Episode 1- Anger, Schema Therapy and Tennis Champions

[Music] Hi, welcome to What's the Scamata? A podcast specifically for Schemes Therapy Practitioners and people that want to learn about Schemes Therapy. Those are interesting in Schemes Therapy. Exactly. We sort of dreamed up having a series of podcasts, hopefully, relatively frequently coming out. We can talk about issues to do with Schemes Therapy Practice and connect more to the community and have a bit of a discussion. So, my name is Chris Hayes. I'm a clinical psychologist in Perth in Western Australia. I'm an accredited Schemes Therapist and with me is Rob Rockman from Sydney, Australia. The other side of Australia. From Chris, interestingly. We are doing this remotely. We are on the other side of the country doing this and it's a new way of getting together. So, I too am a Schemes Therapy devotee, Schemes Therapist, supervisor, trainer. We thought it might be a cool thing to start this process of meeting relatively frequently and maybe having others come on board to talk about issues to do with Schemes Therapy and applying the therapy in practice. So, in preparation today, we're thinking about what sort of things would people be interested in around Schemes Therapy and we both thought that the idea of dealing with anger is often a problem for clients, for therapists and it's often misinterpreted. I don't know about you, Rob, but what are my super vases and people that I train with often? You know, my miscarna characterise, schema modes and you know, kind of think anger is bad and everything is angry child mode and this sort of stuff will bully an attack. What's your take? Yeah, I think it's a good topic for our first run at doing a podcast in focus on schema. I think we could do one across the modes actually that there are those modes that get to all of us in different ways. So, one of our colleagues in CB Andrew Fipp talks about therapists all having their kind of kryptonite and meaning that there are those patients who will get to us. And that can be different that the kind of patients that will trigger off my schemers are going to be different from the ones that might trigger off your schemers and whatnot. So, and I think anger is a good example of that. There are definitely those people, those therapists for whom anger and having anger in the room is a very difficult place to be. So, today we have a focus today on working with anger in Schemes Therapy. And we're going to have a bit of a theme of this in this chat around anger and we're going to be maybe using the idea of anger in tennis. You know, John Macaro, he was known as a super brat for a long period of time. Maybe he's a bit sort of a different place now, but we just have a little listen to this. And maybe we're going to have a bit of a chat about what mode we think that might be. Yeah, it's a bit of a shock. It was a bit of a spread, Mr Macaro. That was a good one. Excuse me. That was a good excuse. But you can't be serious, man. You cannot be serious. That was on the line. You cannot be serious, Rob. I think you left out a little bit there. Yeah, I think it might have, it might have got a little bit explosive driven to that point. But yeah, look, I mean, what do you make of that? Well, you know, me, Chris and I were talking about this and trying to figure out that sort of three or four second clip can be tricky, but there's a couple of things going on. One is there is a bit of a feeling there of a lack of control coming up. So I wonder about whether whether he's moving to an angry space is because of the sense that he's regular form of coping might be getting blocked. You know, we talked about, I imagine that for an elite athlete like that being perfect and in control of his shots and all that sort of thing is a really big part of his game and part of the kind of mode he needs to get into to perform. Now, you know, having a shot miss out by by inches millimeters and whatnot, it may be that he's starting to get blocked from his from his coping mode, which, which might suggest that he needs to win, you know, that he should always win. That kind of thing. The other thing I thought, you know, as well as it's another I guess in terms of control is the sense of justice. So, you know, I think with any, you know, any any any young child, it's not fair. He's getting more than me, the sort of sense. Yeah, that's where it goes. Doesn't it? Once he doesn't go his way, it starts to become quite childlike. Yeah, so we, I mean, when we were talking and thinking about this, this little clip of McEnroe, I mean, one idea is that yeah, he's feeling vulnerable and therefore he's flipping into an angry child's space. And as a result, you know, that could be driven by feeling, you know, sort of a set a sense of not feeling in control and feeling scared on one side. But then also a sense of injustice that he's not getting the call right, you know, the second idea, I mean, we were both talking about as well as this idea, could this be sort of more of an overcompensative, angry, angry kind of maybe a grand part of the grandiser or something. And, you know, so that could be another kind of, you know, part. Yeah, we were thinking about that, but it's a bit tricky off sort of three or four seconds. But I think our consensus was that there's sort of loss of control or complete, it sort of started feeling quite childlike. Maybe, when we just have a bit of a, you know, a read of the mode of the vision is coming on this comes from the manual that came from the scheme of modem, the tree, it's available and often used in the workshops. Angry child feels and expresses uncontrolled anger or rage in response to perceived or real mistreatment, abandonment, humiliation or frustration, often feels a sense of feeling being treated unjustly, acts like possibly like a child throwing a temper tantrum. And that's kind of with the tennis, it's prototypical that the rackets cop it, that there's so much anger and it just kind of needs to come out and they'll often abuse their rackets, like smash their rackets on the ground. What do you think of that? Yeah, I think that it's as externalizing, you know, this idea that, you know, from this manual is also going on to say the angry child serves the purpose of ventilating anger about perceived injustice. Okay, so when we're looking at that clip, he is clearly kind of ventilating anger around that. It goes on to say, whereas the bullying attacks serve to make a distance from others. Sorry, let me start again. Okay, the angry child serves the purpose of ventilating anger around it perceived injustice. Whereas the angry protectors serve to make a distance from other people. Okay, so we want, you know, they're like get away from me. In contrast, the bullying attack mode, in contrast to the bullying attack mode, the angry child does not attempt to attempt to threaten or intimidate. Okay, so I think, you know, I'm wondering whether, you know, it's not that easy sometimes from a three, three, three, three second clip. But yeah, what do you, what do you make from that? Yeah, I mean, I, the more we read into that, that sort of really does feel along the lines of an angry child. And it just does feel like a kind of tantrum. And it has those kind of aspects of like a loss of control, but also the sense of injustice. And that you can feel the scheme is coming, starting to come through. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. Well, it kind of goes on to, you know, keeping the tennis theme. Actually, I have a bit of a chat about Roger Federer. Now, you know, you're sort of preparing for this workshop of the impreparing. It's okay. It's funny. We're gonna be editing the crap out of this. In preparing for this podcast, I was doing a bit of a research, you know, around tennis players and Roger Federer. And look at tennis for the last two weeks. You know, possibly. And I didn't realize, like, you look at some of like Federer. He's calm, he's collected, he's got it all together. He's, he's very gentle. He's a very sportsman like, but, you know, looking at some interviews with his parents and a little bit of documentary footage that I sort of found on YouTube. It really looked like, you know, when he was around 16 to 19, he had a massive problem with having meltdowns and courts. How interesting. From, you know, throwing tennis records, having massive temp terms. You would never think that. You never thought that. Before his frontal lobes had developed, obviously. Well, you know, what happened as well, seemingly from interview that I was sort of reading, you know, along the same lines, was, you know, that his parents were starting to kind of get quite disapproving. And he had a really massive figure in his life. He had a coach that was working with him for all through his teens who died in a car accident. And I think that kind of from reading some interview for material, that was a part where he sort of said, I could get on top of this. I've got a deal with this. So it's just interesting in terms of-- that we do have these angry states. We all do have angry child states. And we learn how to manage these, particularly in kind of high performance situations. Well, we sort of-- something we were talking about before a little bit was something from the contextual psychology or the contextual chemotherapy book, which is thinking about two poles of human organization. There's a table in that book. I'm very interested. I really like this. I suppose that's it. And it just sort of talks about the importance of balancing out your assertiveness leg versus your attachment leg in terms of your needs. And so what that means is that we're motivated on one hand to get our needs met in terms of attaching to other people. It's more prosocial kind of needs. And on the other hand, we have to balance that with looking after ourselves and getting our own needs met for things like autonomy, sense control, and asserting ourselves, being a self. So that does mean sort of a balancing act, and being able to be driven by at different times our behavior as being about keeping relationships intact, which might mean things like surrendering at times or even avoiding expressing certain emotions if it's going to hurt other people, et cetera. And at other times, there may be a need to put those things aside and to be more direct in our needs and assertive and even aggressive at times. So there's this idea that they're sort of normal. Now, if that sort of matches up to the vulnerable child and angry child as lying as a sort of motivating force in one's personality, that the vulnerable child can often times be caught up thinking about feeling, wanting to get the needs met around attachment. And at other times, the angry child mode, the schemers are still triggered off, but often concerned with things around autonomy and even things like abuse and whatnot. So some of the schemers that lie in and around that. Now, the idea is that these two sort of feelings kind of forces, if you like, underneath, provide the impetus and motivation for coping, for subsequent coping. And the idea is that you're more avoidant style coping modes and even your more surrendering style coping mode or even styles might tend to be driven more by the vulnerable child mode underneath. So driven by the need to connect, if you like, and to keep relationships intact versus the angry child, the more over compensated type of coping as being driven a little bit more by underneath by anger, by sort of protesting and fighting to get your needs met. So that's kind of interesting if you think about, now if you even sort of extrapolate that out to the healthy adult, it's the same thing. You know, there are times when our healthy adult might be really informed by our vulnerability. Now, if I see my son is really upset about something and I'll feel that on his behalf, I'll feel a little vulnerable like seeing him that is upset. My move into compassion, like a compassionate parent, is going to be informed or driven partly by connection to my own feelings of vulnerability. - Yeah, it seems to me like intents of the vulnerable side of things, intents of connection because we're here in pop culture. He was vulnerable enough and then sort of sense and fostering connection with others, but definitely intents of the sense of kind of, you know, a sense of anger, a primal kind of basic level, temperament based anger as a way to kind of, you know, sort of get needs met as a child. I mean, like when you have your prefrontal cortex and vocab to be able to, to be able to, to convey these sorts of needs as a child. You know, when I look at my children, I think particularly when they're pre-verbal, they've got sort of three main ways of being that can affect each other, the angry child, or they're in kind of a more of a vulnerable child state. - Yeah. And also, it's a sort of feature of in the environment as to which kind of mode is likely helping get the needs met. So if there are any punish for showing vulnerability, you know, in one way or another, you'd imagine that the child is going to sort of, maybe fall back on other modes, perhaps the angry child mode. - Yeah, it's more socially acceptable to be angry, as opposed to have tears of a fuel vulnerable. - Especially for males, I mean, this could be a little bit of a gender thing. - Yeah, absolutely. - Absolutely. So, you know, I think one thing that I think is helpful for those who are learning more about skintherapy is that, you know, a vulnerable child and the angry child are very closely linked. - Yeah. - And often the sense that, you know, if someone is feeling outraged, for example, if we go back to the Mac and Ro idea, he's feeling outraged and, you know, sort of the perceived unfairness of the call. - Or, I mean, if I was kind of trying to think of ways vulnerable child would be, would be a sense of maybe fear and insecurity and these sorts of things. - Now, this is a key point too, I reckon, because a lot of, I mean, when I've treated guys, let's, I won't say that like Mac and Ro, but let's say guys more along the lines of being overcompensators, they're very much in touch with their anger, oftentimes, and will deny any sort of vulnerability. And one of the things I think is a little bit of a mistake, because I've made that mistake, actually. I've come to learn that is that pushing too much for vulnerability in these kind of guys, particularly these kind of overcompensating males with lots of anger, no vulnerability, there's no vulnerability here. And if you're too, if you push it too much like for, okay, well, there's anger, but where's the vulnerability? You know, I think you just end up pissing them off more and that they get essentially not hearing them. So what I've found is going with where the feelings are, is usually a good move. If they're feeling really pissed off, great, let's talk about that. I'm sure there's good reasons why you pissed off. And going with, with attunement to wherever they're at, and exploring the underlying meaning and the feeling, like what it's all about for them, and spending that time understanding it. And, you know, sometimes that will lead into a bit of the vulnerability underneath that, and that's lovely and that's fine. And especially if it leads to a floatback quite often, it will land on, you know, little Johnny feeling, feeling alone or whatever. But regardless, I think we have to keep in mind that, you know, the purpose of these techniques, such as imagery scripting, are to provide a corrective emotional experience. And so it's okay if all we get to with a technique is an angry child, if we land back on little Johnny, and he's really pissed off about what's going on. That's okay, we can still use that for our scripting, because we're still connecting to the EMS, we're still connected to the schema. So regardless of if the vulnerable child gets expressed, I still think it can be very therapeutic. And it's pretty cool too if you do get to the vulnerability. But what I'm kind of saying is we don't need to sort of push for it so much at times, that's what I found. - I mean, sometimes you can mow things out though, I can't wait, we can kind of suggest stuff. The person feels safe enough to discuss these sort of more vulnerable feelings underneath. That's helpful too, and to give him a chance. - To explore. - Yeah, explore. You know, maybe the possibility that, good to be that you're feeling upset, because about that point call, back before, because maybe you felt like you could be losing, and that was quite a fearful kind of concept. - Yeah, exploring it, that's a good room for that, isn't it? - Yeah. So I mean, look, we've talked a bit about angry child. And, you know, I mean, I'm just wondering in terms of where, you know, obviously the coping modes fit in, you know, obviously we've talked a bit about the idea of maybe. - I'd say probably the next common one would be like an angry protector. - Yeah, okay, okay. - Yeah. - So that would be pretty common. - So, you know, from the literature, it sounds like, you know, and what I sort of suggested, because, you know, one thing to think about in terms of, you know, the effect of an angry type of protector kind of my kicking in is the reaction that you feel, okay? So, you know, for me, when I'm sort of talking to my supervisors, is I, forgetting an angry child, like angry child feeling, you're gonna feel like you're dealing with a person having a tantrum, if you really kind of just look at the, you know, the reaction. But with an angry protector, you're gonna feel pushed away back to the corner. It's like, okay, we don't need to talk. talk about that if you don't need to. - Yeah, we sort of like, oh, touchy subject. Touchy subject. - Touchy subject. - That feeling again. - Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that, you know, with something like the angry protector as well, you know, it's also going to be about particular tops of triggers. You know, the anger protector necessarily isn't going to be, you know, unbothered by a, you know, a, a ref decision on it justice. The particular trigger that's going to be the issue is getting close or talking about a mode of top stuff. - Proximity, people getting into close, poking around. - Exactly. So, you know, maybe in a session, you're saying, you know, hey, how about we doing some imagery? You know, we're doing the imagery exercise today. And the client doesn't want to do that. And I'm like, no, thank you. - Oh, if we can talk about your son, or if we can talk about it. - I don't want to talk about my son. I don't want to talk about my son. - You know, this kind of sense of, get off my case, leave me alone, back off. - Yeah. - And that's the, that's the sense when it's that leave me alone. It's almost like that little Lucy idea. - Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, I think, having to think a bit about the, the actual content of what they're saying, leave me alone, back off, the tone, and the own reactions that you have as a therapist are pretty good kind of ideas. - I always feel when it happens, it's almost a bit like getting a wrap on the knuckles. - Yeah. - You've gone somewhere, you can even wrap on the knuckles, you know, okay, okay, let's go another way for a while. - Yeah, that's what I think of this out. - So, I guess what we talked about so far, we've talked about the importance of defining, you know, really getting a sense of the right mode and understanding that, being aware of our own reactions, because that can help us inform our assessment. But also it can, it can also put us off track sometimes, you know, if our own reactions are a little bit idiosyncratic, like if I'm the type of person that always feels bullied, whenever there's any anger, sometimes our own transference can get us off track. So, I know that's confusing, you know, sometimes transference is helpful, sometimes it can get us off track in terms of what the mode is. So, that's one important point. We had this other point again, which is fascinating. The point I made was, you know, sometimes you don't wanna push too much for the underlying vulnerability, because the person just wants to be heard where they're at. And other times, you know, you might wanna dig around a little bit and just explore and provide the space, because maybe vulnerability will come out. So, there's a sort of, again, there's no solid, you know, do this, you know, do that. But these are some things we might wanna think about in working with anger. And then what else do we get up to? Well, I tell you what, another thing to think about is when we want to push for anger. And, you know, a lot of people, you know, you know, some therapists uncomfortable with anger, but, you know, there's plenty of situations where I want the client to get angry in a sense of feeling, in a sense of justice, injustice, to have a sense of protest. If we come back to this leg thing, this leg, right, between the attachment leg and the assertiveness leg, right, from the contextual scheme of all, if you take that seriously, then, you know, there are definitely people for which are much more driven by the attachment leg and keeping things or stable and not wanting to sort of go into assertiveness, to readily or having that skill. Yeah. In other words, they're not in touch with their angry side so much. And so for some patients, you know, in other words, there is such a thing as healthy adult anger. Yeah, sometimes being a little bit angry can help drive us towards assertiveness. Yeah, absolutely. And it helps us to stand up for ourselves and back ourselves. And, you know, so I do a lot of trauma work. And, you know, in imagery scripting, I want the person to, you know, react and ultimately stand up for themselves. If they come across too flat, then often that can be very underwhelming experience. Yeah, so absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. For, you know, a sense of, you know, injustice pushing. Well, that's interesting. And actually, you know, we talk about trying to get anger and maybe at times people trying to flip that into vulnerability, but actually it's the other way, oftentimes too, that a sign that the, that the scripting has landed occurs when you see the patient flip into a bit more of an angry state. Yeah. So they might have gone in feeling or vulnerable and then you're like, you're tracking their feelings and what's happening now for you? And they're like, now I'm just feeling pissed off. Yeah. And that's often a good sign. You think, okay, now we've moved with things of progress a little bit. Yeah. I, obviously, will try to get the client to access healthy anger, but I might use chairwork for the client to stick up for their vulnerable science. So I might, you know, imagine there's little you that has had these experiences when you're now to sit in the healthy part of you, sit up straight and imagine their dads across from you and he's saying these things. You know, as a part of you that feels irritated, as a part of you, they're sick and tired of feeling this way. Yeah. Okay. What do you want to say to dad in this situation? Sometimes it might be actually, what do you want to say to particular, you know, mose, you might want to get angry at a parent mode per say? And if they're a little too meek, you know, you're like, right, let's turn it up 10%. Let's turn up 20%. Let's roll play. Let's be dramatic. Yeah. Yeah. And then for our more sort of overcompensators, we do the same thing, but like, okay, you want to kill dad. Like, let's turn that down 30%. So let's kind of, you know, some little bit of control over it. It's not to say that you're going to shut down your anger because there's something there, right? Absolutely. But let's turn it down. So if you got any particular kind of angles on maybe working on angry child in session with you, so someone's pissed off or angry and irritated because they, you know, they have some. Yeah. I mean, I, my own experience is to go to a tunement. And really go with where they're at. So I try not to force particularly in the beginning, any, you know, moving them towards vulnerability or whatever it might be, but it's just a staying with where they're at and exploring how they're feeling and attuning to to their own, you know, their internal reality is best I can. Yeah. So, you know, and I think this can be applied across the board. Whatever feelings are in the room. So one of the things that we developed for the book and also for, you know, one of the chapters we just did on a tunement is a sort of stepped process in the tunement, which starts with focusing on a very specific snippet of the trigger. You know, what, what, what is it that really did it for you? You know, okay, you're feeling angry right now. What is it that really got you rolled up? You know, what was the moment even that particular moment? Usually, usually we can, we can drill it down. There may be a lot of things going on, but usually we can drill it down when they really lose it, that there was something in the environment, there's something they really did it for them. You know, what was it? Was it the look in their face? Was it the words they use? Was it the fact that no one was there, like that you're all alone, like what was the thing that really triggered off the feelings? And that's usually starts to get some understanding of the context. The next step, of course, then drilling down into the specific emotional reaction. So, and what exactly is the feeling? Can we describe that? And where do you feel that in your body? How does it show up in your body? In terms of sensations and whatnot. And then the third step being then starting to get drilled down into meaning. You know, and okay, so I can see that you're angry in this situation. And I could easily maybe kind of guess what's gone on for you, but I don't want to do that. I don't want to understand what it's really like for you. So can you tell me, you know, what it meant for you when you would treated that way or when you, you know, in fact, you were all alone or whatever? I mean, what did that mean for you? You know, and it's playing around that meaning space. So I usually find going in there with that stuff and actually really understanding it as best we can. Because of the idea of sitting with your hands, sitting on your hands, you know, be with the client rather than do to when they sort of moments. Yeah. And then the court, you know, if we're drilling down into the steps, the next step being sharing that back, that understanding back to them, say, look, you know, from what I'm hearing is that, you know, the kind of reason why you're feeling so angry is because it really set off the kind of sense of not being good enough for you that nothing you ever do is quite good or whatever it might be. So starting to reflect back your understanding to see if you can get some resonance from the patient as to what it's all about. So I mean, that process of attunement is pretty important. And the fifth step being eventually, once you do get that resonance and the patient's saying, you have that moment, saying, yes, yes, yes, you've got it now. You're getting it done and really get it. Is starting to bring in a bit more like empathic statements, you know, usually something along the lines of, you know, communicating, you know, how hard it must be for them, you know, to have to go through that again and even throwing in a little bit of historical linking and stuff like that. Yeah. And you know, to moat against in that sense as well, like, you know, being able to talk a bit of moat talk, but you can't really do the mode, sort of the talk and moating things out and mode work until you got past it attunement in that sense. Yeah, absolutely. So that's a really good step. And I just find, takes a bit of the punch out of the anger. I mean, anger is still around, but anger's feeling understood now. And then linking and thinking about what do we want to do next in the session. So often times that will mean going with the themes, whether it's abandonment or defectiveness, or whatever, what are the drive of the anger going with those themes and then maybe suggesting whether it's some imagery work or some chairwork or whatnot. There's a couple of things in there that in terms of like, sometimes people are in an angry child mode in session as well, you know, when they're angry at you. Right. - Right, this is a different thing. - Yeah, it's a slightly different thing. So, you know, when you're in an angry child state in session, you know, maybe one thing I might be thinking as well is I'd so agree with you what you're saying in terms of the achievement and slowing things down and getting what's happening, you know, in situations I'll be outside of the room, I think. - But it's there really on the pump at you if there's sort of like fire and off at you and I pissed off with Chris because of this and you're not there and, - Yep. - I mean, what are you thinking Chris? What are you doing in that situation? - I mean, I think that the only really, it's a similar sort of process what you're talking about, but just a first thing, you know, is to kind of sit on your hands and vent, you know, I guess you're angry, you're angry. What else are you angry about? I guess you're angry about that. I guess the number one you're angry with is, I got number two, you're angry with that. I guess you're angry with that. You're angry with that, you can get, you know, here you have a fucking spot here at I guess. You're angry about that too. You know, this venting process, you know, is something that's really important because it's allowing them to sort of flesh out this. What I often find, and I see it from listening to tapes as well, is these really choppy sessions where people, therapists, you know, you know, we were all kind of on the best and want to help and the empathy and the achievement sometimes and care can kind of put out the anger and it pops up and it pops up, you know, so another 20 to 50, five minutes, three minutes later, it pops up again. - And I'm also pissed off because of this thing they haven't worked and they haven't-- - Yeah, absolutely. - Yeah, do it without-- - So it's your idea of ventilation, you know, in that situation when it's really explosive, is allowing some moments to fully ventilate and rest out, you know, the range of issues that might have been treated or things off. - Yeah, so if it's anger outside of the session, you know, it's an achievement, it's getting it. I just want to get it, you know, you know, maybe start to kind of empathise and validate, look at modes, but if it's in session, you know, I guess, sitting-- - And maybe directed at us or whatever it might be, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, it's more of that ventilation idea before going into a tool to achievement. - Yeah, yeah. - And I guess the other idea of that is, you know, if you're going into quickly with the sort of, particularly the empathising part, you're very likely to shut down the anger very quickly. - Yeah. - You apply empathy very quickly, you know, early on, you're going to shut it down, so-- - Exactly, yeah. - You know, and we want our patients to get the idea that it's okay to express and to talk about the issues that might anger them. We don't want to give them the idea that this is a bad thing or we need to close off anger too quickly. - Yeah, because then they don't-- - They don't regulate it, you know. - Totally, totally. So it's, you know, anger's okay, but let's work our way where you don't take it out and lose it and do something that you don't want to do. - Yeah, we want them to break that sort of connection. I mean, a lot of cluster B patients have this relation with anger where I have the anger and it just has to come out in aggressive ways and breaking that connection and getting to see that I can express my angry feelings in the needs underpinning that. - Yeah. - You have to turn into me throwing chairs around or whatnot. - Yeah. The other thing we haven't really talked about, I guess we've talked about dealing with angry child sort of states, but, you know, dealing with sort of a lot of the overcompensation states in Schemotheraapy, bullying attack, aggrandizza, angry protector, type of states. - Yeah. - And working with these. So, you know, at least if I'm kind of working with someone in this sort of state, first thing I want to do is maybe kind of, you know, identify that and help them to kind of see that there is a side of them as a part of them. That's the tough guy and the angry tough guy. - Yeah. I'm feeling pretty pushed away right now or pretty, you know, attacked or whatever, yeah. - Yeah. And then one thing we'd be also to start looking a bit about maybe motivators or, you know, is this kind of side working for you, you know, this level of anger or all this, you know, how does that fit with their ultimate treatment goals? If you do that, you get angry like this and you do these things to me, then you're going to be doing to other people and you're probably doing it to your kids and you want to see your kids. - Right, right. - You can't get relationships to stick, you know, whatever. And how does what's playing out here in our relationship? How does that relate to why you're coming in? - Yeah, so it's amazing how often that really hits like as in, you know, the thing that they're actually coming in for really, really plays out in the relationship with the therapist. - So, you know, therapeutic hook is the big thing, you know, Wendy Behari speaks a lot about the therapeutic hook with work with narcissism. And I think it would go, I might take it, it would be pretty important for that to be with all the overcompensator, angered styles, you know, so you're thinking about, you know, if you do that, your kids won't want to speak to you, you want to see your kids. - Yeah, sure. - It's interesting, like as you work through that anger like that, like so we're addressing the anger, we're understanding it, but then with the therapeutic hook we're actually then reconnecting it back to the vulnerability. - About this matters to you too, because when it's like this, you know, this is the reality for you that, you end up missing out or your pain that is a bad guy or you all have to learn. So, and what about, I mean, you know, in terms of, one thing that we haven't really talked too much about is, anger in the context of, you know, critical, you know, parent type modes, you know, you know, I mean, it can be an issue where people are taking out stuff on themselves, have been raised at themselves for maybe like, eras or steaks and these sorts of things. What do you make of that? - Well, actually one of the things I always say now, if people say, oh, I can be asking them how they felt, they give them situation and they say, I felt angry. One of the questions I almost always asked now is who you angry at? - Yeah. - Because that's just one of those things too, it's a little very quickly tell you, is this obviously fair angry at themselves, it's likely to be more in the critic space. - Yeah, yeah. - And angry at others than it's more in the coping, maybe, or angry child space. So that's a good question. But yeah, you know, that's another mode, isn't it? The people can often feel very angry and frustrated with themselves when they're, when they're, you know, in that critic space. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So again, without, I guess, you know, my view would be to sort of highlight that there's a side of them that is punishing at themselves, their angry at themselves. Look at origins of that, help to get a greater sense of diffusion, maybe doing some share with the angry side. That's angry at you for doing XYZ and being this way. And maybe, you know, highlighting that, you know, ego dystonic separateness. - Yeah, I'm sure. - Yeah, 100% always find this with the critic. The more I do this sort of chairwork and stuff with the critic, the more I sort of really have noticed that, you know, healthy individuals, it's not necessarily the case that they don't have any critic message. You know, it's not like healthy individuals are walking around and they never have a thought like, you know, gee, you're not good enough for this isn't good enough for. You know, that kind of thing, you know, what more often happens though is that they kind of hear that voice, but they're more, they're much more distant from it, diffuse from it. - Yeah. - It's kind of notice that as an import, but they aren't it, like they aren't that voice. And what you see with patience is that, you know, those that are really stuck with the critic, is they really endorse it and actually kind of become that mode, they're sort of like, it's true. I am a piece of crap. Like when you, if you sort of ask them about those thoughts. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And where you kind of see in healthy individuals, and I think the goal of what we try to do is, as you say, externalize that diffuse from it, get it on a chair and sort of ventilating and getting them to see how sort of problematic it is to fully hold that view, you know. And it's fine to sort of step back and be able to notice more about what that side is like and then voice, but yeah, so it's a really is the step one, you can't sort of challenge a critic or step, you know, step boundaries in them, it's on it. If it's not distanced and diffuse. So that's kind of step one. - Yeah, and I guess that you know, you can get sort of almost to quasi dissociative states with someone to literally in that state, whether you know, taking it out on cells or doing extreme behavior, self harm, behaviors and stuff, because they're in that angry, punitive state and helping them to kind of work with that and see it as separate, you know, is. - Yeah, Chris, so I mean, one thing that I wanted to say too, is how cool it was today in thinking about the case, you know, the mac and room behavior, in just going back and forth a little bit and stepping back and thinking about, you know, what mode this could be. And it was kind of interesting that we didn't, like it took a little bit of thought. And I know it's only a three or five second clip, but it wasn't like we were going bang their language child or bang their ball in the tack or something, but it was more like a bit of a process of reflection and back and forth. - Absolutely, yeah, yeah. And it's not easy, I think sometimes when you're learning the model and you're like, you know, you're just learning the terminology, but you know, one thing that I've always took from me from doing some training in the past and what I kind of passed through in our training, you know, is one thing is kind of the, having these four steps to work out modes is one is the content. So what are they actually saying to you? - You can be serious. - Yeah. - Transcribing that. What's the tone? So he's obviously quite angry. What's the, you know, the counter-transference, the process reaction and actually, you know, the fourth bit is what they actually do and what's the body language and this sort of stuff. And they can give you a bit of guidance with that. But even with those things, you know, you find it hard sometimes in, you know, one of my old colleagues, he's always sort of going about what's the function of Zibavia, you know? It's something. - Yeah. - You know, that, that, that, that. - But yeah, I mean, hopefully we put that out there that I mean, in sort of bouncing things back and forth and continuing to look at all the bits of information available and think, you know, holding function in mind, we kind of arrived at something that starts to feel pretty tight. And I guess the other part of this, often we do this alone, you know, most of the time, of course, we're just doing it clinically and sort of, we have a bit of back and forth. Sometimes we kind of, we don't arrive at it properly until two, three sessions on the track, we end up thinking, ah, no, this is actually, you know, a group protector. Yeah. And I was thinking about as Boolean attack. So that's okay. And I hope we were able to model that today. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Because I think it's kind of really interesting things in really interesting situations, you know, and I think, you know, with all these mods that we're talking about, you know, sometimes it just takes a little time for you to formulate. It's not like a one session formulation process. It's a something that kind of is a little bit more organic in text a bit of time. Yeah. Yeah. So Chris, I mean, I mean, I really enjoyed today bouncing ideas off you around. You should do a thing with child. You know, I look forward to doing, we do another one, you know, down the track. I actually hanging out to Rob. Yeah. We always do. You're a good guy, Chris. You too. You too. Not so much angry child from either of since the lots of healthier, dulled and happy child, hopefully, good, bringing on. Well, we've really enjoyed doing this on broadcast. And, you know, going forward, we'll be interested to hear from you and getting a sense, you know, what do people need? We're happy to maybe have a chat, talk a little bit about how we see things. We are looking forward to maybe interviewing and having a chat with some other sort of more specific, you know, presenters and people that have particular interest in skin with therapy. But if you need to contact us, you can email us at [email protected]. I mean, we'd love to hear from people. If you guys have any ideas about either sort of topics related to skin with therapy or specific issues, we could maybe discuss something that might be interesting. To you out there, we'd be happy to look at maybe addressing that in future podcasts. So until then, we will see you soon in podcast land. Thank you. Thank you.