Welcome back to the Untangled Mind podcast. I'm Piper Harris. I'm going to be interrupting the empathy series because today I want to talk about something that's been coming up quite recently, both in my own reflection and in conversations that I'm having publicly. Today we're talking about projecting shadows and why therapy must confront its own defenses. Let's dig in. Thank you so much for joining me. So today is going to be a short dialogue, and I am interrupting the empathy series, but I do think it's something that's very important because it is actually, in a way, a tangent of the empathy series. And if you continue to listen to it, you will hear this more than likely in the next two episodes. Again, this is a six-part series. I will be recording part three next week. So I have been engaging in what I would say is a really successful and growing dialogue with individuals on LinkedIn about the state of psychotherapy. So there was an article or op-ed article that was written by an individual who is also a psychotherapist saying that AI is really not the problem. It's the failure of therapy. I thought the piece was very well written. Granted, it's because I agree with the author. When I first saw it point uh posted on somebody else's profile on LinkedIn, what I read there was um they were in direct conflict with this op-ed piece. They thought it was dehumanizing and wrong. And then all the people that spoke underneath it were like, yeah, you're absolutely right. This is awful. There's nothing wrong with therapy. Um, it was just interesting, and I could see that um for me to respond on that post might not necessarily um evolve into a helpful conversation. So I went to the op-ed and I posted it myself on LinkedIn along with my thoughts. And my thoughts really were this is that the problem I see with psychotherapy, and I've been talking about this for over a year. Um, I have my catching flack series that I discussed, um, kind of to go off topic for a second. I read um Abigail Schreier's book, Bad Therapy, fabulous book. Not all of it is fun to read. You know, listen, I'm a therapist and it's definitely not pro-therapy, but it was a great book, and it really challenged my own thinking and also challenged um what I didn't align with with the therapy field and what I needed to change on my end. So, again, that started my process of thinking about the therapy field, what I was seeing, um, what I didn't want to be part of, and how I wanted to set myself apart. So, going back to that, I engaged in this dialogue on LinkedIn, um, I posted this, and some of the responses I've gotten have been really fabulous. We've had a really great dialogue. Um, however, I have gotten some that confirm some of my concerns about the direction that the field is taking. And so, first I want to say that it brought me back to this quote by Carl Young, and he wrote Um, that the best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others. Let me say this again. The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others. So that's kind of what I want to unpack today. So, how projection, um, both in therapy and in our professional community, I think is derailing what therapy is meant to be, which is transformation, not validation. And again, this really does tie into, I think, this misuse of what empathy is, and that this idea of parading empathy round is a moral bridge is actually obfuscation of your responsibility as a therapist. So, you know, Young's idea, it's very simple and it's but it is very profound. I talk about this a lot with clients. So the shadow is everything in us that we'd rather not admit. So our insecurities, our blind spots, our weaknesses, our biases, maybe even our more darker desires. And when we don't own those parts, we will inevitably project them onto others, or those dark part spots or parts of us, shadow selves, will emerge in um a part of self that is not healthy for us. So in therapy, projection um often of this shadow self can often look like defensiveness, um, maybe it's circular reason or it's avoidance of accountability. So instead of any of us, and this is therapist included, examining our own secure own security, excuse me, we throw them back onto other people, onto our clients, onto our colleagues. And I see this a lot. There is definitely a shift in the therapy field where we're saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, can we please get back to what psychotherapy was initially created to be? That as a therapist, I step into that role to help the individual to confront those risky behaviors, the poor thinking patterns. I am there to support them and love them and walk them through what they're going through, but I will not collude in their idea of you know what's going on in their lives, if that makes sense. So here's the problem that I'm seeing. And this is what I saw when uh a few people responded back um to what I posted. One, it was confusing. So, but here's the problem. When therapists project their shadow, they're protecting themselves, not the client. And this is what I saw with a couple of the responses on my LinkedIn page. So, what what they do is they focus, they focus a shift away from like real growth and change to maintaining the illusion of being caring and empathetic professional. That illusion is comf is just purely comfort and it keeps clients stuck. But really, what I'm saying is individuals that respond in these circular ways or whatever it may be, this defensiveness, it is actually about their comfort. It has nothing to do with the clients. So, by me sharing in this post that um the trend in therapy towards constant head nodding and validation without challenging the client and confronting those shadows parts of themselves is doing no good for the client. And you can read on the LinkedIn post, so many people are like, Yeah, people come to me. I'm like the seventh therapist in the bunch, and they're finally ready and hungry to do the work. Now, the person has to be ready and willing to do the work. If they're not, and my my clients know this, if they're not willing to do that, I say to them, it doesn't seem like you're really kind of in this. I have workbooks, and if they don't engage in the workbook, okay, well, I I can't change you. And sitting here talking about other people does nothing to change the situation you're in. And I've really had the blessing of seeing people recognize that in selves. Like, oh my gosh, I've been basically dancing in the shadow and doing nothing and avoiding accountability. Anyway, so let me give you kind of an example. As I said, you know, I raised concerns about how therapy has, you know, really drifted into this validation idea rather than real transformation. And I pointed out the endless practice of affirmation and that, you know, it might feel supportive, but it really does leave the clients without skills and without progress and really truly without real change. So, as I said, some of the responses I received were very telling. One individual leaned on a 40-year appeal to authority. So instead of engaging with the substance of my points, she essentially said, I've been in the field four decades, so I know better. So that's not argument. Do you see what I'm saying? That's projection. That's a projection of an insecurity. That's a defensiveness because she felt personally attacked. What I'm asking the field to do is when you feel personally attacked, okay, I can't change that for you. But asking yourself, why does this feel like a personal attack? I don't even know who Piper Harris is. This is what I think we're missing in the field is that all we're hearing is, but this is how I feel. And what do I say if you follow me? Feelings aren't facts. They are initial, they happen. We have no control really over the feelings, but we do have control over the next response. If we're constantly led by our feelings, which we know when we look at the brain, the feelings can be misremembered, they can be misfiled away. And so if you're constantly going off, just well, this is just how I feel, and I'm defensive because of what Piper said, then I'm just gonna tell her she's an idiot because I've been in the field, the field for 40 years. So this individual actually fell prey to their own heuristics and own biases. And in fact, there there was no argument, it was a defensive posture and projection, and that's shielding her ego only instead of actually wrestling with reality. Um, others built in some straw man arguments. So they're claiming at one point that I was defending AI as a replacement for therapy, which I've never said, and I've said that over and over and over again. Again, that's projection. It's easier to for people to misrepresent my point than to sit with the discomfort of acknowledging that therapy as a profession has drifted 100%. And this is exactly Young's warning. When we project our shadows or our insecurities about, you know, our fear of being wrong or our need to appear empathic, we actually aren't engaging with dialogue. We circle, we protect, you know, we're we're constantly dancing with that shadow, and clients are left out there, out of the equation, equation completely and entirely. So here's the kicker. It's precisely this defensiveness that's leaving our clients to turn to AI. They're not going to AI because it's perfect. I've talked about that. I tested out Chat GPT to be my therapist, and my gosh, it was obnoxious. I kept saying, could you stop fluffing me? I don't want to be fluffed. I want you to teach me, I want you to give me tools. And it was very rote and it was very rudimentary. Now I understand that there's some other platforms that are trying to build their own therapeutic AI. Listen, I'm not worried about AI taking my job. I'm not. Because there's something to be said about being in the sacred space of holding space for somebody when they come into the room with you. There's something sacred about that. You're not going to get that with AI. Um, I'm just not worried about AI. I'm I'm just not. But so many people, believe me, in my field, are so freaked out. Why are you afraid of it? If you are firmly planted and um in your techniques and what you provide to your clientele, why are you afraid of AI? Again, that speaks to your insecurities. This has nothing to do with AI. It's actually about your insecurities. You are projecting once again. So it's precisely the defensiveness that's actually leading clients to the use of AI. They're going there because therapy isn't delivering change. And at least AI offers action, kind of. And that really needs to be a wake-up call to all of us therapists. So I want to be clear that no one changes without effort. No one changes without effort. And in fact, we can see this in neuroscience. Like, if you don't have actual effort, there's an actual effort included in what you're receiving. Like we can get on to ChatGPT, and he he it makes us feel all warm and fuzzy, but there's no effort included in that. There's no actualized growth. It it messes with our neurochemicals, our neurotransmitters, one in particular being dopamine. So therapy at its best, I believe, is uncomfortable. And it asks clients to confront those distorted thoughts, those unhelpful behaviors. And yes, even the painful truths that they'd rather avoid. I know this past week I really upset a client. I've known her for quite a few years, hadn't seen her in about a year and a half, and she came back and I recognized a same pattern. And I confronted her with the pattern that originally brought her to me three years ago. She was very upset. Body language, everything. She was very upset. And I said, Why did you come to therapy with me? And especially me that you've known for three years. I know your story. I know your patterns. I know the destruction. Why are you here if you don't want me to hold that mirror up and confront you with the destruction that you're walking into? Now listen, she was pissed. She was mad at me and all of the things. And I held space for her to be mad at me because I get it. Nobody wants to look at their own crap. It doesn't feel good. But you know what she did? She said, You're right. And she set up her next session. When we have therapists that only are there to protect their egos, when they protect their shadows, they water therapy down to affirmation and hand holding. And here's the really gross truth that fills their calendars and their pockets, but it does not transform lives. I'm sorry. That's what it is. I can't tell you, it's literally every single client, unless they've never been to therapy before, that says, I've tried it seven, eight, nine, ten therapists before you. None of them have given me homework. None of them have challenged me on this. They affirmed everything was wrong. I actually had a client um a couple weeks ago say, you know, when all of things these things happened, they really were affirming my poor choices and it led me to choosing divorce. Now she wasn't stepping away from her responsibility of choosing divorce, but she had immense pain related to that, saying, I wish a therapist would have said, Hey, you need to back up and look at how you're projecting in your own self into this situation and not taking accountability. She carries a lot of pain from that because these therapists that she went to, they just watered therapy down to nodding of affirmation and hand holding. And just, and I'm telling you, this is the insidious, disgusting side of it to fill their calendars and their pockets. They're not transforming lives. They're not. So Young's point was this: the hardest and most important work we can do is on our own shadows. So for therapists, that really does mean sitting with criticism, um, examining our blind spots, admitting where we fall short, and keeping the focus where it belongs on client growth. Listen, it is not fun to be criticized. I get that. I have received some pretty nasty criticism. But if I just say whatever, that's about them, that is again projection. I'm projecting out, I'm deflecting. So if I don't think I should be criticized about anything, how therefore do I know that I'm effective with clients? How there do I know, therefore, that I'm effective in any sort of relationship? If I'm constantly telling myself that I know everything, it doesn't work. We have to do our own work and we have to do our own work with our own shadow selves so that we, you know, disrupt our deflection and our lack of accountability taking. If we don't, we will continue to lose credibility and more and more people will go to AI. And listen, AI serves a purpose 100%. I built a chat bot on my website because I knew it would afford individuals to ask it questions so they didn't have to like you know flip through my website or wait for a phone call. I think AI, well, I do know AI is here to stay. My problem with AI is this is that no, I don't think it's necessarily ethical to bring it into the therapy room. There's a lot of EHR platforms that offer AI assistance to write your clinical notes. My EHR platform allows it too. And I said absolutely not, because essentially AI is listening to the everything said in session. So you're essentially a co-therapist with a computer. I'm I'm not down with that. But AI has been extraordinary for me for my learning. It has exponentially skyrocketed my learning when it comes to neuroscience, um, when it comes to, you know, when I'm looking at conflicting assessments that might be contradictory, like what am I actually seeing? What am I missing? What can I do? How can I pivot? It's been extraordinary with that. So it's here to say, and it's very helpful, but it shouldn't be the therapist. But again, if we don't pull up the nose with this constant validation and only feelings are the thing that matters, we are going to lose all credibility. And yeah, everybody's going to go to AI. So I'll end it with this. Young really did say that the best work we do is to stop projecting our shadows into others. And I totally agree. And as therapists, that means we have to stop projecting on clients, colleagues, and the profession as a whole. If you are incapable of entering into a conversation without becoming defensive, then what you are doing is you're purposefully avoiding your own work. Your projection will be your downfall. Your lack of accountability will be your downfall. Your inability to integrate something from um even just a dialogue that wasn't directly related to you. It's gonna be your downfall. Someone may say, Yeah, I really enjoy talking to them, but I can't tell you how many times I've heard that from people. So it really means that, you know, the profession as a whole has really got to pull up the nose. It means no more hiding behind years of experience or empty validation. And it really does mean that the hard work of owning our blind spots and recommitting to what therapy is supposed to be. It's supposed to be about transformation. And that does include confrontation of ourselves and confrontation for the client. It does not mean we lack compassion. I don't think any one of my clients would say that I lack compassion for them. But I do challenge them and I do confront them. So the question I'll leave you with this is what shadows do you or um, you know, as a therapist or client see projected in the therapy room? I mean, truly, what shadows do you see? I want you to leave me some notes in the comments, shoot me an email. What shadows do you see either as a therapist or client, a client that's projected in the therapy room? And how would things change if these shadows, remember, shadows are insecurities, fears, biases, et cetera, et cetera. Um, how would these things change if they were owned instead of projected? I would love to hear what you think. So that's my my little um break in the empathy series. Again, I really want to say first and foremost that I've enjoyed the conversation on LinkedIn with a multitude of professionals, even though some of them fell prey to circular um arguments that didn't make much sense. It's okay. I appreciate that you stepped into it. I think that that's a real opportunity for all of us to learn. We don't have to agree with one another. We don't have to. That's not necessarily the point. But to avoid any sort of discussion and lean on, you know, say straw man arguments or like I said, you know, that appeal to authority, you know, you're part of the problem. You really are. But again, I really enjoyed the conversation on LinkedIn. It's been a really great eye-opener. And again, I learned from other individuals. Somebody mentioned something, I said, hey, I'm I'm not familiar with that. Please send me information. It's a fantastic way for us to learn from others even if we don't agree. Even if we don't agree. So take care, everybody. I'll get back to it at you for the third installment of the empathy series coming next week. That brings us to the end of this episode. Thanks so much for joining me, Pyper Harris with the United Mind podcast. I hope you learned some tools that can equip you to untangle your mind and untangle your life. If you're curious about working with me for your anxiety or trauma, head on over to my website at untangledmind.net to connect with me. If you enjoyed the show, please brave and review me on your podcast listening platform and share it with your friends and family. As always, thanks so much for listening to me. Piper Harris with the Untangled Mind Podcast. I'll talk with you next time.