Talking with Absent Others

This week Richard & Fiona natter with Psychotherapist Alan Patching about how to have healing and helpful conversations with people who may not even be around anymore.

Contact Alan: alanpatching@me.com

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Transcript

Richard: 0:00

Hi, everybody. Just a quick note before we start this week's episode. One of the things we briefly go into this week is combat trauma. It's not a big part of the episode, but there are some details that might be triggering to somebody with PTSD about war. Thought I'd better mention it just in case anyway, on with the show. Hello, hello, hello! How are you, everybody? It's Therapy Natters time. It's a chance for anyone that's interested in therapy in some way to learn something new about the people around them, or maybe even yourself. I'm Richard Nicholls, and with me is Fiona Biddle, as always. Good day, Fiona. How are you doing?

Fiona: 0:51

Hi fine, thanks. Yes, and this is episode 101,

Richard: 0:56

Yes. It's bittersweet

Fiona: 0:58

we were going to, we were going to stop at 100 but we'd been wanting our guest today to join us for a while, and we decided if 101 is good enough for Dalmatians, it's good enough for us too. Yes?

Richard: 1:14

I think there's a, there's a psychological satisfaction about doing things in even numbers. Ending on episode 100 does seem to feel satisfying, but it doesn't have to? We don't have to end on episode 100 last week

Fiona: 1:33

Which I

Richard: 1:33

It's okay to do one more, the world still spins.

Fiona: 1:36

I think that's why it needed a frame for it. So that's why I put the Dalmatians frame on it.

Richard: 1:41

I remember somebody saying to me a couple of months ago, that they can't possibly get out of bed at 6. 56. It's, it's, it's got to be either 6. 55, or, oh, that's it, I've got to wait till 7 o'clock now, I can't possibly get out of bed at this time of day, and this is the wrong time, this doesn't feel right. Stupid humans, what are we like? Hey, we've got a guest, Fiona.

Fiona: 2:03

We do have our special guest that, as I said, we've been looking forward to nattering with, and I think it's the first one who is actually from overseas. Everybody else has been within the British Isles

Richard: 2:15

Oh yeah,

Fiona: 2:17

So

Richard: 2:17

you weren't, you were on holiday, but

Fiona: 2:18

Well, I've been somewhere else when we've recorded, yes, but that doesn't count. We have with us Professor Alan Patching from the Gold Coast in Australia. We've known Alan for many years now. He's trained for us done conference presentations for us, been a friend to us in many ways. So it's absolutely a delight to have Alan here. A little bit of background he is a psychotherapist. And trained with the National College, which most of our guests have done but his history is fascinating, including, and I won't go on too long but including that he was CEO of the company that built the Sydney Olympic Stadium, but then after that changed from construction to psychotherapy, which is It's a big leap, but still lectures on construction at Bond University, where he is a professor, and he supervises psychology students at Bond University, so that's quite an interesting mix. So, welcome, Alan. Lovely to see you.

Alan: 3:25

It's lovely to be here, Fiona and Richard, and thanks very much for the invitation, but I must say I can see your images on screen, which the listeners won't be able to do, of course, when they're listening to this, and I must tell them that I think the power of psychology and the way things, people can be influenced. We're on 101, you raised 101 Dalmatians, and I can't help but mention you're wearing a white top with black spots. So I think you've self influenced there.

Richard: 3:55

Primed! You primed yourself!

Fiona: 3:57

I think I did it the other way around. I probably chose this because I knew I was going to say Dalmatians.

Alan: 4:02

Nice recovery, Fiona, nice recovery.

Fiona: 4:05

Ah,

Richard: 4:05

your brain was just unconsciously

Fiona: 4:08

I'll choose that one.

Richard: 4:09

to pick that up out the wardrobe.

Alan: 4:11

Yeah, interesting.

Richard: 4:12

It's what we do. I mean, that's, that's one of the reasons why I I like language. And why When I was interested in personal development and trying to help people, hypnotherapy and hypnosis really jumped out at me. The power of words, the things that we say to ourself that influence us. And if we can be thinking about 101 dalmatians in the back of our mind and it prompts us to pick up a, a top that is got black spots on it is white. What other influences can we have over ourselves when we say the wrong things or the right things that completely change the course of our day? That's what we do.

Alan: 4:49

Or indeed our lives, if you take that to the extreme. And there's no question about it, there's been research done on the influence of belief systems for particularly unfortunate kids in family situations where you wouldn't want them to be, and how their capacity to expand to their full potential is just completely thwarted by messages from adults in their lives, whether it be parents or teachers who don't know better or are angry or in some way upset themselves. And that all gets you know, displaced on the children, sometimes unwittingly, sometimes purposefully, and lives are effectively destroyed by it. Not a very pleasant note to start our conversation on, but nonetheless a reality along the lines of what you're talking about, Richard.

Richard: 5:33

Yeah, we can be nudged. We can nudge each other and nudge ourselves. And I want to nudge ourselves. And I want to, as a podcast series, to nudge the listeners. That if they're in a bit of a tricky spot, see what you can nudge yourself to encourage a better mood, if you're in a, if you're in a, in a down place. There are things that we can do, absolutely.

Fiona: 5:57

course, that's the point, you know, it does sound negative what you said, Alan, about negative messages and their impact. But then we move beyond that, don't we? Which is what we're doing here, which is why we're having this series, is to what do you then do about it? And that actually does fit very nicely into what you're wanting to natter with us about today, doesn't it, Alan?

Alan: 6:18

It does indeed because the techniques that we're here to talk about, which is specifically in therapy terms called the Empty Chair Technique it's a Gestalt technique. But I think one of the most interesting things about it is it's typically done between a therapist and a client. But it can just as easily be done with someone working with themselves if they've got the general principles and, and it works in a way by creating a very real fake circumstance. Now that sounds like a contradiction in terms, but it just shows you the power of having the mind in a space where it can really, really believe something to be true. And it's projecting that truth. into an image of something that doesn't exist, namely someone they might be wanting to talk to from their lives. Typically, someone who's passed on and they've got issues from their life before they passed on, but it could be someone in their life now that they just don't want to be able to speak to, or they can't speak to them because they're overseas or a relationship's broken down. Fritz Perls, was very smart in coming up with this idea in my view. It's not something that, you know, every therapist is going to use every week, but there are times when it comes up and one of the advantages of studying in England did both my diploma, advanced diploma with the college and then finished my master's degree before I did the PhD at Bath Spa University. And one of the advantages was that, was you, Actually got to study stuff other than Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Now don't hold me down if you're listening, don't send bad messages to Fiona and Richard. It's a very good technique. There's no question about the benefits of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and its offshoots. But to say it's the be all and end all. You know, that, that to me is restricting all sorts of abilities that come from other techniques, which are taught in Europe more so than in Australia and America,

Richard: 8:19

Oh, I wasn't aware of that.

Alan: 8:20

very much so. The psychology courses out here do nothing. You know, I do PhD students on our psychology, we've got an excellent psychology course, very well respected at our university, but it teaches the research side of things, cognitive behavioural therapy as a therapy technique, counselling skills of course, and the spin outs of CBT. But that's mainly because the healthcare system out here primarily only gives refunds for cognitive behavioral and spin off type therapies from it. They're not the slightest bit interested in psychodynamic whatever, unless of course it's done by a psychiatrist.

Richard: 8:56

And that's probably because it, it is long term therapy. Psychodynamic work. You're in therapy every week or two for years, more than likely. But it's so beneficial. So beneficial. Have we spoken about Gestalt before, Fiona, in 101 episodes? We

Fiona: 9:11

we did an episode where we went through the, the main the main schools of thought, and it was mentioned then, and we have mentioned empty chair, or I tend to call it two chair, but you could have three, so why call it two? We have mentioned it before, but only in passing, so we're going to look at it in more depth today. So you've got a

Alan: 9:31

I brought along two, yeah I did, I brought along two case studies in my head, thought about quite a few, but I thought these two are so very different and they just gave an idea of the scope, but then if we have time, I've also used it. as a parts technique, which we can explain to the listeners a little later if we get the time.

Fiona: 9:53

Yes, that would be great just to say to our listeners that these are real but adapted to maintain anonymity. But Alan also does have the permission of the clients to talk about it, so sort of they're doubly protected. So just wanted to make that clear.

Richard: 10:10

Yeah, I don't want listeners to think that therapists talk about their clients when they leave the therapy room,

Alan: 10:16

we certainly don't do this. Yeah.

Richard: 10:19

It'd be

Alan: 10:19

No, that's that's just not on. In this particular case, the first one, which is kind of a sad case, but it just shows how helpful therapists can be. And another reason I chose this one is there might be a lot of people who know someone who served in the military and maybe suffered some PTSD. Now, empty chair technique is not a widely recognized technique to use in the treatment of PTSD. That's more likely going to be. Emotional freedom technique now has some, a lot of credibility in that regard, the tapping technique in other words, and of course, EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization Routine, would be two of the key ones used these days, and, and others. Gestalt would not be famous for this, but this involved this particular gent, who was in his 80s, and He came along to me at the recommendation of his medical doctor and he was suffering clear signs of PTSD. I used to joke with him because he's a lovely old chap. He said whenever his wife was washing up after dinner, very traditional roles in the family. That he'd hear things like a teaspoon drop on the metal of the drain for the sink and it would just about put him through the roof because of the clatter. And I used to joke, well, that's just your excuse to leave the room when the wiping up was around the place and he'd he'd have a laugh about it and all that. But on this occasion, he was old school. He had the problem, and I suspected he was coming to me because his wife had said, I can't deal with the reaction, the PTSD reaction we get to any noises around the place. But that's not what he raised he would not address the noise side of it at all. And he got talking about the war and the thing that opened the door is I'd done um, officer training. I'd not done active service, but I'd done officer training when I was younger. So we were able to talk about that. And one day, along with my certificate on the wall, I had my commission from the governor general for when I became an officer way, way back in the late sixties. And he saw that and he was quite intrigued by it. So we got chatting and that was the doorway. Because we had a a common interest, despite our age differences. And I got talking about his experience in the war. And he talked quite openly about it, and he had this particular friend. And he told me that he had very fond memories of this friend. And the friend died in action, and he could talk about it, had no problem with that at all. After a couple of sessions, it came to mind that he was experiencing really bad depression and reaction at certain times of the week or the month, and it varied for times of the year, so It took quite a time because he was a lovely old chap and he loved giving the detail about things, but I could not piece anything together at all. But eventually we got to the fact that he experienced these downed feelings and what we know are symptoms of PTSD, but you know, he wouldn't ever admit to have had that. You didn't do that in those days, you know, these old gents. And he just said when it, I don't know what it is, he said when I'm mowing the lawn, I'm okay when I'm mowing, but when I stop mowing the lawn and I sit down, I always start thinking of my friend, let's call him Ben, that wasn't his name, but I always think about Ben. And I thought that's really weird because the last thing he would have been doing. In the battlefield is mowing the lawn with Ben, but we got talking more detail. I said, Tell me everything that happens from the time you take the mower out till the time you get back. And uh, he told me all this story. And part of the story was I used to take my boots off and I'd give them a wash in the sink and put them on a towel on the carpet in the bedroom to dry it before I put them back in the cupboard. Again, didn't mean anything. And then later on, I got to talk to him and said, let's go back to the battlefield days. I hate to do this. You can stop talking about it anytime. Could you tell me what actually happened to your friend? And he said, well, it's my fault that he's dead. It should be me who's dead. And I said, how so? And he said, well, it was his turn to go up the hill. And get ammunition one morning this was in Korea, not World War II, in Korea. And he said, he just said, I feel bad about today. He said, I don't want to go. I just have a bad feeling. I'm not going to survive the day. So he said, no worries. I'll go up the hill and get the ammunition from the central depot. So he walked up the hill and just as he's arriving back. A mortar shell went off, and he literally saw his friend, blown into the air, and this is a bit not a very nice scene, so I'll get through it quickly, but basically dissected into two parts. One part went over the wall, and his lower body stayed right beside him in the trench where he was going back with the ammunition. And then that affray, that onslaught, kept going for several hours. And, you know, they're fighting their way out of the people attacking and that eventually subsided and that all stopped. And, and he's there with his lower part of his friend's body. And they had to, of course, arrange for the disposal of that. And it just crossed my mind when you've been doing this stuff for a while, things cross your mind. And I said so you have the image of his legs and that's what's very upsetting. And he said, yeah. And I said do you see any link between what you've told me about your mowing and your procedure and that? And he said, no, I said, boots. I said, you've got these shoes with the boots and the other thing. And it was almost like he'd been totally enlightened. So then, because we knew what the trigger was, we could say, okay, now let's see if we can reduce the impact of that. So we went into the Gestalt process of empty chair, and we said, put your friend Ben in the seat and talk to him. Now he would say, well, what I would have said to him is, and you can't do that in the technique. They've got to be in the moment as if it's real. So I said, no, no, just say to him what you'd say. So eventually got him to talk to Ben as if he was still alive and in the chair. And then when we'd swap the chair over, we'd say, now you hop into Ben's position, and be Ben, and imagine yourself in the original chair where you're sitting, and Ben's gonna respond. So once again, it'd become difficult, because, oh, I think he'd say this, and I'd think he'd say this, I'd say, no, no. Be Ben, don't tell me what you think he'd say, be him speaking. And it took a long time to get him into that frame of mind to play the game properly. But once he did the sessions just, and I didn't try to stop them. I always got him late in the afternoon or just let them go on and on until, and three sessions later, and he never had a problem again. That's not to say he didn't have concerns when he remembered his friend on the anniversary and that sort of stuff. But mowing the lawn, that problem was gone. Because he'd resolved it with his friend and he resolved that his friend was telling him things like, You did the right thing. That's what I wanted you to do. I felt really grateful. I'm very peaceful. I'm glad you're alive, having a good life. All these sort of things. That he wouldn't have imagined coming up with had we not been through that process, totally unprompted, just all we do is guide the process and the process is done by him in his deeper subconscious mind and imagination, so a very successful outcome from that one.

Richard: 18:10

There's a phrase I use a lot, which is, the brain doesn't know the difference between fact and fiction. That if you imagine something, it tricks the brain, fools the brain, your brain responds as if it's happening for real. It's why we can watch horror films and feel adrenaline. Why we can be sad about something, on a sad movie, when we know it's just actors, it shouldn't have an effect, an emotional effect. But it does, because our brain doesn't know that it's not real right in front of us. And if you can really get into that, I guess it's kind of, kind of like improv classes, isn't it? Really getting into a particular character, like amateur dramatics, and really feel it. Your brain doesn't know that you're not actually talking to Ben, or your Nan, or whoever it is that you want to talk to, your Dad who is in another town, but you just can't talk to him, and you can say, Be your Dad. Act as if you are him. Talk through him. What's he going to say? What would you say as your dad?

Fiona: 19:17

I agree with all you're saying and I do believe, I mean, you've given a great example of why it's so effective, but I think to a degree. The mind does know, so I can watch really gory things, so I watched the remake of All Quiet on the Western Front, only because I knew somebody was involved, otherwise I wouldn't have chosen to watch. Something that horrific, but I can watch that. Now, if, if

Richard: 19:44

If that was actual

Fiona: 19:45

if, if, if anybody cut their thumb in my kitchen, I'd feel faint. You know, I've seen the odd car accident. I'm, I'm not good. I'm squeamish and not good at all. So, the, the mind does know the difference. But. You still get a response, and when you're doing

Richard: 20:03

when people ask, hey, what's the difference between your mind and your brain? Our mind is our conscious workings out of the neurology of our brain. Yeah. Interprets it. But our brain, neurologically, doesn't know. Yeah.

Fiona: 20:17

thing that Alan said there, which I thought needs highlighting more, was The person really needs to be in the moment, and that's the thing. When you're watching something on TV, you're not in it, you're watching it. You're not in it. So when you do using hypnosis, of course, always best. Everything's better with hypnosis. When you do that, and the person is really in it, then they're in it.

Richard: 20:42

Hmm.

Fiona: 20:43

not talking about it.

Alan: 20:45

Yeah, I think to take a positive example of what Richard said that the mind has difficulty discerning between reality and vivid imagination. It needs to be vivid, present tense, all that sort of stuff for it to be really effective. But sports psychology, which is one of my areas of interest, that depends fully on that. When, you know, the whole idea with sports people, when something goes wrong on the field, they can spend, 5 to 30 seconds swearing to themselves for making a mistake and being down. And they're completely out of the game and completely ineffective when that's occurring. And the whole idea is, don't try and stop the reaction. That's a natural reaction of a perfectionist, well trained not performing at their best. But if you can get that vivid imagination as an anchor, and it could be a physical anchor that takes them back to a mental thought, or it could be just a, an image in your mind that they just train to go to whenever you're feeling down on the sports field or on stage or anywhere, for that matter, a family conversation that takes you back to a more positive place. Then, in the sporting example or the performance example, that reduces the period of distraction and enhances performance in the longer term. So, why wouldn't we use that in our relationships and around the house when someone says something that ticks you off a bit, just balance that out. I'm not saying that you have to avoid rigorous discussion on points of difference in a relationship from time to time, but let's keep them at what Elias Porter from the States in 87 referred to as warranted conflict about the issue, not unwarranted conflict about the personality and behavior style of the person. You know, just having some sort of thought process, and it might be a thought of respect for the partner that when you feel like going off your tree because they've upset you with something they've said, take it back to a discussion that's warranted conflict rather than unwarranted, and it's using exactly the same principles we're talking about here.

Fiona: 22:45

we, we've got a second case for you to tell us about, I believe.

Alan: 22:50

Yes, we do. And this is quite a recent one. The other one was probably 10 or 12 years ago. This one was a couple who came to me in my practice of doing fertility work Similar to what Sharon Mustard does in England, I had a thing called IVF Assist that I put together and did some research on. In fact, it was for my masters thesis at Bath Spa University after finishing with the college. And these people come along some time ago and difficulty falling pregnant, nothing wrong with the plumbing, so to speak. But the woman wasn't becoming pregnant despite several rounds, and a doctor I'd done a lot of work with recommended her to have a chat with me. And she eventually had a young child after just one more round and working with this five stage program we'd put together. Now, when they came back next time, having another child again, had a couple of difficult cycles. So I said, let's try this system again. The woman said to me, do you mind having a word with my husband, who I knew quite well from the previous time. He's having a little bit of difficulty in the circumstances this time, and I don't know what it is. He just seems to be really worried about things. I said, sure. So, he came in and he said, look, I, I am worried about things and I don't know why. I said, well, quite normal. Economics, you know, the more responsibility on whoever's the chief money earner, it could be that. So are you worried about finances? And we just went through standard, therapeutic consultation trying to find something to work with. And it really was quite difficult to find it. He couldn't put his finger on it. So I always find that if you can't get something with immediate questions, going back through a bit of family history, as you would with a normal intake program, but I didn't do that dealing primarily with his wife, it was more just a chat to see if we could help out, and in going back a bit, When we talk about his mother, he'd go into quite loquacious detail and with a very animated and positive sense of voice. And when I talked about his father, it was almost dismissive, his language. And I eventually raised it. I said, well. You seem to have a lot of time for mum, but not so much time for dad. And he said, well, you're a hundred percent right. I never had much time with dad. And I said, Oh, well, do you want to talk about that? And he said, no, I don't mean I didn't have much time with him in the sense of you know, I didn't like him or anything like that. He literally. He wasn't around. He died when I was about 11 years old and my, I think he was 9 actually, and his brother was 11. I said, oh, that's interesting. I said, do you see any relevance of that to your circumstance? And I thought he might say, well, I've, I've got an illness or I'm a bit concerned about, you know, getting an illness or something when I'm going to have a couple of kids and just looking for links as we do, you know, as therapists. Didn't get it from there. And the conversation went on for about 40 minutes and It was a weekend session, so I was just about to draw it to a close and say let's meet again. And he said I thought my father was gutless and he was very forthright and I said, why's that? And he said, well, he had a lot of difficulties with the family and finances and things like that and he committed suicide. And he said he left a Note for my mum, but he didn't leave any note for me or my brother. And my mum told us that he did, but we found out when we got into our early 20s, that wasn't the case. And he said we found out that he'd done that when we were about 16, but we found out about the note in our early 20s. And he said, I just, I've had great difficulty forgiving him. It's just, how could he do that? How could he leave my mother in that difficulty and think he was actually helping. How could he leave us without a father? And eventually, through questioning and all that sort of stuff, it got to the point where he was fearful. In a way, he knew he'd never do it, but he was very fearful that if he met stressors and he had another child, just the two child thing, because it was him and his brother and now, you know, he was concerned that he might have similar pressures on to him. And I'm not sure whether that would have been a concern because it would have changed his opinion of his father or what the concern was, but the concern was definitely related to the fact that I'm thinking of having another child and I never want to be like my father and go through that. And that might sound really strange and weird to people who aren't used to working in therapy, but for listeners who are therapists, that sort of thing is very understandable. So I said, well, would you like to have a chat with your dad in a semi metaphorical sense and he said, no, I don't really want to talk to him. I said, well, maybe you'd feel better if you told him what you thought of him, because right now that's all bottled up. So we went through the empty chair technique and this guy was quite the opposite of the other old gentleman. He was in the moment from the minute, to use that expression that you used, Fiona. He was in the moment from the time we started. He was leaning forward in the chair and he was giving his dad a proper mouthful. He didn't hold back at all. And then when he became his father, he was very good with the responses as well. You could almost imagine this was a real conversation. So even though he was young at the time, he had a good sense of what his father was about and what he was like, and he'd sucked that all in subconsciously and remembered it. So this process we got to a a point in the first session where it was comfortable to stop it, but it still wasn't clear. So he had one more session, which was again quite lengthy. It would have gone for 45 minutes, just the empty chair backwards and forwards. But at the end of it he felt he'd made peace with his father. He didn't feel a negativity about it. He felt he had an understanding and why he'd done it. And he most certainly had lost completely the fear he had about going ahead to have this next child and now they're well on their way through that pregnancy. So, they're probably the most interesting of the cases that I've used this on, apart from, say, the parts thing, which we might be able to talk about in a minute. So, quite different cases quite different approaches from therapy to get people engaged, but similar successful outcomes it makes

Fiona: 29:34

an interesting element that you, you're saying there about that he, he was in the moment from the get go. I have found that some clients have been very reluctant to do this because it does feel a bit weird. And it certainly makes you feel vulnerable as the client to, to do this. And so many people have the mentality of I want to do it right, I want to get it right. And you can't get this right or wrong, you just do it. So if anybody's listening and thinking this might be something I could do. I'd also just like to raise the idea that I think it's possible that to a limited extent people can do this on their own. Now, in Both of those scenarios that you've talked about, that really needs to be therapist led. But whilst you were talking, just a phrase popped into my head, and I've, well, I do know why, but I was just quite surprised, is that phrase what would Jesus do?

Richard: 30:33

What would Jesus do? That's an unusual thing to pop into your

Fiona: 30:37

I know, but in a sense, that's what people are doing. They're, they're, they're doing a two chair thing with, with Jesus, saying, I've got this situation, what would you do? I presume that's what they're doing, but we can do that. We can, we can have a chat with our long lost grandmother. Somebody we used to know who was really wise on such and such.

Richard: 31:00

Or a bully.

Fiona: 31:01

You could have a chat with a bully. You can have a chat with somebody who's a hero of yours. Or a role model, we've talked about modeling before. You can put that sports person in that chair and say, I'm struggling with my training today. What would you do? So there are an awful lot of applications for this that aren't necessarily quite so deep, but let's see if we can fit in a little bit about the parts idea, Alan. We, again, we have talked about parts before, but specifically in this context. How do you, how do you do that?

Alan: 31:34

Well, before I go there, just one thing, the things you just mentioned there about not necessarily dealing with really strong negatives and bringing in influential figures from your life. And just saying, looking at an empty chair, and I think that symbolism's good. And kind of just saying, Grandma, what do you think I should do? But there's another one with kids that works very well, and I learnt this, and you'd, you'd both know this person from Don Motten in the United States, who's got a fascinating history as a forensic hypnotist and then a clinical hypnotist. And Don always says to kids imagine your superhero sitting beside you. What advice would he give you? So it's the same sort of thing that you've suggested. Just make it appropriate to the people involved. Now that's just a, an addition to what you mentioned, Fiona, but if we go now to the parts, and again, I'm sure other people have done this, but this just came to me once I was working with a young woman who was actually on a course we were doing, it was a national college course. And we were teaching empty chair one on one and then a couple of days later we were getting into parts work. We started kind of some looking at the neuro linguistic aspect of parts with the hands that come together and all this sort of stuff. And this was a particular woman who from the day she started she actually had a psych degree and she just claimed she's just completely unhypnotizable. And I said, well, I'm sorry you have that limitation on yourself. And she said, well, what do you mean by limitation on yourself? I said, well, I don't hypnotize you, you hypnotize yourself. I'm just the guide, but you know, you may not be able to hypnotize yourself. And that was kind of like a challenge to sort of get at her back up and say, what are you telling me? I can't do this to myself. And anyway, she was a lovely person and she came to me and said, look, I really want to be able to do this, but you know, can we have a session separate from everybody else? Well, I said, why don't I just guide you and then we'll give you some feedback on what you're doing wrong. So she'd do a little bit of work and then I'd say, well, why don't you try it this way? And what she didn't realize, of course, we were doing fragmentation or fractionization where she's in and she's out and she's in and she's out. And eventually, you know, she was well and truly gone, loved the experience and never had a problem again after that. And she turned out to be a very good hypnotherapist. Along the way with her when we did some of the part stuff, some pretty tough circumstances come up involving various internal parts where, and just for the listeners who aren't therapists, parts are like, if you think of your body, you've got fingers and a nose and eyes and, you know, we're made up of a whole stack of different parts. Well, we therapists say that our personality and our individuality is made up by mental parts as well, which you could look at as not so much brain parts. But it's a collection of neural connections that do a thing. So, you know, you may well, like, for example, using myself, I'm a father, I'm a grandfather, I'm an uncle, I'm you know, a driver, I'm a university professor, I'm a photographer, I'm a friend, I'm a brother, we all have multiple parts that we play in our life. But there are other parts of us that are at play without being so overtly recognizable. Like there might be a part that kind of interferes with your capacity to go beyond a certain level of achievement. There might be a part that says you can't do public speaking, it's too scary, you don't want to take that risk. There might be a part that says you shouldn't stay on your diet because you might get thin and be small and you're better off being large and fearful to someone out there who might be threatening you based on some past experience. So, we want to deal with those parts. And the way we do that is just one on one talking to the parts using techniques. So now back to the story. With this person, because she had two or three parts that are all engaged in one problem she faced as opposed to one, we'd identified these two or three parts. I said, let's try something else here. So, I sat her in one chair and had two other chairs and I sat in the therapy chair and kind of said to her, Let's talk to the part that has this problem, or is giving rise to this concern, and we interrogated and had a chat with that part and she knew how to deal with that pretty well. And then we said, so let's go to another one. So now let's start a conversation. Would this part have a problem if this other part changed and took a different approach? Let's bring a creative part out who can get these two to work together, maybe a negotiator part. And eventually. When she got the idea of how it was happening, I would say, well why don't you interrogate the parts in the therapy chair, and then I will simply come in when we need to talk to the parts individually. So, I would have her in the chair, a different chair for each part and interrogate them, then put her in that chair to talk to the parts in the empty chair thing, and when that progressed to a limit, I'd then come back and put her representing the parts again and eventually we're able to integrate a solution with the creative part saying we will put this together her getting agreement that the other parts wouldn't object to it in pretty much the standard way of parts therapy, after which we had a hypnosis session where we use ideomotor finger movements to indicate that resolution was going to be okay and there wouldn't be any objection to it and that's not necessarily the end of it as you're well aware but in this case that was resolved so it was a just an interesting way to do things. Taking your therapy experience doesn't have to be limited. We do say, let's use evidence based practice, but that doesn't mean we can't use evidence based practice to form a new practice. Because I often get students who'll say, oh we can't do anything that hasn't been done before because that's not evidence based practice. I said evidence based practice becomes evidence based practice because you've built up such an evidence base that now okay to do some research on it, but before they did the research to prove its evidence base, it wasn't. It was a combination of other techniques. And O'Brien and Houston have written broadly on that, that some of the best interventions are a combination of other interventions, you know.

Richard: 38:06

Integrated, yeah,

Fiona: 38:09

Jinx.

Richard: 38:11

Alan, all of that is absolutely fascinating and I know that our listeners, both therapists and potential clients, if that's what they want to do, would take a lot from today. So thank you very much for sharing all of that. It's really, really interesting stuff. If anybody wants to ask any questions. Are you okay with anybody finding you on the old social media networks or anything like that and dropping you a message?

Alan: 38:34

By all means I'll give my email address. It's alanpatching at me M E dot com, just one L. By all means, send any questions. I'd be happy to answer them. Social media, I'm a bit quiet on these days because I've taken my websites down as well, I only see four to six clients a week now because of the university work and they all come from doctors so I don't need to have those pages And just one point, Fiona raised a very interesting point to close with that sometimes when you're doing empty chair work clients feel a bit embarrassed and I found that as well. And you can learn from Freud in that case. I've got a huge picture of him hanging on my wall. Funny story. It's a hand drawing of Freud with a couple of these most famous quotes and it's. Four foot tall and three foot wide that my wife got me my favorite therapist person in the background was actually Jung, so she got it wrong, but none of you who are listening can ever tell her, but we tell her it's the most precious possession, but I learned from Freud and if you do have people with empty chair work or having difficulty, embarrassment, sometimes just moving behind them so they can't see you and be interrupted. It's that works quite well. And on that note, Thank you both very much for having me on board for being the 101st Dalmatian.

Richard: 39:49

Yes,

Fiona: 39:50

Thank you, Alan. And so, yes, that wraps up our hundred and first and last episode in this form. We will be back, In a while. We haven't set a time yet.

Richard: 40:03

Yeah, this is,

Fiona: 40:04

Oh, it's going to be very strange not doing this on a weekly basis.

Richard: 40:09

this is, we'll be back in the spring or the early summer or something like that. This is just the end of season one, but I think 101 episodes, that's quite a lot to get into just the one season. So I think we did quite well, really. I thought we were gonna pause at 50, but because we had some guests on, we were able to pad everything out a bit, which was quite nice. Right, let's love you and leave you all for now, we'll be back soon enough. If you need anything, the links to contact us are in the show notes. I'll drop Alan's email in there as well, so you just gotta give it a click. We haven't even got to type it in. You can ask him some questions, give him some feedback. He'd love it, and so would we, and if you really like what we do, and you've enjoyed these 101 episodes, feel free, if the app allows, to leave a five star review. People do like those sorts of things, and we all like to be liked. Please like me. Please like me. I'll take this to my therapist next week, don't worry, but uh, feel free, yeah,

Fiona: 40:59

It's a bit a bit late to be saying that, isn't it? You should have started that at

Richard: 41:03

Episode one. This is gonna sit on the internet for decades, don't worry. This'll still be here when we're long gone, I hope. Right, let's go for now. Have a super duper late winter, early spring. We will see you next time. If you need anything, you know where we are. Take care, folks. Bye for

Fiona: 41:19

Thank you, Alan. Bye.

Alan: 41:21

Bye everybody.