Welcome to the Counseling Tutor Podcast, the must listen to podcast for students of

counseling and psychotherapy. Here are your hosts, Rory Lee's Oaks and Ken Kelly.

Hello and welcome to episode 31 of the counseling tutor podcast with me, Rory Lee's Oaks. And with me is my erstwhile colleague in the world of everything therapeutic, Mr Ken Kelly. How are you, Ken? Oh, very good. It's great to be here. Rory, good to see you over the wonders of Skype. We get to wave to each other. And of course, we're sending that wave out to all of you listening to this today. Great episode plan for you today. We're going to be starting off with something interesting. It's about holding onto your emotions when a client is maybe bringing something of great weight and you are emotionally moved by that. What do we do in the counselling room? Do we hide that away? Do we let it show?

Interesting topic to debate. Moving on to theory with Rory, a good one today. We're going to be looking at the Cartman drama triangle, Rory. Sounds Bermuda Triangleish, but I guess it's not, is it?

No, no. It's not Cartman from South Park. It's Carp Man.

With a K.

With a K. Carp Man. It's the vowels, my northern vowels.

Cartman, the drama traddle.

Yes, and it's a theory developed by Stephen Cartman, who was a student of Eric Byrne.

And it tells us a universal truth about how we can get really

stuck in relationships and how those relationships can be quite toxic and here's the thing

it is a TA theory but as we'll see it's just so useful for anyone practicing any modality of counselling.

And it really helps you not get stuck in any of that kind of transferential stuff.

So I'm looking forward to exploring that.

And giving away, Ken, just a little bit of real inside information on its development.

So I'll get there.

I like that one.

You know, I went in with my tongue firmly in my cheek saying Bermuda Triangle.

And I did that on purpose because what's really interesting, when you look at the Cartman drama triangle,

it is a place that you can get stuck as with the myth of the Bermuda triangle.

It's the kind of place that you go to and you never come back.

And it's sometimes difficult to recognize when you are stuck in that triangle.

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