Two Simple Therapeutic Exercises. “I” for “You” and “And” for “But”.

Behavioural Therapy and Depth Psychotherapy.

The Psychotherapy that I practice, Individual Psychotherapy draws on therapies I have been trained in and what of these I feel work. A cornerstone of my work is Jungian Depth Psychotherapy, which emphasises the importance of individual uniqueness and soul. My initial training, in Integrative Psychosynthesis, despite it’s intention of integrating the full spectrum of therapeutic approaches and models, never drew me to the Behavioural therapy end of the spectrum. Examples of Behavioural Therapies include CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), Dialogical Behavioural Therapy, Exposure Therapy, and even the various 10 Step Programmes, and I am sure there are more. For me, whilst they have their place, and can even be life saving, they do not address the depths, and seem more of a short term fix rather than a longer term resolution. It is this apparent quick fix that makes these therapies attractive to Health Providers and Insurance companies. The Behavioural Therapies treat the symptom not the cause. They help people adapt rather than transform. They paper over the cracks rather finding what is causing the cracks, and remedying that before re-papering. For me, and the way I work, the required behavioural change becomes apparent near the end of the work, out of the work, rather than at the beginning.

Prescribing and applying a textbook behavioural change to a client’s particular problem at the outset may temporarily help them function better in the world, however it takes no account of their individual uniqueness and risks enabling the client to carry on in the same way rather than make the necessary and more challenging changes to their lives. Without understanding the cause of, and the need for, change, along with it’s personal relevance to them, the client’s willingness is not likely to be in the work, in fact they are more than likely going to be resistant to it.

What is required is a new behaviour that undoes, or is the antedote to the existing dysfunctional/neurotic behaviour, not just a band-aid. Jung described this as an “Opus Contra Natrum”, a work against nature, or more accurately a work against one’s nature, what one believes they are, what comes “naturally” or habitually but is actually dysfunctional. Without understanding the Soul’s purpose in the behaviour, plastering a behavioural remedy over the problem risks the Soul’s call or distress, the wound, being buried, and the soul having to resort to producing ever more distorted symptoms in order to be heard or seen.

What I have just described possibly describes the difference between Counselling and Psychotherapy. Counselling, including the word counsel, tends towards advice and direction from someone supposedly wiser (I know that’s not the way it works in most practice) but Counselling’s focus is on the ego and the person feeling better. Psychotherapy is - to pay attention (therapeia) to, the soul (psyche), which may not feel so good but provides a deeper, more meaningful, more holistic approach, and therefore outcome. Counselling focuses on Ego, and Psychotherapy on Soul (which technically includes Ego). If the Ego and the Soul are at odds with another, not aligned, then there is dis-ease, disease. An analogy I use, is Counselling is getting the dragon back in the cave, and Psychotherapy is taking dragon riding lessons.

In spite of all I have written above, besmirching Behavioural Therapy, there are two behavioural linguistic or semantic tools I do use. These are the use of “I/You” and “But/And” in dialogue.

I/You.

Often people speak in the third person, particularly when explaining, for example “when you oversleep, it feels like you are running behind all day”. This use of the third person is quite common, at least in English conversation, however, in therapeutic dialogue it is not so useful. So what are the psychological implications of this avoidance of using “I”? Firstly, the client may be trying to get me on board, to form a “we” so we have something in common and share the same experience. Secondly, the client is often avoiding the feeling that comes with what they are talking about. By putting what they are saying in the third person, they distance themselves from the feeling they, probably unknowingly, want to disown. In asking the client to say the same thing using “I” it helps bring the feeling (or emotion) home for them, to “own” it. Owning the feeling puts them back in themselves. No longer are they seeking to merge with me in some kind of parental regression. The I statement separates us, allowing us to be two individuals. This does not mean that what they were saying might not be true for me too, it just allows us to be different, unique, avoiding unhelpful merger. Owning the feeling brings a previously unconscious attitude, feeling or emotion into consciousness. This can be cathartic, bringing personal psychological insight and understanding, possibly freeing unconsciously held patterns in the body, and improving their relationship with themselves and others.

Implementing this in therapeutic practice can be a little tricky. Telling someone how to speak can be experienced as patronising, so this has to be handled with care. I often tell the client how it may be useful to own what they are saying, explaining just as I have descrybed above. Additionally, I often explain that I have difficulty following what another person is saying when they use “you”, because I spend the next few moments trying to work out if it is true for me or not, and by the time I have worked that out, I have missed what they have said next. This makes it not all their fault, and hopefully they will be willing to try the change from “You” to “I”, so that I am able to listen, which is after all what they are paying me to do.

Sometimes people shift to the use of “We”, the third personal plural, or “One”; so I sometimes use a jest about whether that is the Royal “We” or “One”, and that brings them gently to the use of “I”.

Often I will set the use of “I” as homework for them, as well as to watch for how others use “I” and “You”, and to see how it affects them or why the other person may be doing it.

This simple act, really is one of the most powerful therapeutic techniques. Clients need their feelings and they need to experience their separateness and individual uniqueness. Seeking merger is often a move away from that which they can not bear. In order to be whole, they need to shrink into who they are, take back what of themselves they have put into the world. In this context it is not surprising that Psychoanalysts are called Shrinks. Here the movement is into oneself, to individual uniqueness, standing in contrast to therapies emphasising growth, expansion and “One”ness.

But/And

The second behavioural/linguistic tool I employ is around the use of “But” and “And”, more specifically replacing “But” with “And”. Put simply, “But” takes away and “And” adds or includes. For example “I had a lovely trip to the seaside but it was windy”, feels different to, “I went to the seaside and it was windy”. The “but” conveys some level of dissatisfaction with it being windy and that the wind took away from the experience of going to the seaside. Whereas, the “and” adds information to the joyful experience of going to the seaside without the (implied) judgement, on the wind. A more informative approach would be to describe the experience of the wind and how that affected the experience. This though isn’t so much the therapeutic issue, which is, that the use of “and” sets up a more inclusive, accepting attitude to, in this case, going to the seaside. The experience is accepted as it is (or was) rather than how it was imagined, or hoped it would be. In this way, life is accepted for what it is, not as a continual dissatisfaction or let down, of how things should be. Such a super-ego driven pseudo-spiritual attitude of wanting things to be different from how they are, brings perpetual cycles of anticipation and disillusionment. The use of “and” can bring a psychological shift towards living in the moment with a more positivistic attitude. The positives stay unblemished by the negatives, rather than the negatives bringing everything down. The power of positive thinking and the impact of how we speak and think are not to be underestimated on our emotional well being. The use of “But” betrays an idealistic mind-set, that diminishes the positive experience through taking away, rather than allowing two things to co-exist at the same time. The “But” conjoins through contrast, irrevocably welding the two objects together in a detrimental fusion, whereas “And” allows the two objects to co-exist independently without the implicit judgement of one on the other. In sum, “But” is judgemental, and “And” is accepting. Ultimately, this exercise could be seen to align with Zen philosophy, where everything is accepted as it is, for what it is, in that moment. As Billy Connolly said “there is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing”.

For those familiar Iain McGilchrist’s work, this aligns with his view of the importance of prioritising the brain’s polycentric right hemisphere’s nature over the monocentric left hemisphere.

The practical application of “And for But” in the therapeutic environment I must admit is more tricky than the “I/You” exercise, as there may well be a place for “But” in the world and it can take some grammatical gymnastics to make sense without it’s use. The removal of “But” seems to result in the need to recreate whole sentences rather than simply substituting one for the other, as with the “I /You” exercise described earlier. My use of “But” is deeply habitual and even when describing to clients the value and usefulness of substituting “And” for “But”, I find myself using “But” in the midst of my explanation. Similarly, by the time this is published it will have been revised to eliminate any errant “Buts” that have found their way in! This habitual, and not necessarily heinous crime of using “But” perhaps needs to be employed more sympathetically in the therapeutic situation than the “I/You” example, and maybe best reserved for those more idealistic and negatively minded clients. Bringing attention to how their linguistic patterns betray an unnecessarily negative attitude to life, will help them experience more unalloyed joy, a wider range of feelings, hopefully easing bad moods and possibly alleviating mild depression.

The two behavioural exercises of substituting, “I” for “You” and “And” for “But” can be seen as a soulful and a Spiritual practice respectively, the former taking the person more into themselves and the latter opening them more to the diversity and rich tapestry of this experience called life. I hope this article has encouraged you to become more mindful of your and others use of these words, and to practice substituting them in your own speech. I would like to receive feedback on how this helps you, and if you are a Counsellor or Psychotherapist how this works out for you in your practice.

Gary Tomkins. December 2024