SPEAKERS

Rosie Gilderthorp, Melanie Lee, Bridger Falkenstein

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast, the show that helps you to reach more people, help more people and build the life you want to live by doing more than therapy.

Hello, and welcome to the Business of Psychology Podcast. I'm very excited today to be here with two guests, probably my first time with two guests, I think. I'm here today with Dr Mel Lee from Trust Psychology, and Bridger Falkenstein from the Beyond Healing Centre in the US, and notably also from the Notice That podcast which you should all listen to, if you don't already, especially if you're EMDR therapists. But I'm really excited to have Mel and Bridger here today, because they're here to talk to us about Somatic Integration Processing, which is a new model, or it's new to me anyway, which aims to help us to synthesise the other approaches that we might have in our arsenal as therapists. And what I really love about it, it's got a really deep focus on the mind and body connection. And also on the multiplicity of selves. And for me, these are two things that have always been a really big part of my work, but I have often struggled to see how they all come together and fit into a treatment plan. So thank you so much for being here today, guys and welcome.

Thank you, Rosie, it's great to be talking again and Bridger and I have been connecting over this for a while now, so it's lovely to be together and be able to share the integration, how that works clinically. But also, as we pointed out earlier, just in a working together collaboration perspective as well, it's good to reflect, have a space to reflect on that.

Yeah, very excited to be here. This journey, you know, and I'm sure we'll get into this and some of the more... some of the podcasts as we go, but even just the collaboration that's emerged between us here in the US and Mel and the passion that we have, I think the goals that we're kind of setting together, it's a great thing to talk about on a podcast such as this, where we're talking about the intersection between a deep passion and, you know, love and appreciation and a business. That's a very important intersection, so it's, it's a very special place to talk.

Absolutely. And I think we'll probably spend the first half of the podcast thinking about what SIP is and how it might help us as clinicians to kind of deepen and expand our practice. But I do also really want to ask you some questions about the business model and how you got going with this and how you're turning it into something sustainable. Because I know that there will be people listening to this who've got a kernel of an idea for something that could be great, but just can't imagine how to get it off the ground. So let's get into SIP first. I suppose this might be one for you, Bridger, but could you say a little bit about why you created SIP? Why it had to be a thing in the world that needed to exist?

Yeah, so here in the US, you know, we have a myriad of professional classifications and licence types and, you know, and I know, that's similar across the world, but for us here in a private kind of business situation, there are these boundaries that exist between, you know, the professional identity of these various disciplines, and when a model or theory comes out of one of these disciplines, there's this strange, you know, timidity across the the aisle of like, well, do we use this? Or do we not use this? How do we talk about it in our way? What's the kind of standard or the guidelines of how to do that, and I think that's where we started to see a kind of explosion of burnout and siloing and isolation because in that timidity or that, you know, the, the lack of guidance on which direction to go with the content or with the theory, or how do we actually put this into practice, we found you know, the need for psychotherapists or the need for counsellors was just crushing, you know, with such a lack of community identity. So beyond really, you know, SIP is just a facet of beyond, but the reason SIP came out of that kind of pressure was to help people understand their work, help people understand how they could continue their work in this landscape of, you know, such a diverse theory and technique kind of reality, and what to do about new learning that comes out or new theory or new ideas. You know, that's something that in our graduate trainings is not frequently talked about, we're typically looking at content that's, you know, 20, 30, maybe 10 years old, but we're not really taught about how to synthesise the material, let alone how to make sense of new ideas. Are there new ideas or are they just kind of repackaging some really old wisdom? So that's, that's kind of where SIP came from. More specifically, you know, we're integrating attachment and neurodevelopmental theory, somatic psychology, and the neuroscience of memory. And those are not just as a random plucking of theories, those are from a very detailed literature review of traumatology and what kind of makes change possible in the field of trauma.

That's really interesting. So it sounds like you kind of noticed or felt an identity crisis in therapists in your community. And trying to solve that problem led you to creating something to help people almost, you know, hang their experiences together so that they could work and feel confident that they were working within a framework that made sense within the evidence base. And I found that really interesting to listen to, because I do get the sense, and Mel and I, obviously, we've come up through the same system, so you probably picked up on this as well, but almost like new stuff is a bit of an existential threat sometimes. And there's a really big distrust of new therapies when they emerge. And and you're right, we still think of things like ACT as being quite new. And I'm reading ACT textbooks from the 80s, they're older than me, some of them, I think, yeah, I can really understand that the need for that. Mel, what was it that drew you to SIP? Because I think you were just getting into it when we had our last conversation?

That's right Rosie. I’d been listening to Notice That for a number of months in the run up following my EMDR training. But it's it's it's really interesting to hear you give that history Bridger because I knew elements of it, but I don't think the full picture because the my experience of using SIP regularly in my clinical work now has offered what I think Bridger and his colleagues hoped it would in that my identity feels a lot more integrated now as a therapist, and it's actually, ironically easier to do trauma work with all the complexity because you've got a synthesising framework, and that was the dream. So if if I'm honest, the reason I was really drawn to SIP was the frustrations of that impostor syndrome, and thinking I've got all this training, but why it doesn't take click, why is it still the case that there's stuck points in therapy, and this idea that you have to pause and dance or whack-a-mole therapies, Bridger talks about that, but you have to stop and do one technique and then stop and do another. So the idea that you could integrate, because of course, the more you discover with your CPD, you know there's something in the mind body connection, you know, it's something to do with EMDR memory, just intuitively all the reading tells you, they're all important. My CAT background taught me it's all about the relationship and what's happening in the room into process wise and intersubjectivity. And SIP just, it was Jen and Melissa, Bridger's colleagues talking about it initially as the building up to the training that we're about to offer, just touched on all of them and said, there's a way you can do this together that's attachment focused, takes the body into account, takes neuroscience into account, and still allows you to be authentic. And I was like, tell me more, that sounds incredible. And then, of course, these moments in the training where everything that we know about can be layered on top of the model. I think what Bridger and his colleagues have done is just create something really elegantly concise, there's ways you can visualise it, use principles of it on a daily basis that means I don't have to hold all that theory in my mind, I can trust my gut instincts, knowing that I am working on a knowledge base that is profoundly evidence based and useful. So not looked back, and that's where our excitement in collaboration comes from because I thought how can I get more involved in this because the world needs to know that this is possible.

I love that and that excitement is really rubbing off because it's putting me in mind of, I've got this really lovely and also talented, I think, coaching client who came to me really upset recently because she felt like in the therapy room she wasn't doing anything evidence based, she was just being. And just to let that land, she was criticising herself for just being. And we kind of explored that and everything she said I was like there is an evidence base behind all of these things, it's just not integrated in your mind yet, and it was funny, that was only a few weeks ago, and then I watched your webinar and I thought, oh, this would really, really help. And I know as a clinician, I've been there many times myself where I've come out with what did I do there? Did I do anything helpful? And yeah, it seems like this model could really help us know where we're going with that dance. So the dance still happens but we feel more confident that it's leading us in the right direction.

Yeah, there's a strange, kind of implicit, and sometimes it makes its way into the explicit, but implicit assumption that to be with is to do soft therapy or soft science or, you know, it's not as clinically effective. But I think that's a, that's a not just imprecise, but you know, drastic under estimation of what it means to actually be with, in that, you know, the, the one of the taglines of, of SIP is learning how to listen. And that's really what we're going after is that, you know, the reason we have this Venn diagram with attachment neurodevelopment, somatic psych, and memory is not because again, they're random, but because they help you understand what to listen for, as the person that you're sitting with, as they become more and more able to feel safe with you, reveals the origins of their fears, their, their, their, what's at the base of their dysfunction, what they're struggling with, what keeps them buried in the past, they start to just naturally show you. And if you don't know how to listen to those things, you're going to have to force it, which is where a lot of these protocols put them into a framework and have a lot of, you know, prestigious stamping of evidence based therapy that says this is the way you process through trauma, or this is the way you change behaviour, or whatever. But I think in the absence of safety, that's the best you could hope for is a script based protocol that's been, you know, subject to quantitative, you know, methodologies to validate its effectiveness over time. But that's, again, I think that that takes therapy out of its origin into some westernised conceptualization of changing.

Wow, that's deep. My brain is wanting to go so many different places with that. But yes, what it's putting me in mind of is actually that that's the bit that you can't get in a six month training course, isn't it? The bit that actually allows you to really deeply listen and be with somebody is almost, well it is certainly, in my mind, the biggest skill, and the thing that has to become part of you, and why we're a vocation, and not just a job.

Yeah, you have to be in a community that believes that, for that to actually take root. You know, this type of identity development can't happen alone in these asynchronous like, I'm just going to take it... you over these next two years, I'm gonna take three or four trainings that are just random, or I think they're related, but I don't know how they integrate, like, that's where beyond is so much more than SIP, because we have a community that we're actively cultivating to, you know, help embody the wisdom of the trainings that we put together. So I couldn't agree more.

There's something so deep about the learning from the clinical application as well, then having these ongoing discussions around, so in my attempt to like embody that SIP principle, this is what happened and it was so effective, that like to share that back just builds on the confidence that what you're doing is more than just theory. So as Bridger was talking there about the, the core kind of tenants underlying it as well about how to, like these intangible things, about how to listen, I suppose the way that I sit with it now is because there's such a deep emphasis on safety in the room, which, again, all of these core models emphasise deeply is underlying all traumatology, and we know that like from our CPD, we know that from knowledge base, but how do you live that in the room, is being in tune with the other, if there's any facial expression, physical movement indication in my body, that something's not safe, or something feels now threat based, to just almost put all tools down and spend all of those next process moments reestablishing that safety, is what you're allowed to do with SIP. And I think previously, like you described, Rosie, you'd come out of sessions before knowing this theory of thinking, I think I did something useful there, but I couldn't articulate what it was or I'm almost embarrassed in supervision to describe that we didn't do any techniques this week, when actually you're doing the most profound thing, which is to allow another embodied person to feel safe and coregulated with you. But you do it much better when you've got the permission to do it, because you stop talking and actually allow your body to offer the safety, which up till that point, it's like silence means you're not doing anything, some other models...

Yeah, absolutely. And especially, I once, I don't know why I did this really, but I once downloaded a template for my clinical notes, because I was feeling anxious that I wasn't putting the right things in. And the bulk, the main section was techniques used. And oh my gosh, the guilt when I had nothing to put in that box, because often, you know, I would have stuff to put in it, but some sessions, I'd have nothing to put in it because all I’d done was listen, really. And I'd always had clinical supervisors who have been very supportive of that, but there was still this nagging feeling, I'm not doing CBT I'm not doing EMDR I'm not doing ACT. What am I doing? And I think SIP answers that question a lot of the time when you look into it. So you started to talk a bit Bridger about the kind of theoretical underpinnings. I'm curious, actually, so you've mentioned sort of neuroscience and neurodevelopmental attachment and all of that stuff. What was your kind of background that brought all of that to the forefront of your mind at the right moment?

Yeah. Well, that's a, that's a large question. In, you know, my, my professional training, in my undergraduate degree was in clinical and behavioural neuroscience. And so that's a psychology emphasis. But I studied that alongside a double major in sociology. And so that's what really began my fascination, or I guess, formalised my fascination. Because before that, I was deeply interested in humans, creating culture, and anthropology and linguistics was always really interesting to me. And so in, in college, I started to get that the more precise tools than I ever had, and I've always been a voracious reader and organiser of information, and so it just took, I took very well to it. And then as I got into my, into my professional training, I wanted to go into psychoanalysis, but found my, my heart was so much more set on wellness than illness. And that's an important distinction, perhaps for another time. But in that counselling was the way that I, was the way that I knew that I wanted to go, I wanted to help people and this was to great disappointment of my mentors in undergrad, because they said I needed to be doing research and I needed to be, you know, that I would waste a lot in that space of just doing therapy with clients every day. And that was, I don't know, to me at the time, I didn't think much of that, but it's funny to see history kind of play out to where I am teaching a lot, and I am writing a lot. I'm creating a lot of content, but I am putting the client and the therapist first as I think about that relationship. So you know, all throughout my professional training, that the things I was reading, the things I was listening to, was piecing together the model underneath the surface, my graduate paper in my trauma course was called safety as the treatment, and that really had the bones of SIP within it, bringing in attachment and neurodevelopment, bringing in, at the time, I was really, really interested in polyvagal theory that was kind of when it was captivating so much of my, my creativity, and then obviously the science of memory. You know, I knew the neuroscience side of that back from my undergrad. And so all of it was there, it just wasn't called somatic integration and processing yet, until we at Beyond all came together and said, you know, I really think that this thing that we're all doing, which is you know, together, again, we didn't call it what it is now, but we were doing it then this thing that we're doing could really help the clinicians that are coming to us for consultation, that are coming to us just for community. Like what if we actually put this together, and we'd already been doing the podcast for a while and so we had some inkling of an idea of what it would look like to put together this training. Jen and Melissa had already been doing EMDR trainings for years. So we had quite a few templates from the old world, if you will, that would help us put together this training. And then you know, it just kind of took off from there, as soon as we put together the slideshow and I mean, people showed up to take it. So.

I love that. And I'm not surprised. Because what, what it sounds like you did, there, is you identified a need, because you had that need. So in a sense at the beginning, you were your own kind of ideal student, which means you're able to speak to that need. Often, that's the best way, having that bit of lived experience behind helps you understand what people really need from you, and you created the training that met the need. So I'm not surprised that lots of people are really keen to take it. So then let's dive into the model in a little bit more detail. Because Mel, I really loved on the webinar, you described SIP as helping to unleash your therapy ninja. I really loved that, and I think it really speaks to that feeling when therapy is going well and you feel like all your synapses are helping you to find the right thing for the client. And I love the idea that SIP can help us feel like that more often. So could you just say a little bit more about how SIP helps you to feel like that in the therapy room?

Yes. And I had such anxieties as well about using the term ninja. But I think in speaking to Bridger, this is what's so wonderful about collaboration and coming from a similar place in what you're trying to achieve longer term, is you can play around with ideas and you trust that in the intersubjective space between. Because of course this doesn't just exist in the therapy room does? It exists across the board in all collegial relationships and Bridger...

With humans, just in general, human beings.

And you modelled that beautifully in the SIP 1 training as well. So that those initial interests about, this is not just gonna help professionally, oh my goodness, this is just kind of about yeah, understanding human relationships and behaviour. So this, I suppose it's the permission giving of a model that, you know, there's been significant synthesis and work, as Bridger's been describing, at that theoretical synthesis level, your Evidence Based Therapist podcasts has the tagline, you know, 'we read so you don't have to', because there is a huge trust in the bringing together of minds that we're doing more than just what an individual will be able to create. And there's something so deeply profound about that, that when you and I spoke before Rosie about trying to live your values within your practice, there could be something so isolating or self-doubting about being in a room, even if you've got colleagues around you. And because the work we're doing with chronic pain, in particular, is about team working and how you genuinely bring people together with a case conceptualization or formulation that is truly integrated, not that you just pass it on to one person after that person has finished their piece of work. So there's something in the principles of SIP that just spoke so deeply, that allow you to position yourself in the therapy room and with others, with such sort of honest authenticity, that it feels like you're doing therapy from your gut, because you're able to, I think the key word is trust. And that's what's been so magical. I've had very emotional moments in our kind of evolving collaboration with Bridger and the team that just like oh my goodness, when you meet others that you can trust in and trust that what you're trying to do together, even if you might have different opinions, or different ways of coming at it, different experiences, there's a deeper journey that you're on. And I'm able to channel that and take that into client work as well. So there's something in that permission giving that then you trust the client system in a way that this person knows more than any technique is going to, that I'm just a facilitator, I'm not the healer, or the person that's doing fixing, I'm offering something different. And what pressure that takes off your shoulders. And it's the same way with creating courses or thinking about how to bring SIP into clinical practice across the world because starting in America coming across to the UK, all these collaborations that are happening, you trust that you're going to get there greater through integration and heads together. And there's something deeply profound about that moving away from the individualising that has come with mental health. It's not about what's wrong with you is it? It's about your context and your environment, and what's possible with another it's co-created always, it's a flow. And so it's, I've always been quite a bigger visionary person, I find details difficult. It's grat for business at times, but awful at other times and that's why I find SIP fantastic sitting into, but then I need help to translate those details across to make it understandable to others and that's where the dialogue flow happens. But that then allows a curiosity in the therapy room to do the same like trying to get... you trust the bigger picture of where you're going. So the details kinda take care of themselves.

Yeah, it's so interesting how this model is so impactful for both of you, as human beings, as well as your therapy practice, and the two things can't be separated. And that is true to the theory of the model. So it's really interesting to kind of watch that process as you talk about it. You know, getting on to...

Sorry, just on that really quick, the, you know, one of the things we provocatively say at times, in our consultation is that, this whole thing, therapy is made up in, you know, the drop of the bucket that it becomes when you look at human evolution, it is made up, and we just agree that this role has high importance, and we, you know, set up these training programmes and all these ethical certifications to ensure that we're offering quality services that can be, you know, paid for, but when you look at it, again, from a human evolutionary biology perspective, we're, we're stepping into the role that humans are, are very well suited to perform with each other. And so that's where, again, we needed to, if we're having an identity crisis, and burnout is such a fear, we believe that it's because of that, that, you know, almost forgetting, of what this really is all about. Incompetence and a fear of imposter syndrome will set in, if we talk about therapy, as it's this elusive and ambiguous, perfect, you know, business role, or clinical expertise or something like that, that isn't... it's vaporous, it's not real. So you're always going to be chasing the carrot of competence, and I have to be better, and there's this evidence base, you know, excellence and efficacy and all of these indicators of quality care that we in the West value, we need to look deeper than that and see that this is actually about an identity as a human, not just a role that you play, nine to five at work, and then come home.

I love that you're saying that out loud. I really love that. I think it's one of those things which needs to be made explicit so we can confront it, and say, are we actually okay with, you know, pretending that this is something it's not? Because, yeah, I think there is this real belief that I'll know it, if I'm really doing therapy, if I'm really doing it right, I'll just know somehow. And of course, you always feel like an impostor. Because you're not you're a human being sitting in a room...

Rosie, I get this question all that all the time. You know, I do so many hours of consultation and somebody likes it and just so preciously, they ask, you know, how do I get to the deep work? There's this fixation on this deep work idea. And I think that that, again, is a misrepresentation. That is, you know, of course, you're going to feel that way, if you hear the way trauma therapy is talked about as like this miracle, you know, silver bullet type of cure, then you're going to be longing for that every single moment you're sitting and thinking about sessions, or you're sitting and thinking about clients or whatever. But that's not how human organisms emerge. That's traumatic, if that's if the change is that immediate in that transformative that is the definition of trauma. So we have to look at then, how humans emerge as complex, interdependent systems. And this is, you know, a lot of interpersonal neurobiology language here, but that we form in relationships. That's where the hope of therapy exists, if it does at all, in the relationship.

Wow. Yeah, I don't think Yeah, it's crazy that we forget that sometimes, isn't it? Sorry, go ahead Mel.

There's two things coming to mind as you're both talking here. One is that the irony of trauma therapy being less energy taxing, like less tiring, when you actually take away that pressure, because it is all about the relationship between you and you're a part of it. To deny that is effortful and to try and step into these, there's these fantastic terms in SIP 2 when we touch on in the city of self, where are about objective and subjective self, and this idea when you notice you're in objective certain therapy, when you're trying to be a therapist or a psychologist, that when you feel that you're in that, always know warning signs to me, you know, subjective enough right now, because there's something in that, that the other will feel your authenticity, you're doing something to me now because you're in psychologist mode. So we have to get back to what's happening between us. And that's not to say you don't do things really skilled or are incredibly technique driven and well trained, of course you do. But it's knowing when to kind of turn it up and turn it down. Because knowing the depth of the co-creation, especially with kind of attachment theory and neuro development, and the way that SIP talks about the different levels of the triune brain, like you talk about compassion focused therapy and other approaches, we're really looking at the core way the brain is structured here. It means that if I know I've got somebody that's been through highly complex trauma, that there's developmental there, then we can guarantee that trust and safety are tested from day one in the room all of the time. And anytime there's any hope, we're going to get a downpour again, of like checking on safety, because that's what you've needed to do. So it takes, it offers, SIP offers predictability there as well. So when those moments happen, you don't panic as a therapist and say, I've done it wrong, or I went too quickly, they go, of course, this has happened, you're trusting my, the safety of our relationship here, you're always going to do that. So we can, we can lean into it. And it allows you as a therapist to just hold quite a containing position, and I found that so helpful from an energy perspective of like, yeah, well, you do have an impact on me, and I have an impact on you. That's just life, like, so let's not pretend it's not going to leave this room.

And it gives you a formulation as well for why you have to take self care seriously. You know, I don't always love the term self care and I think that, you know, often people have a false idea about what that means. But things like, I mean, it's not just therapy work, even when I'm doing coaching or teaching, I feel my body takes on other people's anxiety, whether I'm helping them with their business, and they're anxious about, you know, will this work, or whether you know, I'm working with somebody on deep seated trauma, I always feel it really in all of my muscles and my body. So I have to schedule in to go for a run in the middle of the day, you can see I've done that. And I have to do that, because I have to release that energy before I can take on more of any sort. And I've always felt guilty, but actually the way that you were talking just there, I was like, I shouldn't have to feel guilty about that because that makes sense, and you're formulating both people, not just one person.

Yeah, and that's, of course you're gonna feel all of those things, and I think in self care what is so sadly missed in our fixation on state change self care, where oh, you need to just let go of this stress and you need to, you know, figure out how to leave your work at home, etc. We completely omit trade change self care, like any of this deeper work that you are to be, you know, doing as a human not just as a as a therapist, but what our processes as humans to become more whole as we grow older and become more, you know, that's where wisdom comes from, and we organise communities that flourish in that in that perspective. So are we doing anything that helps illuminate what the course of both state change, self care and trade changed self care would look like? And that's what I think SIP holds just in its, in its DNA is, you know, so often when people come to take the training, they'll say that they came thinking about their clients, but they left thinking about themselves. And that's what, again, over and over again, is yes, that's the that's the way that's the way this educational journey and CPD should go is we should be thinking about the work we're doing in the room, but understand that it's through working on ourselves and how we approach the other that that work in the room will become more and more effective, more and more generalizable, and long lasting. That's how we're going to get the type of results that we're looking for.

So what would be the core aspects of an SIP case conceptualization then, just so we can give people a bit of a picture of it? I know we can't possibly get into all of it on a podcast because, yeah, people need to come to your webinars, and we'll talk about that. But in group...

Yeah, safety is the treatment. And so what we mean by that is that it's recognising that there are good reasons why these symptoms and these disorders have emerged in this person's life. Trusting that somehow everything makes sense. If we, if we learn to follow the breadcrumb trail, as we say in SIP, that's where we will discover why the person's dysfunction emerged and when it did and why it's still around. So then in whatever modality that you're using, you can now see that, yes, we're addressing the symptoms for sure, because we want to get relief, and we want to, you know, help them feel better, but that there's so much work underneath that when we start dealing with traumatic memory and thinking about integrating the self, that is all about invitation. We can't, you know, I can change your felt sense of depression and anxiety, but I cannot do to you what will change your character, like, in a way that actually integrates yourself and, you know, moves you towards wholeness all the more meaningfully. So in looking at then the Venn diagram and the triangle, which we'll talk so much more about in all the trainings, that's basically what we're trying to do, is help people understand that the reason we can have change at all in therapy is because we got here through our experiences and relationship and that whatever it is that we're presenting with has an immense amount of justification internally of why we are the way that we are. And that's going from the most, you know, the most obvious symptoms, or behaviours, or character traits, or personality traits to the most simple way of holding tension in your, in the right side of your neck. All of these, all of these things have a meaningful backstory that somehow emerges in one's felt sense of absence of safety and connection. And if we have had experiences of safety and connection, then we're more resilient to trauma moving forward, of course, you are like you have resources that when you yourself are depleted, you can fall back on those templates of being resourced in the past or go back to the relationships in real life, and of course, you're going to be more well suited to handle adversity in the present. So, Mel, I don't know if you'd add anything to that? But yeah, those are what come to mind when you asked about core principles in a few minutes.

Yeah, I think the anchor to safety, which is very visual on the Venn diagram and the triangle has been really helpful. But even the general trajectory of you're looking at symptom reduction, trauma processing, and integration, which other models will talk to, but there's something in that if you get the process, the safety between you right, you can go straight to process like, and trusting that the symptom reduction will happen, although there might be some resourcing needed or some safety that is felt very tangibly before you can go on to things, I think I'm much more trusting now that when I invite, like this idea of invitation is so important, constantly inviting into subjectivity, can you and I get to an honest conversation about what this formulation is, and what I'm noticing in the room, and you keep inviting it, and there'll be a number of people that will absolutely take your invitation straightaway. So I'll ask an honest sort of reflection question and people say yeah, that's how I feel and on we go. And then actually, you can do your EMDR processing or in IFS language, you can move on to kind of an unburdening of an exile or the type of things whether there's trust that the protective parts of the systems or threat based part of the systems have enough relaxation in them to let you progress. And, and there's something in SIP that lets you get beyond just trauma processing, Bridger and I've talked about this too, you're allowed to almost get to this integration point quicker than you would imagine, actually, if the therapies progressing okay, where we're just trusting that your authentic self is allowed in the environments in which you're in, you don't, it's not just that you experience the symptom reduction in this room, it's something is shifting physically and mentally within you, that allows it to be part of who you are. And I suppose there's something then in how you move through those stages that feels a lot more fluid, and less, less pressured. So if I offer an invitation, and I get an absolute rejection, and what I mean by that is I'll invite a reflection of someone's internal world, and then they'll go off and tell me a different part of the story about how they relate parking in the car park or they... so metaphorically speaking, I've offered out my hand and they haven't met it and you get to sense with SIP the kind of interesting interactions that you can pick this up from, then I'll know they don't feel safe with me yet. So I don't have to push any harder, we just come back to that I know now I need to get a right brain left brain kind of conversation going about what's, what the meaning of what you're saying is and how that's felt in your body because you'll get a lot of people giving you those stories early on, or different parts of them that show up early in therapy. So there's, there's something about the trajectory of where you're going that gives you confidence in the treatment plan, but like the specifics are so much more moment to moment, then and that's where you're kind of antenna needs to be up and you have to use your somatic self, your embodied self, to give you those kind of barometer checks of this doesn't feel okay, because I'm frustrated in this moment with them, or I'm critical of myself in this moment with them, so there's something going on here that needs to be spoken about. And I love this phrase of everything is talk aboutable. I'm so honest in therapy now in a way I didn't think you could be as a trainee psychologist, or in other parts of practice, because it's human reality.

That's really interesting. And that was a phrase that I hadn't heard before and really enjoyed in the training too. I thought, oh, I must ask Mel on the podcast, possibly putting you on the spot a little bit, but could you give us an example of what might be a common thing that you would talk about now that you might not have named before?

Yeah, I think the most likely moments this happens is in the process. And what I mean by that is almost in what we'd call the transference, countertransference moments. And I have to say, CAT therapy, like kind of cognitive analytic therapy talks a lot about you can name things. So a lot of my experience in doing this has come from that training and all of the supervision I've had there. But it's moments like a client was talking to me earlier last week and she was in a sort of storytelling mode, in the sense of, she needed to give me the background information to what was happening in the moment. And we talked about this before. And I said to her, you recognise that we're doing this again right now, so I can hear what you're telling me, but why is it important to share this with me right now? So it's as if you're getting out of content and into process as often as you can. That's the invitation to intersubjectivity. But deep, deep trust that I'm not criticising her, I'm not pressurising her to say holding a mirror up, that will be embarrassing just to say, when, d'you know when you're in storytelling mode, I cannot understand where you're going with this. Or when, and I wouldn't call it storytelling mode unless we come up with that language, but the impact trusting that if you feed back the deep impact on you that's legitimate, it will take you somewhere profound. So I love that you're telling me this, I get that you want to share the context, but d'you know, when you do that, I lose track of what's really meaningful to you, and doesn't that remind us of other times in relationships that you've told me about before, where you feel you don't really connect with people, you're always giving them something, rather than genuinely being vulnerable? This is happening between us right now. I think, like, I'm always inviting it because there's times when I'm wrong, but even when I'm wrong in what I offer, it leads to another conversation. And I think it's incredibly brave and courageous as a therapist to say things, or when that there's a physical move, or an eye contact shift, I will comment on physicality. I noticed you move to that point there, just what happened? You don't have to over interpret it, because you're probably wrong, or you're getting too objectifying, but it's every moment is communication.

I think in that the it, you know, other conceptualizations have language to this, like sometimes challenging is a, you know, a concept that other modalities will talk about, and that I want to make clear is not what Mel just talked about. Like challenging, again, is an objectification inherently. It's saying I feel you doing this, but we don't say it like that, we say like, see you're doing it again. Or like we hold up this, you know, inherent contradiction that we see and we expect the client to understand that contradiction and know that oh, dang it, I did it again or whatever. But I think that what what in SIP everything is talking aboutable, what that is really getting at is that, just as Mel said, every moment could be put into language, literally every single piece from whatever you're going through, like if you find yourself zoning out in session, you can talk about that in session. If you find that there's a rupture relationally and you don't get to process it until the session is over, and then they leave, and then the next session, you come back you can talk about that then. I think another piece with that was coming up as Mel was sharing her example is, you know, these clients that seem to tell you the same story over and over again, this is really common and in trauma processing, where you'll get somebody that is pretty paranoid in relationship and they you know, may have quite a bit of experience of being, or a feeling, hurt by another person or like somebody else doesn't get them and they'll just be looping on this story. How do you make sense of that if you can't talk about it? Like what do you want to tell me, in coming back to the story again, because I've heard it a number of times? And even if they say, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realise I was doing that, again, like, you can press into that even farther and say like, I think a part of you does know, because it seems to come up multiple times, so let's be curious about that together, like, what does it feel like is the intention of sharing that story again, as we were processing something unique before, but we seem to just find our way back to this old story? What do you make of that? And we can, again, just process that together?

I have to say, as well, when it happens when you're on the receiving end of it's when my own therapy experiences have I been on the receiving end of that, or if Bridger and I are having a conversation and discussing things and he gives me some inter subjective kind of comment on what's happening between us, or I do the same with him, there's something so deeply attuned about it. Like it's beautiful, even if it's something you don't want to hear, or it's threatening in some way, you're so open to it, because you know that the other person has seen you that deeply that there is this meaning to that we all want to be seen, don't we and be that when we put on an avoidance or a mask to go back to something, that somebody goes I see you're doing that and I'm still curious about you, I'm not going anywhere, I'm allowing this moment to happen between us, but not in the way it happens with others. And that's a transformative experience if someone can give that to you repeatedly in therapy, which is what we try and do.

I was just gonna say that it was putting me in mind of my experience of personal therapy as well. And that those were the more powerful moments. And the power certainly did not come from some of the techniques which we tried out, which, yeah, weren't so successful.

Yeah, yeah, we get questions about this in the trainings a lot, of you know, does this work virtually, across zoom and things like that. And I think this collaboration is in essence, is an excellent testament to that, because I've never met Mel in person.

One day Bridger!

Yes, one day, but I never met you. Yeah, I've never met you and I still feel like I know you. And that I can pick up on things, and that I noticed things, and that you notice things about me. And so I absolutely believe that you can work this way across, you know, zoom or a different, you know, telehealth settings. It's just learning to, to pay attention to the breadcrumbs when you see them.

Absolutely. That's so interesting. And there's a million questions I could ask you about the model, but I am going to force myself to stop. And instead I'm going to ask you like, how are you getting people trained up in this model? It's obvious it's a message that needs to be spread. What's the plan for getting this out to more therapists?

You want to start on that Bridger, given that we'll start with Beyond?

Yeah. So it really is an organic process that we hope will just catch on in different communities that will find it relevant. Like that's, that's really what we're desiring to do is build community for therapists so that we can continue to evolve the model and make it meaningful and relevant to the people that need it. It's not like a book sale, like, you know, series that we're going on trying to get sales for this thing. If the training does well, it's because people find that they need that, that material, and we want to make it as meaningful and relevant to those people as possible. So really, the major call in all of this is to, is to put community first, and that is both business side as well. We're not interested in selling products, we're interested in building community, and then letting the development of different trainings or webinars or talk series or podcasts or whatever, come to support the community development going on as it grows across the world. So you know, we're doing podcasts actively, and we're, we're hosting these webinars monthly at this point to get SIP into the UK. But as we, as we grow past that, even, I mean, the goal here is to get every space on the planet aware of intersubjectivity and the power of feeling safe in connection whether or not anybody ever knows that that's SIP or that's whatever, our desire is that people would find safety and connection, ultimately.

Okay, that's interesting. So, you know, just to ask a few kind of businessy questions, so is SIP a trademarked thing which you're then going to control everything that comes out of it? Or are you releasing it in some way?

So it's technically intellectual property. It's not formally trademarked under any type of, you know, legal, legally enforceable action. But the, that to me is consistent with the desire that says, I don't care if you, like, call it yours and want to take it farther than we can, that's the whole point of this thing. So please do like, take ownership of it and take it farther than we could on our own, because the model inherently changes with every person that comes to use it. So to ratchet that down to try and maintain some semblance of control, which is, I think, a fantasy, that, through that, we would rip away the power of the model. So really, it's about yes, like, please take it and let's practise it together and let's figure out how to get it into schools and into hospitals and into... because it's not about the money it's about, it's about the change that it can bring.

And that's pretty much how it's been sort of modelled in the time that Bridger and I have known each other. So it was originally advertised to say kind of three day SIP 1 training on the back of the Notice That podcast. And then the follow up training being another three days. I know Bridger and his colleagues have developed it into a longer sort of online programme that you can do over a period of time with supervision or consultation, but this idea of connecting with the team and Bridger and being able to think about well, I think people in the UK would love this, how do we talk together asking the questions you just asked Rosie about intellectual property, like what do we do together and actually really doing it collaboratively means it can evolve with all the influences that are there. So I know Bridger is going to have to head off soon in this conversation...

Yeah, I do hope that we can come back. I do hope we can come back on the podcast sometime Rosie, because there's so many, there's so many things to talk about with the business side. You know, we have a model that we call subjective business, and it's under, you know, it's supported by an acronym of invite, acknowledge, see and collaborate. And so I would love to come back and talk through that together with Mel and to really help people feel invited to a way that puts community development and the meaning of relationship first, and then lets content development come and support that, because I think we're all in making this a business devotion, we're wanting to both gain personally and professionally from our commitments and the work we're putting into this, but the way to do that is not just to sell products. I know that sounds counterintuitive to some, but it's really about putting relationship first and then letting the creativity that emerges organically and again, akin to evolutionary biology, like why it would do that is because we do that together when we build communities, we create things that support one another. That's worth paying for, that's worth investing in. So a short little piece, but I'd love to come back and talk about that.

We'll definitely have you back on to talk more about that. Such a good example of values driven business, and thank you so much for your time talking to us about the model. I will ask Mel a few follow on questions about how people can get trained up in the UK, but I'll let you go for your client. Thank you so much Bridger.

Well thank you so much, yep, see you all.

Right, so Mel, I know that there are going to be people listening to this who think this is for me, I need to get involved. How do they get involved?

So what Bridger and I have talked about is to make it accessible because as we've talked about, there's a lot of concepts here to bring together. And there is a philosophy of care here that it doesn't have to be psychologists or particularly trained therapists really, you know, safety and connection with others is a universal human trait. But I get that to translate some of this into other professions is an ongoing sort of work in progress. So Bridger and I have offered two free webinars up till now, there's one in June, one in July, with just taking a theme from SIP. So we started with working somatically, we did multiplicity of self. Those recordings are free if people email info@trustpsychology.co.uk we've got copies of them but Bridger has also got them stored on the Beyond Healing Centre online community, which if people get in touch with us, we can point you towards, anyone can join that community. It's a forum discussion board, the talks are posted on there. But then this all leads up to a one full day training on Zoom, which is a paid event, on Saturday the 1st of October, it's from 10 in the morning till about 5 in the evening, Bridger's very kindly going to get up early for the time difference.

Oh bless him, that will be so early!

The reason we want to do that is to show this interaction between him and I, on how you bring the theory in, but also show the clinical applications. So we've tried to make the webinars up now quite case study based as well. There's a particular client I've got, who's given consent for us to talk about his case, and how just applying these principles has been so useful for his chronic pain in particular. So we'd love people to come to the webinars, get a flavour of it, and then yeah, join us for the four day training if you can, but we will run more, Rosie, I think the idea of the community is that this is an ongoing dialogue. I've already had people reach out to me that know about EMDR CAT in the UK, and want to be part of this moving forward or develop it for, you know there's no kind of SIP for pain model yet, we're developing that in collaboration with Bridger and his colleagues. And there'll be multiple other like iterations of that won't there for a variety of other presentations. So get involved people, you could be part of something really exciting.

Yes, it sounds like there's a real movement and my brain is obviously going to oh how can we use this in the perinatal space? So many ways, so many ways. So yeah, very exciting. I'll definitely be at some of that training going forward. And I hope I'll be seeing lots of people there who are listening to this now I'm sure I will be. So I'm gonna put all of the links in the podcast show notes. So if you're worried that you missed anything, it will all be there, so you can go back to it. And just to say, Bridger's podcasts are really good. So I've listened to Notice That, and what was the name of the other one?

Evidence Based Therapists, which is him and his colleague, Melissa, who you'll know from Notice That, but also Caleb, who talk about mainly memory consolidation, but all of the, they go into different papers on attachment and various other theories and explain it, just have a dialogue and a conversation between clinicians about what the key take home messages of these research papers are with their tagline like we read, so you don't have to.

I love that tagline. That's really hooked me in. He mentioned it and I thought I don't think I've, I haven't heard that one yet and I've got to!

You've got Beyond Trauma as well, which is a podcast for people going through trauma therapy to get a flavour of what this is, in terms of if you're experiencing it as a, from a client perspective as well. So definitely going to, if you go to beyondhealingcentre.com is their website, and they've got the links to that community and all the podcasts there. And our website is trustpsychology.co.uk. And just email us at info or at melanie.lee at trust psychology, and I can certainly engage with some dialogue around anyone who's interested. Just wanted to be the person that tries to promote this across the UK. And as you said, Rosie, it was, it speaks to us, doesn't it in terms of what our training maybe lacked slightly or where we got frustrated when we learning all of the different CPD options. So it really has helped me and I want it to help others too.

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast again Mel. You've now reached friend of the podcast status.

It's such an honour Rosie, thank you so much for the work you're doing. If it hadn't been for me listening to your podcast, I would have never emailed Bridger, so thank you so much. It was the confidence to reach out to like minded people. So it all, it's all part of a bigger picture isn't it, of integrated working helping each other out?

Oh, absolutely. I'm very pleased to have a small part in that.

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