Transactional Analyis made simple – part 2
Last issue, we set ourselves the tricky task of making Transactional Analysis simple for easy application in our day-to-day lives.
This has been tried before, of course. There are many training courses and books out there which seek to simplify the TA model and often quite a bit is lost in transaltion. The challenge we set ourselves was to make the ideas of TA simple without being simplistic.
At LJA we value TA highly for the insights and solutions it offers in business situations, particularly where there is conflict or confusion.
In this issue we look a little deeper into ego states, consider the nature of strokes, both positive and negative and start to think about the games that people get involved in, whether they know it or not. If any of you missed the introductory article last time, contact us and we will send out another post haste.
A quick recap
Eric Berne grouped our ways of thinking and behaving into three ego states, which he called Parent, Adult and Child. Each ego state can be defined by the combination of feelings and experience which occur consistently together.
When we respond from one of these ego states, we think and feel drawing on our experience of the parental figures in our lives which have been absorbed into our way of relating, or in which we used to repond to the outside world when we were small. In the Adult ego state, we are rational, factual, able to think and make choices for ourselves.
Structures and Functions of Ego States
The structural model of TA looks at what is in each ego state i.e. content and the functional model considers how each state is used i.e. process.
TA‘s functional model is concerned with the deeper levels of ego states: the adapted and free child and critical and nurturing parents of our ego states.
As children, we learn to adapt to the demands of parents and other authority figures. We also internalize the voices, rules and instructions of those figures.
As grown ups, we may resort to these old ways of behaving as if we are in the same situations. How many times have you heard someone say ―Oh no, I sound just like my Mum/Dad!
Sometimes, we rebelled—maybe we made a point of not saying thank you or tidying up our rooms or getting our chores done. We can find ourselves being rebellious as adults, too, but as we are still playing to the rules of our childhood, we are still in the adapted child part of our ego state.
Yet there will also have been times when we behaved in ways which had nothing to do with external pressures and then, we were using our ‗free child‘ (also sometimes called ‘natural child‘.) We know we are thinking and feeling from this ego state when we are spontaneous and independent of any rules - if we are happy we show it and if someone hurts our feelings we let them know.
Spending time in Adapted Child is not ‗wrong‘, after all, navigating the adult world involves a lot of rules, many of which we learned when we were young: we look out for traffic when we cross the road, say ―please when we want something and get to bed on time (usually!) so that we can function tomorrow. Following these rules makes life run smoothly and saves us a lot of mental energy– it offers us a short cut to a simple life. This is our positive or OK Adapted Child at work.
However, we have a negative, or not-OK Adapted Child, too. This is when we replay the old patterns of our childhood which are no longer appropriate or helpful in our adult life. Maybe when you were young you learned that you got what you wanted by whining or sulking or giving people the silent treatment. Maybe you still do that as an adult, thus ignoring the fact that you have a choice - you could just ask for what you want!
Free Child can also be classed as either positive negative, OK or not-OK. Free child is our expression of thoughts and feelings where there are no parental rules or limits to ‗adapt‘ our behaviours. It is obvious that this can work either for us or against us. It may make us spontaneous and assertive or anti-social and inappropriate.
There are lots of stories, films and TV programmes where characters remain in their adult bodies but become children, and sometimes vice versa– and the jokes always come when we see grown adults acting like children, visibly responding from their Free child, yet this is exactly what we are doing in our everyday lives!
So what does all this mean?
The two most important messages to take away from this are
- there is no ‗right‘ or ‗wrong‘ ego state and
- the power of this model is realizing that we have a choice in each of our transactions about how we are going to respond. You don‘t have to respond to a situation with your critical parent or your not-OK adapted child.
You can respond with your adult. When our clients have come to this realization, it is no exaggeration to say that it has changed their lives.
When we act from the Adult ego state, we aim for an I‘m OK/you‘re OK or win-win situation free of unnecessary aggression, sulking, whining, umbrage, persecution and guilt!
The games people play concern getting rewards for these less positive or not-OK behaviours and we repeat them endlessly until we have understood what is driving them and chosen another way.
Just knowing this begins to give you choices and the chance to do things another, more productive way.