Bronagh Starrs

Dr Peter Blundell interviews Bronagh Starrs about her life and work.

Bronagh is the Creator and Programme Director of the MSc Adolescent Psychotherapy at Dublin Counselling and Therapy Centre. She also has a private practice in Omagh, Northern Ireland. 

Bronagh's Details
Twitter: @StarrsBronagh
Book: https://www.bookdepository.com/Adolescent-Psychotherapy-Bronagh-Starrs/9781138624290 

Peter's Contact Details
Twitter: @drpeterblundell
Instagram: @drpeterblundell
Website: www.peterblundell.com

#TherapistsConnect is a platform for connecting therapists.
Website: www.Therapists-Connect.com
Twitter: @Therapists_C
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Facebook: @TherConnect

Origins of #TherapistsConnect

Transcript

Opening: 0:01

This episode of Therapists Connect podcast is sponsored by Webhealer. The number one website provider for private practice therapists, serving the community for 20 years Webhealer offers a non technical and fully supported online platform, helping therapists use the internet to grow their practice. Whether you need a website or booking system or even a secure email address for your practice Webhealer can help. Contact Webhealer today via www.webhealer.net and use the coupon Therapists Connect for 100 pounds off their do it for me service. Welcome to the Therapists Connect Podcast, a podcast for therapists by therapists.

Peter Blundell: 0:52

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Therapist Connects podcast. My name is Dr. Peter Blundell and today and back interviewing therapists about their life and work in the counseling and psychotherapy community. Today I'm delighted to be interviewing Bronagh Stars. Bronagh is creator and program director of the MSc in Adolescent Psychotherapy, that's at Dublin Counseling and Therapy Centre, which is completed in partnership with the University of Northampton. Bronagh is also director of Blackfort Adolescent Gestalt Institute, and maintains a private practice in Omar, Northern Ireland as an adolescent psychotherapist. Hi Bronagh.

Bronagh Starrs: 1:32

Hi, Peter how are yeah.

Peter Blundell: 1:34

How are you. Thank you. How are you?

Bronagh Starrs: 1:36

Good, thanks. Good.

Peter Blundell: 1:38

It's lovely to finally meet you after all this time,

Bronagh Starrs: 1:41

you too Peter, you too.

Peter Blundell: 1:44

Bronagh, thank you very much for coming on to the Therapist Connect podcast. It's really lovely to have you here. And I know we've chatted quite a bit on Twitter. So it's a nice to actually kind of chat in person. And so we're gonna have like a set of questions today that I kind of asked everybody and then some specific questions to you. But my first question is, which is one that I ask absolutely everybody who comes on the podcast, is can you tell us a little bit about how you became to be a therapist in the first place? What kind of drew you to us as a profession?

Bronagh Starrs: 2:15

Sure. And just, first of all, to say that it's a pleasure to be here. And thank you for the invitation to come talk to you today, Peter. And so yeah, in relation to becoming a therapist, I suppose, looking back, I always had a searching heart. And when I graduated from college, at 23 years of age, really, then I started a journey of personal development and discovery. And then psychotherapy training felt like a natural evolution, I guess. And I've been a music teacher, and I loved working with young people. But I was more interested in what made them tick, rather than, you know, teaching them the F sharp minor scale on the piano. And I knew I didn't want to teach music for the rest of my life. So I just turned 30, a few days before my psychotherapy training started. And I remember sitting there with a palpable sense of excitement and thinking to myself, this is what I want to be when I grow up. I suppose that passion has never left. So that kind of came from a very personal place. And,

Peter Blundell: 3:21

and that's lovely. I love the phrase a searching heart. I think that's that's a really, really nice phrase. So it's interesting, then that you it sounds like you were interested in working with adolescents kind of immediately that was that was the kind of group of people that you were drawn to as the therapist,

Bronagh Starrs: 3:40

I'd say that probably came from my own. Adolescence was quite a colorful, difficult time as it is for lots of people and, and my own personal therapy before I trained as a psychotherapist, I spent many an hour with a therapist, focusing on exploring the male?? when adolescence, I suppose, yeah, I had a fascination for what happens and the complexity of adolescence. And then I was working, I was teaching music and was working with choir. So after graduation, I just all my contact was with young people. And so suppose it was the natural evolution to although the psychotherapy training that I did was an adult oriented training. Yeah.

Peter Blundell: 4:22

That's quite common, actually, isn't it that people do the adult training and then possibly go on to work with young people or children sometimes. So could you tell us a little bit more about your career since then, and how has that evolved?

Bronagh Starrs: 4:37

Yeah, well, actually, just from that point, Peter, so I did a great psychotherapy training, in Dublin, and I, I'm from Northern Ireland, actually, but I traveled on there to do the psychotherapy training. And then in our final couple of years, we did placement work. And of course, I wanted to work with adolescents. And I was very aware that I had zero training. And I remember thinking, does nobody think this is a bit nuts that I'm actually working with teenagers, but I have no training. But, you know, the, everybody seemed to be fine with it. And it was quite funny, because, you know, I'd have one session, and I would think, Oh, my God, that was amazing. You know, I wish somebody nearly recorded those beautiful sight, I think I'm gonna be a great therapist. And then the next session was like, there's just carnage after the first two minutes, oh, my God, this person's never going to come back. Like, this is really terrible, and, you know, as real seat of my pants practitioner. And I didn't know why one session was good, and one session wasn't good. And, of course, I would blame the young person. Well, you know, they just weren't ready. And now, I would look at it and say, you know, I didn't have the contact skills to engage that young person. But suppose I'm someone who likes to know what I'm doing. So I set about trying to find a training, and I suppose play therapy didn't really excite me and, and it just wasn't something that I wanted to go down that route. So I was looking for a training, and I found one in the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, and Ohio. And it was two five day training workshops. And actually, what quite a lot of it was around children. And some of it was around adolescence, but it was great loved, it was very American. And then I came home to Northern Ireland, and I thought, That's it. That's, that's as much of a training as or as I think that was, like 2004 2005. So I thought, all I have is me and the teenagers, and I'm gonna just sit and pay really, really close attention. So I have two box fulls of journals ledgers of writing down what happened and when I intervene, what happened next? And when he said this, why did I say that and what, and I just started to be very meticulous in I suppose, exploring and analyzing the therapeutic space. And then I guess, I seem to be good at it, I think to get the clients and then people invited me to come and talk for half an hour, or to train for an hour, or invite me back for a half day or then a day, and then a couple of days. And so that was that was kind of doing more training by invitation. And, and I always was left with a sense that, gosh, I feel like I have more to say. And I was deepening my work with adolescents all the time. So I decided I think around 2011 when I decided that I was going to write up a six week program, because people were always asking for more training. And, and I sat down and started to write, because I thought, Oh, my God, this is gonna be a year. And then the more I wrote, the more that oh my god, this is actually a two year program. So I ended up with this two year program, and which in 2012, I then delivered for the first time it was a diploma in adolescent psychotherapy in Dundalk in Ireland. And a few years ago, it became a masters in adolescent psychotherapy. And so I partnered with Dublin Counseling Therapy Centre, who are in partnership with the University of Northampton. And and as far as I know, it's the first and only Masters in adolescent psychotherapy in the world. It's two years wholly devoted to adolescent psychotherapy. So now, in terms of my career, I see adolescent clients, I used to work with adults and children, but I just don't have the time anymore. And, but I work with adolescents and I teach the master's program. And I also do a lot of training and workshops for therapists and other professionals who work with adolescents. And I also do a lot of work with parents and webinars and talks and whatever. So yeah, there's a nice mix of the client work and the teaching which I love.

Peter Blundell: 9:06

And that's fantastic gosh there's so there's so much in there that I want to kind of want to know more more about I was really resonated with when you're talking about being an early like kind of newly qualified kind of practitioner and kind of the ups and downs with that and kind of trying to find your way with it and how you make sense of it if if there's nothing out there to kind of connect with or people to support you with all of that sounds quite a challenge and experience I think,

Bronagh Starrs: 9:34

yeah, it was quite lonely, I think at the start Peter and I had a sense that the way that I was working with adolescents was very different than the way a lot of other people were working with them. And I couldn't quite find the words for it. I have over over the years but in it Yeah, I felt like I was just burrowing away here quietly with these teenagers and but the there was something really important happening there as well.

Peter Blundell: 10:03

I think that sounds lovely. And I'd be absolutely fascinated to read all those journals that you've written. It's interesting that you did that. Because I think these days, we'd probably call that like deliberate practice, you know, where you're kind of really consciously going through the work that you've done and the areas that you might need to improve or change. But it sounds like you just kind of did that intuitively as your way of like developing yourself.

Bronagh Starrs: 10:28

I did. And I suppose I saw the journaling as really trying to understand developmentally, what was happening with these teenagers and therapeutically, what was happening, what worked and what didn't. And I have come up with this approach to working with adolescents, which is very focused on. I suppose adolescents have taught me, it's not, you know, my model, this is what worked or this is what I've come up with. But it's actually just paying attention to teenagers and going, this is what seems to resonate with them, and they'll tell you when it doesn't. And so it's a very ground up model that I have put together.

Peter Blundell: 11:13

It sounds particularly because it's come from that practitioner experience, but listening to the young people, you know, and kind of what they what, what they found meaningful. I was shocked to hear that you're the only masters in the world that is centred around adolescence. But then when I thought about it, I thought actually, I don't have heard of any of any others, actually. So that's quite an achievement. Really.

Bronagh Starrs: 11:39

Yeah, I mean, and there's a lot of child and adolescent trainings around, but they seem to, and I certainly can't talk for all of them. But there seems to be quite an emphasis on the child and the adolescent as maybe, to a lesser degree, I know why I certainly would have people participate in workshops all the time who have completed child and adolescent trainers, and they say, you know, this is the part that was missing, or there wasn't enough of this. And so I suppose I wanted to have the training to be solely about adolescent psychotherapy.

Peter Blundell: 12:17

I think that's brilliant. And obviously a space where people can go to kind of specialize I suppose one of the things I was thinking about, I suppose, if people do child and adolescent training, they feel like the adolescent bits missing. But if people do adult training, maybe working from 16+, it's almost like assumed that the 16+ is kind of similar to adults on that might not necessarily be the case.

Bronagh Starrs: 12:37

Yeah, oh, that drives me nuts. You know, I think what happens in the world of counseling, psychotherapy, is we think civically 18 years of age as an adult, and 18 in terms of confidentiality parameters, and, and how we work with people. It's, that's part of work, but, you know, I would defy you to find a 22 year old who has a fully functioning adult ego, and, and even, you know, the adolescent brain development, the neuroscience would say that, you know, adolescents starcher (inaudible) 11 have 12 years of age, and that whole myelination process, the end of adolescence, really, in a non traumatized brain is around 24 years of age. So I think we have a big challenge is to think more developmentally. And so, you know, I would, I would work with and the reason I don't call them teenagers call them adolescents is because I would work with people in their early 20s. And I would very much see them as adolescents. And I would involve their parents, you know, if you have a 23 year old and mom phones up, hi, Bronagh we're looking for an appointment for our son, and you know, that she's also going to pay for therapy, and things like that, that's not an adult. And there's probably issues tangled up with the parents there as well. So, yeah, and people think that's a little bit strange at the start that, you know, you would work with people over 18 in a very adolescent way, but when you think developmentally, it makes perfect sense.

Peter Blundell: 14:10

But I suppose there's something in there where you're talking about depending on who the client is, you know, their situation and and how involved their family is with, with all of that.

Bronagh Starrs: 14:21

Yeah, I would say that, you know, people say, do you work with people in their 20s with their parents as well as it will I I would never, ever involve parents with an adult client. But a lot of the 20 somethings that I work with aren't adults, so and it works. There's a real gift in that because there is quite a lot of untangling from parents and and all that work needs to be happen before that emergence of the self can take place and you fast track a lot of that work when you involve the parents actually

Peter Blundell: 15:00

So, so you have got this approach that you work with, how would you define that approach? Kind of do you? Have you got a name for it? Or how would you describe it?

Bronagh Starrs: 15:10

And well, I mean, the title of my book is a Radical Relational Approach, I guess. I say relational phenomenological, existential, I hold the adolescents phenomenological experience at the heart of the work and how they construct their life space experience, and also see my role as supporting them to make meaning of their experience. And what I think them developmentally all the time, how do I support this adolescent to develop a greater capacity for self reflection, to develop more ownership of their experience and develop a stronger sense of self and of personal integrity. And developmental work involves parents, so I always involve the parents. And also in terms of therapeutic approach, I've come to realize that adolescents, especially those of them during trauma, have a really hard time integrating variable intervention. So I've come up with a specific way within this methodology of work, and which makes their life space visual and tangible and three dimensional, which I call Sand Space. It's a dynamic and very different way of working in the sand traditional techniques, like, you know, play therapy and Jungian approaches. And it seems to work they integrate, and it's transformative. It's also really acts on for support in the self reflective capacity, and for the emergent voice. And, like, I would teach a lot of workshops, and this one is undoubtedly the most popular. So I'm delighted that so many people have integrated this intervention into their work, but it's really paying attention to not the symptoms, not the self harm, or the eating disorder, or the school refusal, or whatever these things are, but to see that human being beneath it, and to ask myself the question, not how to cure the symptom, but what's happening developmentally? And how do I situate myself to support this young person to, to really emerge more with integrity and their life space?

Peter Blundell: 17:25

Quite a few different examples in the book, isn't there of of ways of doing that, which were really, really nice to read and kind of really kind of brought brought some of that alive? When did you get the inspiration to write the book? You know, if you if you had that for a while? Or did it come about more recently?

Bronagh Starrs: 17:44

Well, I guess I had been asked by so many people, including my students, probably top of the list to write a book about this relational methodology. And, and I guess it was a bit like, right, in the master's program, I felt that it's something valuable to say, and I think, really, by far the richest part of the book, are the client stories, and I wanted to give voice to their experience, the young people that I've worked with over the years are just amazing. And I have enormous fondness for them, and respect for them. And I've learned so much from them. And I knew that readers of the book would learn so much from, from their stories, and from how I engaged with these people as a human being first. And really, to support their integrity and actually, my thinking and interventions continue to develop. So I have another few books in the pipeline as well. If I ever find the time to, to write them. But yeah, I think it was it was more demands from people to write a book.

Peter Blundell: 18:51

Well, the need is there isn't there, as you say is that it's maybe a group that is maybe not discussed enough, and the focus and attention hasn't hasn't been on them. So having an opportunity to write some of that work up I think is really important. I really liked the way that there was kind of like an overview at the beginning, but then you break it down into specific kinds of topics and areas throughout the book. So there's lots of different chapters in there around around different potential problems or issues that a client might bring.

Bronagh Starrs: 19:22

Yeah, and it's essentially was written as a kind of a broad handbook for the master's program. So all of those chapters are kind of parts of modules on the training program as well. But yeah, I suppose I wrote it with very much speaking to the psychotherapist. Like how do you cultivate your posture as an adolescent therapist and how do you understand what's unfolding within the room within the therapeutic space? The symptoms and the you know, because we the relationship is really important, but we do need interventions as well. So there's that balance between relationship and intervention. And it's a really fine line with adolescents. So my, I suppose my aim was to really open the heart of the reader to deepen their, their encounter with adolescence. Really?

Peter Blundell: 20:25

I think the book does that really well, actually. And it was, it was, it was, yeah, it was really nice to read. And I got quite a lot out of it, actually. And yeah, so I really, I really love that. So thank you. So I'll ask you some broader questions about the charity community in a minute. But just before that, I was wondering, are you able to give us like a hint, or an idea of any of the other books that you are possibly writing? Or is that a secret at the moment,

Bronagh Starrs: 20:56

I'm writing a book about Sand Space and the book that that actual intervention, and I'm also writing a book about anxiety in the modern world. And because anxiety has just escalated amazingly. My understanding of anxiety 10 years ago was very different than it is now, and the kids coming in are very different than they were 10 years ago, and the parents and so that whole process of making meaning of the anxiety and and how to work and support the teenager of the parents and work in the wider inter disciplinary domain with it. Because I suppose there's just such a desperate need around anxiety, and again, with anxiety, you know, we throw mindfulness techniques at it. But that's just symptom management, there is so much more to anxiety, I suppose, for a lot of therapists, you know, once you do the, the mindfulness meditations, the breathing techniques, you're kind of, out of I know, you know, I would supervise people I would say. So they come in with anxiety. And I said, so let's do some mindfulness breathing. And is it well, I already did that with another therapist, and they're like, I don't know what else to do, you know. So anxiety is something that we really need to get our heads around. And I do a lot of anxiety clinics for parents and practitioners around. And they are always so well attended, because people are just desperate to understand it people are so bewildered.

Peter Blundell: 22:35

I mean, I mean, offering that kind of mindfulness technique can be a bit of a shutting down of exploration can't it, as you're giving somebody something to do rather than kind of exploring the feelings kind of the that's going on for that particular person.

Bronagh Starrs: 22:47

Exactly. And I suppose with a developmental lens, I'm always interested and how anxiety shows up in the life space and how you know people's relationship to anxiety. And people come in the door with so much urgency that we just want this anxiety taken away, want them to stop and panic attacks and get them back to school really, really quickly. And then I will pick up the urgency as a therapist, and oh my god, right? What What techniques do I have to help these panic attacks go away and to get pupil to return back into school? And we miss that whole human being underneath all of that.

Peter Blundell: 23:21

And even when you would talk and then I was feeling anxious thinking thinking about the rush of we've got to get this sorted quickly and the determination behind that. Some of that therapy work is slowing it down, isn't it? And and going hold on let's let's actually figure out what's going on. For sure. I was also really interested in you mentioned kind of anxiety and how you've noticed it change, you know, so over the years, and how, maybe adolescents or kind of parents are kind of coming with a different sense of anxiety, could you would you be able to say a little bit more on that.

Bronagh Starrs: 23:56

And yeah, if you say a little bit, I mean, if we two weeks, that'd be great. But

Peter Blundell: 24:00

we need to buy your book everyone.

Bronagh Starrs: 24:02

Exactly. Peter exactly like that. And so I suppose if I if I talk seven or eight years ago, and a young person come into my office and anxiety was the issue, I would be thinking what like maybe questions on my mind around what's not happening that needs to happen or, and, you know, are is their family process at play here. And but I get in the way, there was a there was a meaning for the anxiety in their lives, which which wasn't that difficult to figure out. But they're all coming in with the same the identical kind of symptoms, now, and the parents are coming in with the identical response to it. And it's epidemic levels nearly at the minute. And I have I've kind of ideas about way that may be happening. You know, I think we've had these holding frameworks and adolescents legs for years. For example, if I tak I grew up as a teenager in the 80s. So family was one of the holding frameworks and, you know, parents, I came up with a good Catholic Irish family, and, you know, my mother and father stayed together, whether they should have or not, that's what you do in that family and, and school, you went to school as a student. And that's just who you were, and not a full human being but a student and the church in terms of our moral code, you know, the Catholic Church would have told you how to conduct yourself, whether you did or not as a teenager was a different story. But, you know, you could push against that, that kind of moral rule that was laid down. Sexual orientation, you know, I, I wouldn't have called myself strict as a teenager, because that would have said, you know, that there was difference there was people who weren't straight because the were'nt people who weren't straight, that's just, and there was no such thing as anything other than I'm a girl, I fancy boys end of story. And because it was no other there was these rigid holding frameworks in place for people. So I think, and our parents related to us and the adult world in general related to us, and this way, that in a very repressed way, so we had a repressive experience of adolescence. And that has all been dismantled over the years, and we're the better for it. And there's a lot more sense of safety and happiness, and you know, personal integrity and freedom of voice. And that's wonderful. And in the process of that adolescents, now have an expressive experience of adolescence, under parents or parenting in an unexpressive era. So, you know, if I had a sore tummy as an, as a teenager, I said to my mom, mom, you know, I feel a bit anxious. I don't think I can go to school today. First of all, I wouldn't have the words to say that. But she would have said, Get on, I'll give you something to cry about that might have had the wooden spoon out or something. And whereas today, you know, the parent, like oh god are you okay? Do you need to talk to me about stuff, you know, what, let me go in, I've talked to the school and my goodness, I need to bring it to the GP. So kids kids are able to name what's happened, the parents can name it, and we express who we are in a much freer way. And I think by nature, that creates anxiety. And I think people's identity in adolescence is much more fluid now, I don't I'm not talking general all identity. There's a lot, a lot of vaguer sense of identity. Whereas for me, as a teenager, in the 80s, I was girl, I was a Catholic, and all those connotations. And I lived in a very heteronormative world. And when I went to school, like I would have been very rebellious as a teenager, when I went to school, I was just seen as somebody with bad behavior needed manners put on them. And so, um, my parents would have saw themselves as disciplining me and making sure that I did my homework and but but in terms of that deep relational contact, it wasn't there because it wasn't in the culture. And as an adolescent, I didn't really have a voice. And so I think we have transitioned massively from repressed adolescence to expressive of adolescence and, and anxiety I think, as the fall out of it. That's the nutshell.

Peter Blundell: 28:52

I think that's really, really interesting in fits in with something that I've thought about which is the there is feels like a general awakening around mental health and, and, and all of that kind of things. There's a much more awareness around the need to empathize with people and understand people, but as that awarenesses has, has, has got greater, sometimes I wonder whether we actually have the support systems and the, the stuff to deal with it. So a little bit like what you were talking about there is as we start to talk about to become more aware about it, but actually have we actually got the spaces to actually explore that kind of properly and be able to and be able to manage it.

Bronagh Starrs: 29:37

Well, you know, that's just fascinating, Peter, because my my sense is very definitely no the frameworks that we held in place where, you know, family, and school and church and all of these really repressive frameworks, and we don't have like modern frameworks to support these Kids, we really don't we're in flux around that. And it's teenagers are really struggling. And what are we doing? We're pathologizing them. That's what we do. Like there's a problem somewhere. So let's pathologize these kids, because they're all presenting with these symptoms at the minute, which is a bit sad.

Peter Blundell: 30:19

But are very challenging thing when there's so much pathologizeation going on. And then and then with that comes, then all these other types of services we need, but actually, what you're talking about there is actually what the support systems, the frameworks, the broader things that we can think about, that can help people or young adolescents manage manage those experiences and in a better and more supported way.

Bronagh Starrs: 30:41

Exactly. And I think, you know, one of the keys there is I will do a lot of work with parents, I'll do a lot of work with schools is try and try to support the the supporting adults to really shift they're ground quite a bit. So that we can, you know, because kids will flourish once you do that. Otherwise, we just, oh, he's anxious and self harm, and he needs therapy or a need to go to CAMHS or you need some mental(inaudible).

Peter Blundell: 31:11

It's really interesting. I can't wait to read, I can't wait to read the book. Next one. So, think a little bit more about the wider therapy community. I suppose we touched on that a little bit, almost there. I wondered, how do you see the wider therapy community? And how connected do you feel with other kinds of therapists?

Bronagh Starrs: 31:33

Well, that's interesting. I live and practise in Northern Ireland, yet I feel more connected to the south of Ireland. That's where I trained myself, that's where I offer a lot of training and workshops, and the Masters I'm wearing(inaudible) very well known in the world of psychotherapy. I have a much quieter presence in Northern Ireland and the UK. But that's all about to change actually. I suppose it's something I've been thinking about. You know, I've I suppose I had a lonely experience of Northern Ireland growing up here as a therapist for the last 20 years. And Northern Ireland has disproportionately high levels of mental ill health and comparison to the rest of the United Kingdom, which is a 25% higher overall prevalence of mental health issues actually here than in England. And as a society emerging and transitioning from conflict, failure to address the mental health legacy of the troubles has meant that transgenerational trauma is embedded within families and communities. You know, for example, more people have died by suicide in the past 17 years then were killed during 30 years of conflict. And young people in Northern Ireland are twice as likely more than twice as likely to take their own lives compared with England. So we have a dire need here. And of course, the crisis has been accentuated by high levels of social determinants of like, you know, mental health, poverty, generational long term unemployment poor housing, domestic violence, economic inactivity. And consequently, Northern Ireland possesses one of the highest incidence rates of trauma disorder in the world. And so given the lack of investment in mental health, are people experience considerable difficulty accessing services, in addition, and there's lengthy waiting times and there's inadequate therapeutic resources here it would be well known and so there's an urgent need for accessible high quality mental health services to meet these complex issues. So the Dublin Counselling Therapy Center where I teach the master's programs in partnership with the University of Northampton are extending our recruitment in to Northern Ireland and now offering master's level professional qualifications and counselling psychotherapy and adolescent psychotherapy. And it's actually going to be taking place in my hometown of Omagh County Tyrone, which is kind of located around the center of Northern Ireland and I will be director of the Omagh campus. So I'm quite excited in terms of establishing a network of depth psychotherapists working and here in the north of, which is, you know, what this huge need here. I know, when I would have worked with adults, I always described it as it was like lancing the boy, you know, they would come in and when I wouldn't relate to them in terms of techniques, but but really meet them and have that deep encounter of another human being. It just allowed them to sit really deeply into themselves and then all of this terrible stuff came out. And I think we need you to be trained at depth in order to be able to hold that space for for very wounded people or who are carrying lot of transgenerational stuff. So then, in terms of the wider therapy community in Northern Ireland, and I have high hopes I would be well, really well socially looking at it centrally socially looking at probably in the whole of Ireland. And, and but not wider, you know, it's kind of interesting. I, I am I'm well known here and then outside of here, not so much at all.

Peter Blundell: 35:24

That sounds really exciting. And so when when will the first kind of cohort start? Will that be September? Or is it going to be? Yes,

Bronagh Starrs: 35:33

this October.

Peter Blundell: 35:35

Fantastic. I'm gonna keep you busy. Will you still teach in Ireland and Dublin as well.

Bronagh Starrs: 35:40

I will, I will only two hours up the road, or down the road let's grand Yeah, yeah.

Peter Blundell: 35:47

That's fantastic. And then what do you think is the biggest challenge that the profession faces right now? That's a very broad question.

Bronagh Starrs: 35:57

Interesting, I actually, I might answer that in relation to adolescent psychotherapy. In particular, actually, since we've kind of been focusing on Peter. So I how I understand it is, let's see if I am. So there are three principal categories of referral as adolescents so there, I call them direct issues. So the adolescent is or isn't doing something or feeling something or thinking something that's troubling them or troubling other people, for example, anxiety, or depression, or substance misuse or low academic motivation or aggression. So then there are indirect issues. So the adolescents environment is creating complexity and strife for them, for example, separation, trauma, grief, adoption, peer isolation, or their overt developmental issues where, you know, parents will phone up and it'll be like, you know, his attitude and his lack of respect for his parents and these treatments, home stability(inaudible), and, and battling with parental control. That's the problem. So it's almost always one of those indirect issue and then direct issue or an overt developmental issue. And it's in both talking to unsupervised and a lot of adolescent psychotherapists, I would say that therapists come under tremendous pressure to intervene at the behavior level, I think we mentioned that earlier on. So this kid is self harming and not attending school, and you're really good therapist, if you can get them back to school really quickly, and get them to stop self harming. And so there's a lot of pressure from parents from schools from the wider and professional demand. And the assumption can often be, well, you're the therapist you fix them. And I think, consequently, the work with adolescents is often experienced as a set of techniques to be applied to struggling teenager, the biggest challenge I think facing adolescent psychotherapy, is to remain committed to seeing that emerging human being beyond the behavior and to sit deeply and to trust the healing relationship in a way. We all heal through relationships, adolescents included. And I always know, you know, if I'm doing a training workshop, I always know what's gone successfully. But you do that go around at the beginning, and you'll hear the word upscale alot, you'll hear I need to upscale and just to get more interventions from a toolbag. And people come to an adolescent therapy workshop very often for techniques. But when I do the final closing round, I will hopefully hear the difference, which is I'm more aware of the complexity of this, and really, how important the therapeutic relationship is, and I go yay, success. Because we are really driven at the behavior level, and not with children and not with adults, you know. If I was working with a child, and I had a room full of lovely creative things, and the kid comes in, and the whole thing is like just track that child be with the child. And, and the same with an adult, depends on your methodology, but you just sit with an adult and just allow their process to unfold and just bear witness to them. But in adolescence, worksheets, the techniques and breathing and it's like we we interface with their symptoms. And I think there that is a huge challenge is to really commit to that human to human encounter, because that's, that's where the healing and the developmental progress happens, I'm convinced.

Peter Blundell: 39:34

I was really when you're talking then I was really thinking about all the techniques and the strategies and all that kind of thing and interaction at the behavior level of just completely missing person underneath all of that, you know, and I think it's a risk of doing that in all different types of therapy. But it sounds like it's it's particularly important for working with adolescents.

Bronagh Starrs: 39:58

The way I know we're on audio here, but I have a little triangle that I often draw out that the bottom of the big thick part of the triangle is contact. And then the next little bit is strategy and the top that tiny little about the top of the triangle is technique. And the main piece is, is how am I making contact with this adolescent what's happening in this therapeutic contact, what's happening developmentally. The strategic place, I mean, thinking strategically equates with thinking developmentally, so developmentally what's trying to happen. And then the last little bit is right pull something out of your bag of tricks or do the Sand Space. But that the techniques really need to be integrated into depth therapeutic relationship. And I suppose I just know, and I supervise so many people who have fantastic techniques, and I have probably come up with 1000s of techniques at this stage. But the issue with them is there premature. So I have applied this technique to you and it has fallen flat on its face, because there is not enough therapeutic ground between us. And I just see that happen, and over and over and over again. And they say, you know, there's two big transference in an adolescent psychotherapy, and one of them is urgency, and the other is despair. And, and when you're motivated by either of them, your'e remote in the contact, and, and there's a lot of urgency around, you know, we're bringing our kid to see you because he's suicidal ideation he's self harming. And and you know, this is this is life or death, you better deliver the goods really quickly. And you don't get the same level of urgency or intensity with kids or with you know, I think that really heightened with teenagers actually,

Peter Blundell: 42:03

it's really interesting. It's making me think about when you talked about, if you use those techniques, and then that's all you have there's nowhere to go. Whereas if you built up a deeper therapeutic relationship, there's always other places that you can go.

Bronagh Starrs: 42:17

Exactly, yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, and it's, you know, it seems so radical, I think that's part of the, you know, the title of the book. And it's radical to really emphasize the therapeutic relationship. And as you said, early on, you know, to slow people down. And my experience of adolescence is they're hungry for adult contact, and really see if I'll contact because a lot of them don't talk to the parents, because their parents don't understand them. You know, of course, that's not always true. But you know, that they have that sense. And also, it's really useful for them to talk to someone outside their family, so that they can kind of develop a relationship to the relationships that they have, which is a huge piece of their developmental work. And it's their, you know, adolescents are meaning makers par excellence that, you know, I always think, even as an adult client, like, you know, we do a lot of inner child work, I think we miss the point so much because children have a felt sense, but it's an adolescence that we start making meaning of our experience given voice to it, that's where shame becomes really embedded. And actually, you know, if we, if we did more inner adolescent work, we would dislodge and neutralize a lot more shame. And you know it's also interesting, I know, people who've been in therapy for years, and they've done a lot of work in their childhood, and they have done an awful lot of work on their present adult experience. But adolescence is a blind spot for us. And really, unless something happens, so my parents separated or someone died, or I was sexually traumatized, during adolescence, that situation, I may talk about that. But in terms of my developmental journey, and the experience of being an adolescent, it's really very underdeveloped. And it's, it's something that really surprises my students, because there's a very strong experiential component and they have a requirement to be in personal therapy. And the power of that adolescent process coming back up is absolutely huge, and incredibly healing. And I have come to see and I always say this, at the start of every academic year, I've come to see that my students are completing this two year master's program and secondly, to be able to work at this level with adolescents, but primarily to heal themselves and to fall in love with their adolescent self because that seems to be what happens for them.

Peter Blundell: 45:10

Well, I feel like that is a lovely note to kind of finish on actually. And I feel I feel like I've learned quite a lot of speaking to you and it's been really, really lovely to hear your passion around this subject area. So thank you so much, Bronagh, for coming on and talking to me today

Bronagh Starrs: 45:28

It's been a pleasure Peter, thank you very much for the invitation. I my favorite thing in the world is talking about adolescence

Peter Blundell: 45:37

Well, your book Adolescent Psychotherapy - A Radical Relational Approach is out now and you can get it all good book shops, so I'd ask people to go out and buy a copy while you can. Thank you so much.

Bronagh Starrs: 45:49

Not at all. Thank you, Peter.

Opening: 45:51

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