? How will I know?
Fiona
And the word sleep still sneaks its way in and waking up from hypnosis still sneaks in.
Richard
Yeah, a lot of myths and misconceptions. Isn't that yeah, if anybody is interested in hypnotherapy, by the way, um, me and Fiona we're part of a hypnotherapy group of people. And we recently started up a YouTube channel with some hypnotherapy exercises on there for people to listen to in bed while they're relaxing off to sleep. If you fancy listening to that, the link is in the show notes. I'll make sure that's gonna be in there for all the episodes infact I'll go back and add it to some of the early ones as well. So if anybody's interested in hypnotherapy and relaxation, personal development and mindset and stuff,
Fiona
yeah, and if there's anything you'd like us to do, if there's any you'd like us to create.
Richard
Yeah, that'd be nice
Fiona
for that channel, please let us know.
Richard
Because there's enough of us in the group. How many is in the Brookhouse hypnotherapy group now, at the minute at a time of recording
Fiona
18 I believe
Richard
What? That's loads. God I didn't realise there was that many of us we wouldn't even fit in a pub.
Fiona
Well, we could be cosy. Cosy in the pub. But yes, I think there's 18. Yeah.
Richard
Oh, nice.
Fiona
Then they all they're listed on the on the website. hypnotherapy.org.uk.
Richard
Yeah, if anybody wants to see hypnotherapist or Hypno psychotherapist, either or, yeah, I'll add the link to the Brookhouse hypnotherapy group in the show notes. Find yourself a therapist, at least you know that these ones are definitely vetted and well qualified and experienced and all round good eggs.
Fiona
They are indeed,
Richard
yeah, they are. So that's our natter. We've had some we've had a question, Fiona.
Fiona
We have I'm not going to read it out completely this time because, well, for a start, it was quite long, but it also I felt it was quite personal and revealing of details that perhaps shouldn't be aired, but the gist of it is from a guy called Rich which is confusing with Rich and Richard,
Richard
There's as a few of us, he's probably the same age as me. It was a popular name in 1975, apparently.
Fiona
And he says he's a long term fan of your other podcast. So that's yes.
Richard
Thank you for listening rich, good man.
Fiona
Indeed, he's raised a sort of general issue about whether guys more than girls worry about their partner's past. So he's in a relationship and has discovered about his girlfriend's past. But he's not it's not particularly about that. It's just a general thing that he has found in talking to his pals, that these things tend to bother the men more than the women. So I thought we could discuss that the potential male female differences, but also then look at where beliefs such as this is going to worry me. Because that is a belief in a sense, it might not feel like it.
Richard
What it means
Fiona
Yes, where these come from, and how they develop and what we can then do about troubling beliefs.
Richard
Like it. Troubling beliefs. So this is more than just jealousy. And we can maybe, we can maybe label it as Rich is experiencing something that's jealousy. But it's not about now, he's not by the sound of things, worried that his partner is going to leave him for any of her past partners. But it's there in his mind that she's got a past, iand he doesn't like thinking about it,
Fiona
It seems more like an uncomfortable feeling. He's uncomfortable about what she did before she knew him. But of course, most people of a certain age, well, they're going to have a past. So he knows that. He said, so he understood the logic. But still, the feeling arises that makes you feel uncomfortable.
Richard
If he was sitting in front of us as a, as a client, we would more than likely go through some of his experiences that shaped his beliefs. And what that story is, what does that mean that his girlfriend has a past that she has previous partners? What does that mean to him? He says, in chatting to some of his pals, that it's a common thing amongst men, that they don't like to get this uncomfortable feeling. They don't like it that their girlfriends or wives have, have had other sexual partners. But he's not going to know what the women will think because he's not in a group of women. As with pals that are women talking about it, by the sound of things,
Fiona
well, there is some cross pollination between different sexes, they do sometimes talk, you know, his statement was that, in discussions, he felt that from what he'd heard, that men were more bothered than women.
Richard
I wonder if that's true or not. But then that's my job to wonder. My job is to sit on the fence and look at every angle and go what's really going on here?
Fiona
Oh, I love sitting on fences.
Richard
My wife hates it
Fiona
It's a very comfortable place to sit.
Richard
Yeah, I can't form an opinion until I know, everything. So I have to sit on the fence. I can't just jump in with my gut instinct, I can't trust my gut. Gut feelings aren't to be trusted. Not really. But that's for another day.
Fiona
So for some, if you just look at this, logically, there could be some sense that men and women might see other relationships as differently in terms of the biology, in that
Richard
Evolutionary psychologists would definitely say that
Fiona
women are the ones who are giving birth. And men can make lots of women pregnant.
Richard
And it's fairly obvious when the woman gives birth, as she's giving birth. Well, at least I know, this is mine. Because the woman knows that this is definitely my baby, it's coming out of me. Whereas the men in our ancient past, and even in our current even in, even in present days, I suppose in in theory, we never are going to be 100%
Fiona
Well, unless you kept your woman locked up in a, well locked up anywhere. Unless that's the case, you can never be 100% certain. I mean, you can do DNA tests these days. But, you know, you hear stories of people who have done and found out Oops, that's not what I was expecting. Yeah, but yeah, throughout history. It's never been certainty, but in as you say, a woman knows. So that could be a sense where that matters more to a man, because he could be bringing up somebody else's child. If he wasn't sure.
Richard
The evolutionary psychologists like there's been a lot of research done into into this, I think it was, what was his name something Buss. And I think Daniel Kahneman was involved in it or maybe did an offshoot of a study, looking into the theories into this. And and it is just theory, because we don't really know what was going on a million years ago, before we branched off and became chimps and bonobos, and all the species that we now are. Back when we were something else, it was probably beneficial for the propagation of the species that the male of the species was very protective of their partner of their mate, and wanted to make sure that nobody else's sperm was going to be fertilising any eggs. But now we've got frontal lobes. And we can do a lot of thinking you're getting it into words, and there are stories that we tell ourselves about it. And we couple up to each other in an attachment way. And all of these different ideas melded into this million year old species that we now are million year plus, they all bang around causing problems. And I'm not 100% Convinced that evolutionary psychology hits the nail on the head with with too much of this. Maybe it did back then. But certainly there were some studies now that have been done in the last sort of 10 years, that seem to say that an emotional attachment to our partner is just as important, cross gender. I know that there are some studies in the early 80s, which suggested that men are more concerned about making sure that their partners aren't having a sexual affair. And women are more angered or upset by the idea of an emotional affair. And that that has been the staple of, of jealousy studies for a couple of decades now. But more recent studies have said that, that those figures are kind of well, the studies weren't done properly. The questions weren't asked in the right direction. The questions were to binary. It was just Hello, woman. What do you think is worse? An emotional affair or a sexual affair? And the woman would go an emotional affair. Okay, man, what do you think? Oh a sexual affair. Well, there's the study done. And what the more recent studies have done when they see the possibility of a problem there is let's ask the question again, but this time on a scale of one to 10. Let's look at both of those conditions and see how you feel on a scale of one to 10. How much does your female partner Mr. Man, how does that hurt you? The idea that she's had a sexual affair? Oh, eight out of 10. Okay, what about this emotional affair? Oh, seven out of 10. Oh, okay. So they're both important. They're both important.
Fiona
And of course, we're talking about heterosexual relationships here. And I'm not aware, although I'm sure there are studies that have looked at these topics within same gendered couples.
Richard
The thing is, you need a big N, a big number.
Fiona
you do need a big N. But thinking of having a big number. Statistics only really matter, well to statisticians. And in terms of health care, and things like that. So you have to do stats on vaccinations for viruses, as we've recently been through, to know statistically whether they work across the population, so that they're valid for those sorts of things. But when it comes to any sort of psychological research, even if it's finds that 99% of people believe such and such, you could be the 1%. So it's so much more about how you feel that matters. So going back to Rich's question, it just matters how you feel and the fact that you recognise that it's not a logical feeling. Going back to what we were talking about last time, on appropriate and inappropriate emotions. You could recognise that that's natural, but perhaps not that appropriate. And then you can let it go
Richard
This may well be, I don't want to make assumptions. But I wonder if there'll be a correlation here between that and self esteem, that if somebody's self esteem rises, then they're going to be less bothered that their partner has got a past. We'd expect that to be the case.
Fiona
And it will also depend on what they have been told, I use the word told very loosely,
Richard
taught,
Fiona
Taught that's loosely as well, what they've learned from loads of different sources, because we're all learning all the time. Right, from the moment we're born, we're experiencing and learning from those experiences. It's funny, you mentioned Daniel Kahneman earlier, Richard, because do you remember his 20,000? Moments theory?
Richard
Ah, yeah, yes. Yeah. Every day we have these 20,000 little experience. Yes.
Fiona
So that's, that's his theory. But the thing is that with every one of those moments, so he doesn't define or I don't think he defines what a moment is. But everybody knows what a moment is, it could be a split second, could be several seconds, but 20,000 of those every day. And if you'd like to get a calculator out and calculate 20,000 times 365 times your age, you find out how many moments you've had. And if you think about the fact that every single one of those moments you have experienced something, and that experiences either confirmed what you already believed, or made a difference to what you already believed. Well, that's interesting that isn't i? It shows something about the learning process. And obviously, as children far more of what we're experiencing is new. By the time we get to be old, like what I is
Richard
You're not old.
Fiona
Depends who you talk to. Joking aside, the older you get, the more experiences you're likely to have, that are confirming what you already believed.
Richard
But if what you believed in the first place was wrong,
Fiona
Then yes, if what you believed in the first place was wrong, or maybe not, it might not be something that's right or wrong, like Rich's belief, being concerned about his partner's past, that's not right or wrong, per se, then you're looking for the things that are going to confirm and discounting the things that are going to challenge it, but you can do that challenging yourself. You can look at any belief that you have and reevaluate and see. Is this the right belief for me to be holding going forward? Or should I change it?
Richard
I wonder if Rich's question is prompted by an element of men growing up in a society that's still patriarchal.
Fiona
So he will have learnt Well, probably will have learned from the patriarchal society, subtly, probably, you know, most of the time, I would imagine that no, influential, powerful teacher who everybody completely believes everything they said automatically, is sitting down a room full of boys and saying, Now, when you get into a relationship, you must really be concerned about your partner's past sexual history. But it's subtle. Those messages get through subtly.
Richard
Yeah, I'm thinking, thinking about my own experiences. I've been with my been with my wife for 26 years. I've had enough time with her now. To feel secure, to feel safe. That it doesn't matter what her experiences before she met me was would be. Because I met her when she was 19. She's been with me longer than she's been without me. And whenever I say that, to her, she looks dreadfully shocked, a little bit pale, and quite scared. Oh, my God. But it's true that for most relationships, if we can get together young enough, that's gonna happen. Well, we want that to happen if we get together young enough, because we want to we want to live and grow old together if there's a choice. So we're all going to have that sort of experience that says, Well, eventually, we've been together longer than we were not together. But what we want is that all of those experiences over in my case, 26 years, can dilute down any of the early worries fears. Am I good enough? Am I the one for her? Does she love me all those sorts of questions and queries that might start early on in a relationship, and they're conscious, they're cognitive. But as we know, if you repeat something, it stops being conscious stops being cognitive, and eventually becomes unconscious and automatic, and you feel that way without having to think those things. But if we've got more subtle, over 26 years experiences that say, in one way, shape, or form, I'm telling you that that I love you. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you I'm not interested in anybody else. By listening for those cues, we'll see them. And it'll dilute down any of those problems, because there's lots of different ways of saying, I love you, and I'm gonna spend the rest of my life with you. Nobody else is important to me, even if it's just "Have you got your coat?"
Fiona
Oh, that's sweet. I was just thinking, just let's take that. Do you love me? question. And when you think of a relationship, let's take it away from you to, to any relationship, when it starts, those two people are starting from a base, with those 20,000 moments times 365 times whatever the age they are, when they're starting the relationship. And that's a large number. however old you are, it's going to be a large number, if you're an adult or teenager, whatever. Quite a lot of those moments are going to have been around. I'm lovable, or I'm not lovable. If somebody's at that base point of starting the new relationship, I've had quite a lot of experiences that leading to a belief of, I'm not lovable. I'm making this very binary. And of course, it's not binary, it's very subtle. But let's just go with it. If you're starting from that point, it's going to take a lot more to shift that a lot more, have you got your coats, and perhaps more specific, I love you's. Then if somebody has had a lot of their 20,000 moments per day of you are lovable, who is just looking. Looking for confirmation that they are and that this person is the one doing the loving. So going back to that idea of reevaluating your beliefs, anybody listening to this has that feeling that they had a lot of moments saying that they were unlovable? Well, that can be that can be changed that belief that's been created can be amended can be shifted. Because, well, whoever was telling you that, hopefully subtly, but sometimes people do get told these things directly. Unfortunately. Those people were wrong. The ones who were doing the telling, because you are lovable. So that can be changed. I mean, that probably is going to be a going to the therapy scenario to change it. But it is changeable.
Richard
Yeah. Yeah. Because people might ask the question, What can therapy do to help with this thought process? How can therapy help me? How can talking to somebody help me? Well, to me, as a relational therapist, I suppose rather than, rather than anything else, I'm not. Although I prescribe to some of the CBT theories, my work is made is mostly around, showing somebody that they're lovable.
Fiona
I think it's creating, it's modelling. It's modelling a relationship that that the other person is okay and is lovable. That's what that's sort of what we're doing. It sounds a bit odd when you put it in those words, but that is what we do.
Richard
If a if a client can learn this person, this therapist of mine likes me is interested in me, values me, sees me as lovable and they have other clients. They think that way about other people too. But it doesn't take anything away from me. There are boundaries, it's a it's a it's a boundaried relationship that works and teaches them at an unconscious level, at a at an emotional level, that they are likeable, lovable, valuable. And if they can learn that, however subtly, it happens in therapy. If they can learn that deeply. They can take that feeling they can carry that feeling into other relationships, at least that's my take on what we do as talk therapists.
Fiona
Absolutely. And if anybody's listening to this, that feels that sounds a bit weird a parallel could be, I hope everybody's had this experience or can see somebody else having had this experience of a teacher at school, who is so caring, and so connected to each of the children in their class, that they inspire all of them. And then you can see that it's not about a one to one, it's a one to many relationship. And that it sort of feels like it parallels to me if you get that sort of feeling of what those teachers, the special teachers can do.
Richard
Yeah, I like that. Yeah, that works. Yeah, it really does.
Fiona
I just wanted to mention a particular theory of beliefs, which comes from Gestalt Therapy, which is called interjects that we interject other people's beliefs and swallow them whole. And it's important to recognise that everybody will do this as a child, we all do. Swallow beliefs hold from other people, parents, teachers, again, from society. And that's important that we can do that, you know, if you tell a child that cars are dangerous, we don't want them saying, Well, I'm going to test that out for myself. We want them to believe what they're told.
Richard
That ain't a very successful species.
Fiona
Yeah. But with those sorts of exceptions, it's, it's really good if people check out what they're told and decide for themselves, whether that's on the big issues, so religion, politics, anything cultural, all those sorts of big issues, but little issues as well, that we can be living to that aren't necessarily ours. And it helps to have another look. 2, that I tend to use with clients to explain this of my own. One of them is a belief that bacon sandwiches have to be cut into quarters. Squares, not triangles.
Richard
Oh, no, I'm triangles all the way.
Fiona
Oh no. Oh, that's I mean sorry. I'm sorry. That's just wrong. No, bacon sandwiches, squares. Right. And I've reevaluated that one I've thought it through for myself. And I think it's absolutely correct. So not changing that one. I mean, why would you want it any different I just cannot conceive
Richard
So you can start in the corner.
Fiona
We can start in the corner of a square. Squares have four corners, so you've got an extra corner.
Richard
Truth. Oh my God. You've opened my eyes.
Fiona
You see it's got 4 corners that way so it's even better. Okay. That's that's one though. Another one. When I was a child, you had to have a bath before bed every night. This was you know, just just what you did. Unless you were ill. If you were ill couldn't have a bath until you were better. That one I have reevaluated and changed. I now have a bath when I want one once a year, whether I needed to or not. That was Queen Elizabeth the Second wasn't it? No first sorry, Elizabeth the first.
Richard
Happy Birthday!
Fiona
Wrong queen. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, I, I don't know why that rule was in place.
Richard
And that's a value that you internalised. You took somebody else's opinions, somebody else's values somebody else's ideals, and said, Well, that's the way of the world. And took it on
Fiona
And gradually, as I was living my own life as an adult, sort of this doesn't fit. So I changed it. So everybody will have those things. Obviously both of those things are trivial. Well, the bacon sandwich isn't trivial of course. The other one. We all have these trivial ones that can just be used as examples to help us get to grips with this whole idea of how our beliefs come into being and then what to do with them. Keep them or change them.
Richard
Yeah. Recognise whose belief is this. Whose is this? Is this mine? Is it something that I came up with for myself? Because in Rich's case, he has developed this belief that potentially at an unconscious level, it's a bad thing that his girlfriend has had previous experiences with men. It's a bad thing. It's not a neutral thing or a good thing. It's a bad thing. It's something that should be felt at a, this is a dangerous thing level. And it'd be interesting to see where where did that come from? Is that just a lifetime of sitting around a pub table? In a slightly patriarchal society that says, That's my woman, that's my partner, as opposed to I'm her partner, for example. I mean, there was, things have been changed in terminology nowadays. But I remember if you if you watch any reasonably old TV show, or film or especially something that's a period drama, and somebody gets married, we now pronounce you man and wife. You weren't a man until you had a wife. You had her. You owned her. We've come a long way. We still got way to go. But
Fiona
And with the name as well, the taking the name. Yeah, it's the woman's name. So your wife is Mrs. Richard Nicholls.
Richard
She answers to it if anybody says
Fiona
I'm looking forward to after Greg and Louise's wedding, I'm going to write to Mrs. Gregory Biddle. I just can't wait because I think Louise will be furious. She is going to change her name she wants to. I don't know why anybody wants to become a Biddle but Well, I mean, in terms of joining the family, yes. But the name No. But she wants to. She's really looking forward to that. But I'm not sure about the being Mrs. G. Biddle. It is that's anachronistic. But it still is allowable.
Richard
it's very rare. But I know that it happens. We will you will. Something only very recently I saw on Twitter, somebody was talking about how somebody was leafleting for a local election. And, and tried to try to give a she said Oh yeah I'll take a leaflet. And she was doing some gardening. And the the MP said, Oh, this isn't for you. This is for the man of the house. This. This is in 2022. This isn't for you. It's for the man of the house, the man of the house, what the hell. So it still goes on. You can imagine which political party they represented. But I'm not going to. It doesn't matter. This isn't gonna be that sort of podcast.
Fiona
I think we don't. We don't go there.
Richard
But I'll tell you something, Fiona. What we have done today is gone everywhere. We've properly travelled today. And we've come to time already.
Fiona
So we have
Richard
We have. Does it feel to you we've just been talking about this topic and only scratched the surface?
Fiona
Oh, yes. There's been several things that have popped into my mind of oh, we need to cover that another time. So we will Yeah, another time.
Richard
Yeah, we will. In fact, we'll be back next week with whatever we end up talking about. And we've had a lot of questions, certainly in the in the consulting room about sleep. So we might do something specifically about about sleep habits and sleep health, that might be quite useful. Because we've had
Fiona
That'll be good.
Richard
I don't know about you because I've certainly had clients that have been talking about that a lot lately.
Fiona
Post pandemic post lockdown. Yes. Or during and post. An awful lot of it. So that'd be good.
Richard
Well, let's do let's do something on that on that. So hey, you already know what we're going to be talking about next week now. So if you do have any specific questions, you want to quickly get in. You're too late because we record these in advance. I mean, I can edit that out
Fiona
Or leave it in it's funny.
Richard
Yeah. Yes, it is. We'll leave it in that's quite funny. So we're gonna have to love you and leave you because time has ticked on. You know where we are. If you want us feel free to submit any questions you have, but not about fungal nail infections. Please make it about talk therapy. Have a super week, folks. See you next time.
Fiona
Bye.
Richard
Bye.