“The fact that you’re struggling doesn’t make you a burden. It doesn’t make you unlovable or undesirable or undeserving of care. It doesn’t make you too much or too sensitive or too needy. It makes you human. Everyone struggles. Everyone has a difficult time coping, and at times, we all fall apart. During these times, we aren’t always easy to be around and that’s okay. No one is easy to be around one hundred percent of the time. Yes, you may sometimes be unpleasant or difficult. And yes, you may sometimes do or say things that make the people around you feel helpless or sad. But those things aren’t all of who you are and they certainly don’t discount your worth as a human being. The truth is that you can be struggling and still be loved. You can be difficult and still be cared for. You can be less than perfect, and still be deserving of compassion and kindness”.

I read something the other day that I wanted to share. Something someone considering therapy may find useful to know, perhaps. If you are currently struggling with something……anything, you don’t have to do it alone. Therapy can be a great source of support when you feel like you don’t want to or can’t speak to those close to you.

Asking for help is never a sign of weakness. Too often we hear people express that they feel weak for asking for some support, weak for asking for some kindness, weak for expressing they need something, that they feel something, that they cannot cope alone anymore.

Whatever is happening for you, however you feel, where ever you are in your life, you don’t have to cope alone. Help is available.

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Reacting in ‘the same old way’ in Psychotherapeutic terms probably means you are engaging in Script behaviour that may no longer suit your needs or who you are. I addressed the concept Life Scripts in my previous post.

As a child, when this Script was developed maybe you didn’t have a choice.

Maybe you learnt to react in a certain way to best get your needs met, to please others or to simply be able to survive.

Maybe you emulated how your parents or primary caregivers reacted to situations believing this was the most effective or only way.

Maybe you didn’t have a choice then.

Maybe………

Now you do have a choice however. If your old ways of being and reacting are no longer allowing you to live the way you wish to – they can be adapted, changed and re-learnt to better serve you in the here and now.

Psychotherapy can help as a way of addressing these ‘old ways’ and helping you to look for and establish ‘new ways’ that are all yours and no one else’s. If they are yours then YOU are in control of them. YOU and no one else.

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Below is an essay I wrote a while back on a Transactional Analysis concept I find particularly useful when working with clients. It explores the idea of ‘Scripts’, what they are (therapeutically), how they come to be and how they are acted out in our here and now reality. An aim of personal therapy is to equip the individual with better resources to handle a certain amount of stress before feeling they have no choice but to resort to their Script behaviours, thoughts and feelings about themselves, others and the world. The freedom of knowing you have a choice can be liberating.

What kind of script have you written for yourself?

Script

‘Each person decides in early childhood how he will live and how he will die, and that plan, which he carries in his head wherever he goes, is called his script.’ (Berne, E, What Do You Say After You Say Hello?)

The theory of script, as developed by Eric Berne and his contemporaries revolves around the above principal. It adheres to the notion that, in early childhood, not only does a person set down a general view of the world for themselves but that they go as far as to create a comprehensive life plan that, unless awoken to, they will go on to live out. Early Transactional Analysts discovered that it was in fact early childhood decisions rather than grown up, adult planning which ultimately determined the destiny of the individual. So, no matter what they said they were striving for, what career path they wished to pursue, what type of man they were searching to marry, ultimately they appeared to be driven by some internal compulsion towards an often contradictory or at least very different conclusion. Because the script is formed in early childhood it is based on feeling and intuition as at this time the child does not have the ability to translate its experiences into words. Therefore much of the script is formed at a non verbal level. In adult existence the script often lies in the realms inaccessible to conscious memory as generally the closest we can come to our early childhood years is through dreams and fantasy. Therefore, though we may be living out and experiencing our childhood decisions in the here and now through our behaviour, we are likely to remain unaware of these decisions ever having been made. Berne’s most comprehensive definition of script can be found in ‘What Do You Say After You Say Hello?’ where he said; ‘A script is a life plan based on a decision made in childhood, reinforced by parents, justified by subsequent events, and culminating in a chosen alterative.’ (Berne, E, What Do You Say After You Say Hello?)

A script is adopted when a child’s inert expectations regarding protection and natural development are challenged. It is this that leads to what is called the script decision being made, where the child adapts all of their expectations to enable them to survive in their external environment. Steiner, a contemporary of Berne’s, has said ‘The script is based on a decision made by the Adult in the young person who, with all of the information at her disposal at the time, decides that a certain position, expectations, and life course are a reasonable solution to the existential predicament in which she finds herself.’ (Steiner, C, Scripts People Live). Put bluntly, a script is adopted so the child can get by in their home situation. For example if a child learns to get love and attention from their parents or parent figures they must be quiet and well behaved this will form a crucial part of their script, perhaps leading them to believe it is only possible to receive love under these conditions. i.e. ‘I am only lovable if I am quiet and well mannered’. Because the script is believed to be decisional it does not necessarily follow that different children brought up in the same environment will adopt the same or even similar Script beliefs and develop the same life plans.

Though parents cannot solely be held responsible for determining a child’s script decisions they are a hugely influential force upon them. From the time they are born a child will receive messages from their parents on which they base their conclusions about themselves, others and the world. Because the world is perceived as a hostile, life threatening place to a small, physically vulnerable child early decisions are based upon extreme emotional experience. It is then no wonder that script decisions are often, themselves, extreme. Nor is it any wonder that a young child will make decisions based on the fact they perceive their parents as being all powerful and in total control. If a child is hungry and Mother does not come to feed them, will she ever come? And if she doesn’t come this means death or a life time of being alone. Further to this, due to the frame work for early script decisions being constructed of entirely different stuff to an adults basis for decision making, the child may go on the believe that because it’s Mother did not always come when he needed them to that therefore all people, or perhaps all women, are untrustworthy. It is then this belief that becomes fused into the very core of the child’s being and perpetuated throughout its adult existence.

When a child writes its life script it also writes the final scene, the closing scene. This is what Berne referred to as the ‘chosen alternative’. In TA language we call this the script payoff. Everything else that is written in childhood and played out is a build up to this final scene, the payoff. What this means is that in adult life we are likely to behave in ways and find ourselves in situations that ultimately bring us closer to this payoff. To achieve psychological predictability and justify our script decisions in adulthood we chose to make reality fit our script decisions, our view of life, the world and each other unwittingly being driven towards the payoff of doing so.

People often respond to the here and now realities of their adult lives as if the world were still the way they viewed it when they made their early decisions. In TA Today it is expressed that we do this because we are ‘still hoping to resolve the basic issue that was left unresolved in our infancy: how to get unconditional love and attention. Thus as adults, we frequently react as if we were still infants.’ (Ian Stewart and Vann Joines, TA Today: A New Introduction to Transactional Analysis). It is a common condition to fall into script, or script determined behaviours under stress or in a stressful situation. Another factor that can determine an individual behaving in this way is if there is a resemblance between the here and now situation or environment and a stressful situation experienced in childhood. An aim of personal therapy is to enable a person to deal with certain levels of stress before engaging in script behaviours and implement or improve their ability to solve here and now problems rather than reverting to script.

Image courtesy of thaikrit / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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‘It’s a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes.

Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same.

You realize what’s changed is you.’

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Have you ever wondered why you think the things you think, or feel and behave the way you do?

One of the concepts I particularly like about Transactional Analysis is the model of personality it uses to change the way we understand ourselves.

It can be particularly helpful to those wishing to gain an insight into their own methods of behaving, thinking and feeling with a view to then making changes.

At any given time we are all acting or reacting from one of these places. The idea is that for us to be healthy and functioning at our best we act or react from the most appropriate place at the most appropriate time in order to gain the results that will benefit us or get our needs met.

For example – crossing a busy street. The ideal place to be coming from under this circumstance is your Adult Ego State (A) The reason this is ideal is because when crossing a busy street you want to be able to be reacting to direct here and now information, such as waiting for a break in the traffic, using a pedestrian crossing if there is one available and taking that last look left and right before you step off the curb.

The benefit of Psychotherapy is that it allows you the space and some guidance as to how you function and how come you function that way and allows you to see that if certain methods of behaviour learnt in childhood and stored in your Child Ego State (C) or learnt from your parents or parental figures and stored in your Parent Ego State (P) are no longer healthy for you or are holding you back in some way they can be changed by you in the here and now.

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Transactional Analysis is a specific form of Psychotherapy that works mutually and relationally – looking at how the past informs the present. By becoming aware of the links between the past and the present we can begin to move forward, to act freely and become who we wish to be.

Transactional Analysis can be defined as many things, first and foremost it is a philosophy that begins with the belief that each of us is fundamentally OK whilst also expressing a point of view and a description of people which gives us an understanding to the structure of personality.

Woollams and Brown (1978) describe it as “An ever-expanding system of related techniques designed to help people understand and change their feelings and behaviors.”

Eric Berne began to develop the theory of TA before 1958 when he had his first articles published containing the principles of TA and its concepts. His first book Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy was published in 1961. This laid out a theory of personality and interpersonal relationships, in all his works extended over thirty – two years including seven books and fifty articles, transcripts and papers (Stewart 1992).

Berne described TA primarily as “a unified system of individual and social psychiatry”, because of his extensive work within the psychiatric community both working with individuals and groups. In its strictest sense the term transactional analysis was used by Berne to denote the analysis of transactions. In his book Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy 1961 he described TA as ‘Structural and transactional analysis that offers a systematic, consistent theory of personality and social dynamics derived from clinical experience, and an actionistic, rational form of therapy which is suitable for, easily understood by, and naturally adapted to the great majority of psychiatric patients’.

TA Today (Stewart & Joines 1987) describe TA as defined by the ITAA (International Transactional Analysis Association) as “a theory of psychotherapy for personal growth and personal change”. Stewart and Joines go on to say it is a theory of personality which uses a three part model known as the ego state model, which helps us understand how people function and express their personality in terms of behaviour.

Briefly TA also provides us with a theory of communication, it gives a method for analysing systems and organisations. It also offers a theory of child development, it offers life script explaining how are influenced by our history and the decisions we make about ourselves, others and the world because of that. It offers explanations as to how we continue to repeat patterns of behaviour that may be self-defeating. Overall TA gives us a theory of psychopathology, a system of psychotherapy, a treatment system for all types psychological problems from average neurosis to psychosis.

This article is written by Bob Cooke

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