The Art of Authentic Communication

This week we are continuing our mini-series on Transactional Analysis – a powerful tool for understanding human behaviour and communication. We build here on the concepts we looked at in last week’s episode so if you haven’t listened to that already go back and familiarise with it before launching into this one.

In this episode we cover what Transactions are and explore the idea of Strokes – those essential units of human recognition that we all crave. Why do we need them, and how do they shape our interactions?

We also look at the different types of Transactions that occur between our Ego states. We break down Crossed Transactions, where miscommunications often arise, and Ulterior Transactions, where hidden agendas come into play.   

That leads us into a brief look at the Psychological Games people play, finishing with some tips on how we can achieve authentic human connection and intimacy with the people in our lives.

So, whether you’re an actor looking to deepen your character work or simply curious about the intricacies of human interaction, this episode promises to be a thought-provoking journey into the heart of Transactional Analysis.


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An Awakened State production.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:07

But if I have the awareness to understand myself, and that enables me then to make healthy, spontaneous choices in the moment, is that means that I will experience more intimacy in my life, which means I will experience relationships of greater health where I can be vulnerable with people, and so I don't need to play the games anymore. So, really, that is what Byrne is inviting us to do is to become more aware so that we can be more spontaneous and experience greater intimacy and therefore become an autonomous person who is able to make healthy choices in the moment rather than getting hooked into the games.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

This week we are continuing our mini-series on transactional analysis, a powerful tool for understanding human behaviour and communication. We build here on the concepts we looked at in last week's episode, so if you haven't listened to that already, go back and familiarize yourself with it before launching into this one. In this episode, we begin by exploring the idea of strokes, those essential units of human recognition that we all crave. Why do we need them and how do they shape our interactions? Next, we look at the different types of transactions that can occur between our ego states. We then break down cross-transactions, where miscommunications often arise, and ulterior transactions, where hidden agendas come into play. That leads us nicely into a brief look at the psychological games people play, which will be our main focus for next week's episode, finishing with some tips on how we can achieve authentic human connection and intimacy with the people in our lives. So, whether you're an actor looking to deepen your character work, or simply curious about the intricacies of human interaction, this episode promises to be a thought-provoking journey into the heart of transactional analysis. Let's jump into it. So this is our second part of our mini-series on transactional analysis, and very pleased to say we were joined again by Sarah Lowe's to help us along with that. How are you doing today, Sarah?

SPEAKER_03 2:33

I'm doing very well. It's a real pleasure to be back.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Yeah, very good. I really enjoyed the uh last episode we recorded with Sarah. This is a fascinating topic, so it's good it's gonna be good to hear more. And thank you so much, Sarah, for joining us again.

SPEAKER_03 2:49

It's a pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

So in the second part, we're gonna talk more about the games people play, but first it would be good to talk more about transactions, the actual transaction part of transaction analysis. Yes, and really what transactions are. So as far as I'm aware, transactions are basically they take the form of a stimulus and response, right? And then that response then forms part of the next stimulus basically as a conversation develops.

SPEAKER_03 3:13

Yeah. So I mean, essentially, a transaction is a unit of social discourse, if you like, what in more ordinary parlance we might talk communication. And it breaks a unit of communication down into, as you've just said, a stimulus followed by a response. So a very basic example would be I mean, in you know, once it's a bit like we've just done, you know, we arrive on the call, you know, I say hello to you, stimulus, you say hello back, response. They can also, it doesn't have to be verbal. You know, if you pass a friend, um, you know, you're walking down the high street and you see a friend of yours on the other side of the road, you wave, that's a stimulus, they wave back, that's a response. You could also say, you know, same scenario, you see them, but you wave, stimulus. They see you, but they don't wave back, that's still a response. You know, there's still a unit of communication that's being completed there. So when we talk about transactional analysis, what we are doing, whether you're doing it in therapy, in coaching, or in the rehearsal room, is you are analysing the units of communication that are being exchanged and what that reveals about the underlying relationship dynamics. You know, transactional analysis is fundamentally looking at relationships and communication and how the communication builds the subsequent relationship and how what's going on forin each of us internally influences the way that we communicate and therefore influences the relationships that we go on to develop.

unknown 4:53

Right.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

Right, yeah. And then the so the in the transactions themselves, they constitute strokes, right? Each transaction has a bunch of strokes. And you talk about what strokes are and and why we have a need for them as human beings.

SPEAKER_03 5:06

So um Bern uh talked about the fact that as human beings, we have um four basic hungers that that need to be met as we go about the business of being a human being. And and those are um uh one of those hungers is the um a hunger for stimulus, so you know, to um a need for physical and mental stimulation in one way, shape, or form. Um, there's also a hunger for recognition, which is to have my very existence recognized, so that you know I know that I exist and I know that other people know that I exist. There's also a hunger for structure, which is about how to structure my time, so that I'm not just you know looking at four walls 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but you know, that I need I have a need to do something with my time. And then the final hunger is to do with position, which links us back to what we spoke about in the first episode around life positions, you know, a need to have an overall framework for interpreting how I understand myself and others, and how you know what's my position in relation to the others around me. Now, strokes come in and relate to the hunger for recognition, the hunger to have my existence recognized. And strokes are a unit, if you like, of recognition, of the way that we acknowledge each other. And I mean, a bit like the example that I I just gave for the transaction, you know, saying hello, that that is a stroke in and of itself, even in the example where the person doesn't wave back, that you know, we will take negative strokes in the place if we can't get positive strokes, it's better to it's a bit like better the devil you know. It's better to get negative strokes than to get no strokes at all. So strokes can be verbal or non-verbal in the way that they are delivered, um, they can be positive or negative, and they can also be conditional and unconditional. So, for example, um a conditional stroke would be something like well done, that's a good picture you've drawn. So I am I've done well because of how I drew that picture. Um, an unconditional stroke is is maybe simply saying, you know, I think you're fantastic. It's not dependent on anything, it's just an acknowledgement of the fact that, you know, you know, saying I love you to someone, you know, is an unconditional stroke. It becomes conditional as I love you because you put the dishes away. My love for you is conditional on the fact that you've done this thing for me. So so yes, that's a basic sense of we seek strokes in order to have our existence recognized. And if we can't get positive strokes, we will take negative ones in their place because at least I'm being recognized. And again, we might we'll probably come back to that when we talk about games later. Um, because often that's an exchange of negative strokes, and we stick with the game because we'd rather play the game than be left by ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Right, like in crime, you know, a life of crime isn't that seeking negative stroking.

SPEAKER_03 8:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

The risk of being caught, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:20

Yeah. And sometimes actually the maybe fundamentally there's a desire to be caught, you know, because ironically, and come back to one of the other structures, often, I mean, this is a stereotype, but you know, often people who end up in a life of crime have often grown up in environments without a lot of structure, where maybe there's only been negative strokes in terms of their recognition available. And whilst um, you know, prison probably still gives them a fair few negative strokes, my word is it provide them with structure in their lives. And for some people, when they leave prison after a long time, it's very difficult to figure out how to live in this world. Um, scenes from Shawshank Redemption come back to my mind. You know, how do you cope in this life when suddenly you've had every minute of your day being organized for you, and then you're left out in the world, and now you've got to figure this out for yourself again. And so, you know, if you've never learned how to structure yourself growing up, it can be quite difficult and challenging to do that as as you as you get older.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Right. So so the stroke then is it could be when you say negative, so if you insult somebody, that is a stroke because it's a unit of a transaction.

unknown 9:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:28

So if um let's say somebody, you know, in a working, I was gonna say in a work environment, I also had the the Queen Vic in the EastEnders, you know, come into my mind. Let's say, you know, somebody's serving behind the bar, and you know, maybe they're new or something like that, and they either pull the pint and it goes everywhere, or the glass slips out of their hand and it smashes. If somebody in response to that just goes, Oh, you effing idiot, you know, in one sense it's an unconditional negative stroke because them as a rather than criticizing the behavior, the fact that, you know, God, you know, you've dropped the glass, that's not helpful. What the person has done has criticized them as a human being. They've called them an idiot because they've, you know, broken a glass.

unknown 10:13

Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

But is what causes that in the person who says you're an effing idiot, is that really come from a lack of strokes themselves?

SPEAKER_03 10:25

Potentially. Potentially. I mean, it you know, it depends on all of our own individual sort of life experiences and the decisions that we've made about ourselves. I think the where I would connect it to again with what we spoke about previously is life positions. Is that sounds to me like you've got somebody who's in a one-up position and and perceives others as a one-down. So they move very quickly to criticism because what that does is it reinforces their life position, the I'm okay, you're not. And why people develop a life position of I'm okay, you're not can be for any one of a number of reasons, but it might be, you know, one option could be what you were just talking about, John.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Right, but doesn't that I'm okay, you're not is it always like a layer over I'm not okay?

SPEAKER_03 11:14

There I think there is often people would often say that I'm okay, you're not okay probably masks a deep rooted vulnerability that actually I've got to sort of justify. Sometimes sometimes it can be, you know, somebody who was maybe raised to just believe fundamentally that the sun did shine out of their backside, you know, and everybody else is less than. So it can maybe be rooted in uber confidence that's boiled over. But I think my experience is often when I meet people like that, my sense is that something is being masked. We sometimes talk about, I can't remember if we mentioned this last week, driver behavior, which is ways that we behave when we feel actually I might not be okay around here, but if I behave like this, I'll be all right. And one of the driver behaviors is be strong. I'll be okay around here if I behave in a way that makes me look strong. And I think you you will often see that in people with a life position of I'm okay, you're not, that there's an element of that what they're doing is presenting a very strong exterior, um, you know, where they probably don't reveal too much about their own inner thinking or they're or reveal too much about their own emotions as a defense mechanism, maybe from feeling that if actually I show those emotions, I really won't be okay around here.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

It's like toxic masculinity, isn't it? I guess that's where that comes from, is the sense that I can't show that I'm I'm weak or have emotions or I'm sensitive.

SPEAKER_03 12:36

Yes, absolutely. I mean, I the be strong drive and bur, I mean, you know, all of the drivers, um, there there's five in total, you'll see them in in all genders. Uh I grew up with a very strong desire to be able to do things myself. I'm the I'm the younger sibling. So I've got an older sister who's three years older than me, and I never understood why did that mean, but just because she was three years older, that there were things that she could do and I couldn't. So I grew up with a mantra that's often quoted back to me of I'll do it myself. And I think that has also to a degree led me at times with a be strong driver because I want to look competent and I don't want to look like I don't know what I'm doing. So I'm aware sometimes now, if I'm delivering a training course for the first time and something goes wrong, I find it really difficult to ask for help. I want to sort of keep this mask on that everything's fine and nothing's going wrong, and I'm not at all worried or anxious about anything. So it can be present in women, but I think you're also absolutely right that in uh you know factors to do with toxic masculinity, the it may well be a factor as well, this sense that it's not okay for me to show vulnerability. And actually that's weakness if I show vulnerability.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Right. So, but this idea of like compensating for a lack of stroking, yeah. So I I often um with with clients and with students, I ask them the question if all the care, nurturing, and support and love you needed to get from the age of zero to 21 added up to 100%, that would have been perfect parenting on your parents' behalf. How much did you get? And then they'll come back and they'll go, you know, some will say 20, some will say 45%, some will say, Oh god, my mother, 110%. You know, it was it was uh do you see what I mean? It was too much. The precise measure would be 100. And then say say they come up with a number like I got a 45, I've got 45. Yeah, then I say, Well, well, therefore there's a stroke deficit of 55.

SPEAKER_03 14:48

Well, potentially, and if we we follow the analogy, potentially what you could say is there's a positive stroke deficit of 55. And what you might have done was plug that 55 gap by accepting negative strokes in this in the place of getting positive ones. So you might still get your your 100%, it's just that more than half of them was was actually coming from negative strokes rather than positives, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Okay, yeah. This is new to me, this idea of um a stroke being a negative or a positive. Yeah I've been I've taken the liberty to sort of create a little bit of language borrowed from Eric Byrne of an anti-stroke, yeah. Which, you know, and if if a stroke is a expression of libido, it's a caring, nurturing thing. Yeah, how are you? Um, or you look you look nice today. You know, this that that that's a caring, that's an expression of the libido. The anti-stroke would be an expression of mortido. So uh, you know, like the game of blemish, like, oh, is that a spot you've got on the end of your nose or something like that? And it it's um, and I got this term from Eric Byrne, I think it was from Eric Byrne. He talked of siphoning off the mortito, yeah, you know, passive aggression, like an example always resonates with students when I say that when you when you're scrolling through social media and you might deny somebody a like. Yes, absolutely, have very nice, they're never gonna know whether you saw the post or not. Yeah, so you deny it, and in a way, that's a little bit of spite, you know, that's a bit of mortito, or you know, you might um instead of uh loving their Facebook post, you might just like it.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

Oh, I know it's just a serious or I guess who also got the the more passive aggressive version is on WhatsApp or on on certain mobile phones, you can see when the blue ticks like it's been read. So if the person's seen the message, they definitely have seen it, and then there's been no response. So you know they've seen it, but they've chosen not to respond. That's yeah, that's the more passive aggressive version of that, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Yeah, yeah, right. So no response is a response in that way. In other words, it's the delivery of uh in in in the language I've been using is an anti-stroke. But what I wonder with the question of you know, how do you compensate for that missing 55%? That might be through expressing the mortido, through going around insulting everybody, putting everybody down, making people feel bad, but that would be based on the missing 55%.

SPEAKER_03 17:35

Yeah, I think you could certainly play with that as an idea. There's also um uh Claude Steiner, who um uh you know worked with Byrne in the early days of uh transactional analysis theory and um wrote a book which is quite well known in the TA world called Scripts People Live, sort of really looking at how you know people behave. He also came up with this theory called the stroke economy. And in in one sense, building on your idea, John, that that we trade in strokes and that when we're trading in strokes, it's not necessarily it's you know, they're not usually unconditional positive strokes. It's it's a bit like you know, if you unconditionally love someone, you know, you simply love them and you simply offer them the positive strokes because that feels right to you. When we move into conditional territory, there's a trade going on. And he had, I'm gonna read these out just so I don't forget them. He had five sort of there are five statements in the stroke economy, and those five statements are don't give strokes when you have them to give. So that's a bit like you know, not liking or or or you know, I I will admit, I shouldn't say this probably on a podcast, but sometimes I've seen a message come into my WhatsApp on the front of my screen and deliberately not opened WhatsApp so it doesn't look like I've read the message, even though I have, because I've seen half of it on the WhatsApp screen. So don't I know, I know, I'm giving all my trade secrets away. So don't give strokes when you have them to give. Don't ask for strokes when you need them, don't accept strokes if you want them, don't reject strokes if you don't want them, and don't give yourself strokes. So that's all it's almost like this sort of economy of the way that we trade in strokes that will certainly in the life positions usually keep somebody, whether that's us or other people, in a one-down place where somebody's not okay in this scenario. So I'm holding on to my strokes, or I'm not accepting them even if I want them in a way that keeps me in a in a negative position. It's like we reserve strokes and hold them up, and sometimes we'll trade in. Um, after the Second World War, there were often what they called stamp books where you would like collect coupons. And was it were they called the green shield?

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Green shield stamps. You used to get them. I remember my dad in the 70s, we'd stop what he'd get green shield stamps, and then you'd fill the book and then you could cash it in. For I remember I got a wigwam as a child.

SPEAKER_03 19:56

I got and there's in early writing there is talk about trading in your stamps, which you can do from a positive. If you've you know got a book full of positive stamps, you might trade them in by doing something really lovely for somebody else. But also sometimes you can collect your negative strokes if somebody's been unpleasant to you or has particularly done something, you know, nasty. It's like you collect all of those stamps, and then at some point you explode. There's some big payoff, or you get really angry with people. Like, you know, I know people where they seem really calm and they can seem to be able to take anything from everybody, but then everybody remembers the one or two times they have really blown their stack in front of someone where suddenly they've gone absolutely livid, gone absolutely ape with someone, because they've they've they've held on to all of these stamps and then they've chosen this moment to cash them in and just really express all of this sort of tension that's been held up in people. Again, I think there's probably a lot of drama.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

So you you you could collect the strokes and then cash them in for uh a homicide. Yeah, yes, yes, or you could collect the strokes, you could collect the uh as a uh uh I know this isn't the the thing, anti-strokes, yes, and cash them in for a suicide.

SPEAKER_03 21:10

Yeah, yes, those are sort of extreme at the end-of-the-line examples, but but yes, you know, again we'll go we'll come onto this later, but they are extreme examples of the payoff in a game that people might have been playing.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

I think one of the more farcical examples that comes to mind is Basil Faulty in the scene where he uh gives the car a damn good thrashing with the brand. Absolutely, absolutely it pays off in the most ludicrous way.

SPEAKER_03 21:36

Yes, absolutely, you know, and and in one sense that's such a hopeless way because you watch that you know Faulty Towers, most of his anger is is really to do in the relationship with his marriage, but he very rarely says anything actually to his wife. It comes out in his behavior and all other sorts of weird and wonderful ways, which are wonderful for a comedy drama, but not necessarily great for a healthy relationship, you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

Right. Well, it's that tension. Isn't it? It's the tension, it's the discrepancy between his desire to be acknowledged and be respected and be considered and how he really feels. Yeah, that creates the tension, and that's what creates all the sarcastic jibes and the you know.

SPEAKER_03 22:18

Yes, because in that relationship, he is so often invited in that in that relationship with the character of Sybil into a one-down position. She's constantly putting him down or making him feel, you know, like he can't do something or he's gonna mess it up or he's got something wrong. And he's constantly trying to find ways, in one sense, of getting positive strokes, but does it in such an inept, over-engineered, farcical way that all he ends up getting at the end is a shed load of negative strokes because once again he's ended up in the one-down position having done something completely ridiculous, you know?

SPEAKER_01 22:56

So how has he essentially married his mother?

SPEAKER_03 23:00

Well, I mean, I'd need to sort of meet his mother to find that out, but there's a potential. Well, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

There must be a relationship between Sybil and her position and his mother's. You see what I mean? Because he allows himself to be treated like that, he must get a payoff from it.

SPEAKER_03 23:14

Yes. So I think again, this is something we will probably talk a bit more about when we come to talk about script. But usually when we find ourselves in relationship with people, whether that's romantic relationships, you know, platonic friendships, work relationships, we meet people, we get close to people who can further our own life script. So, life script, just in brief for now, are um decisions that we make about ourselves and about what it means to be me in this world and what sort of person I am, you know, what sort of life position? Am I a one-up sort of person in terms of the life position? Is it I'm okay, you're okay, or is it I'm okay, you're not okay, or I'm not okay, you are, or nobody's okay. We make those decisions about what we think our life position is very early. We start making that decision before we're verbal, before we've really understood actually what life is and how it all works. And if that life script is never challenged, if it never becomes conscious, because we write it subconsciously, we make these decisions about ourselves. So, for example, if Basil Faulty were a real person, I do believe from documentaries that John Cleese did base it on somebody he met.

SPEAKER_05 24:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:25

That um, you know, whoever that person was, that potentially they grew up with an early life script which said, You're not quite good enough. Everything you do is probably gonna go to hell in a hand cart at some point. And so he is likely to meet people whose own life script will help to reinforce his. So likely to meet people potentially like Sybil, who seems to think that she's got it all sorted, she's okay, it's she's not the problem, it's everybody else's, and once again, she's got to come in and sort it out because Basil's got it all wrong. That so they have met and married because their life scripts complement each other. They might not compliment each other in a particularly positive or pleasant way, but it's familiar, and therefore there's a level of comfort. It's easy to be with this person because they affirm what I know to be true about myself, which is either I'm inferior or I'm superior, and therefore that's a match that will work. So, yes, there is likely to be something, whether it's to do with the mother or other people, but something in that person that he's married that reaffirms for him who he believes himself to be and how he has come to believe that life works for him.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

Right, and even in his choice of being a hotelier, that he's in a subservient position to his guests.

SPEAKER_03 25:46

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

So he can be putting in he's he's in, but he's frustrated with that because he's an absolute snob at the same time, yes, but also he's subservient to all this riff-raff. Yes, yes, they're the problem, yeah. Completely unless Lord and Lady so and so turn up, then he's altogether different, isn't he? So there's one episode where someone's a lord and and he doesn't know what to do with himself. No, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

Well, talking about uh the relationship between husband and wife that's got kind of an inappropriate mother relationship. A lot of my research has come from the I'm okay, you're okay book, which is a really fascinating read. But in that they talk there's a whole chapter on analysing the transaction. So I thought that might be good to talk about the specific transaction so people understand they can be behaving or or responding or giving a stimulus to someone from a certain ego state, and one of them is the is parent to child. And the description they put in the book is let's say a husband from his child is sick and is looking for care and attention, and the wife acting in parent is willing to mother him, and it's incredibly similar to the plot of Phantom Thread, the Paul Thomas Anderson film with Daniel Day-Lewis. It's it's uh set in 1950s London, and he's a quite obsessive and controlling fashion designer uh called uh Reynolds Woodcott, fantastic name that he has. He uh he starts a relationship with this uh younger foreign woman, this waitress, uh who becomes his kind of muse, and he's had a lot of these in the past, and things really start blissfully, but then eventually turns through when he begins to see her as a bit of a distraction. And this is you know potentially a bit of a spoiler for the film. So if you do want to watch it, maybe skip ahead 30 seconds. But um her kind of response to that is uh is to poison him with wild mushrooms that she forages to make him sick so that he stops for a while and just kind of recharges the batteries. And he having this, he's got this sort of very strong connection to his deceased mother. He always keeps kind of parts of his secrets hidden in the clothes and the fabric of the clothes he makes, and he he wants to be mothered and cared for, and kind of he's got this very strange relationship with his mother, and she kind of fulfills that function. So he plays this sort of game with her where he allows her to poison him so that he can be sick, and they kind of get this it's this kind of very complementary, yeah, like kind of life transaction, I guess. And and that would could essentially go on forever and ever until one of them isn't okay with that anymore. Yeah, but that's a great way, I guess, of seeing how even in a marriage, people can be operating from parent and child. It can it can go on and people can be okay with that.

SPEAKER_03 28:22

Yeah. So uh as a you know, we spoke about ego states last time. All three ego states, parent, adult, and child, are available to us at all times. They're not linked to our age in one sense, you know, they develop as we grow, but they would say, even from when we are little, we are developing our parent ego state as we're figuring out what it means to sort of you know be in charge around here. And we we can step into and use those ego states at any time. And when we are in communication, when we are offering a transaction, where we're offering a stimulus, we're we're starting a unit of communication. Outside of conscious awareness, unless you've just done a training course or you've been listening to a podcast about transactional analysis, most of the time, outside of conscious awareness, when we offer a stimulus, we are operating out of one of those three ego states. This is what the theory puts forward, and we are aiming at an ego state in the other person. So you know, in that example, he is operating out of his child in um ego state, aiming at the nurturing parent in this woman. It's are they married?

SPEAKER_02 29:40

So they they aren't to begin with, but then they do become married and things start to get better, but then they start to get worse. And this is kind of the solution to kind of have play this strange game.

SPEAKER_03 29:48

Yeah, so he's operating out of his child ego state, offering that invite to you know, initially his partner and then his wife to, you know, look after me and care for me. And a complementary transaction by definition is one where the ego state you were aiming at in the other person is the one that responds to you. So he was aiming at parent in her, and it was her parent that responded. So that's a complementary transaction. And Byrne had three laws of communication, and the first one relates to the complementary transaction, and again, you alluded to it in what you just said, Jordan, is that unless somebody changes that transactional pattern, that people can continue to operate, that complementary transaction, whether it's parent to child, parent to parent, adult to adult, whatever, can continue to operate in that way for years. You know, that communication, because complementary transactions are comfortable. We know the groove, we know how this works, I behave like this, you respond like that, I then respond like this, and this is how we communicate. I will I'll often say to people, you know, I have lived most of my life as an independent woman. You know, I look after myself, I care for myself, I do what I need to, you know, to do. I go back to my parents' house, which bear in mind is not actually the literal house I grew up in, but it is the place where my parents now reside. And I can just feel myself slipping, much to my sister's irritation, into a sort of the child ego state and just allowing my mum to run around after me. My mum would argue I don't let her help me enough as an adult, and she's probably got a point, going back to what I said before about me being relentlessly independent. And so when I go back home, I can just feel myself slip into that child groove where I suddenly seem unable to even make myself a cup of tea, or I suddenly seem unable to clean up the dining room table after myself. You know, these are patterns that were very present when I was growing up, when I was a young child. And so if I'm not mindful of it, which I am because of what I study, I could easily slip into ways which are not actually resourceful in the here and now. You know, I can help my mum, I can make a cup, I could make her a cup of tea. How revolutionary would that be? You know? So yeah, your point is absolutely right, is that when we're in a complementary pattern of transacting with people, it we can get into the way where he potentially is never making use of his adult or his parent ego state in healthy functional ways in his relationship with her, and she is never drawing on the other ego states in ways that actually might be useful and might invite that relationship into a much healthier dynamic, you know, where actually they can be in relationship to each other and both of them can be well.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

That's why they say if you think you're enlightened, go and spend a week with your family.

SPEAKER_06 32:41

Yeah, they'll soon put you out.

SPEAKER_01 32:46

Because then all the trigglers are there, aren't they? All those old complexes and the uh you know, the like you were saying, like the wanting to be helpless to be cared for, and all that kicks back in.

SPEAKER_03 32:57

Absolutely. And as I said last time, in terms of ego states, the parent and the child, if we step into them from, as I said before, that from the adult ego state, so we're making a conscious choice to integrate some of what's useful in those ego states, the playfulness of the child and its creativity, the uh you know, the nurturing of the parent that's providing care. They can be really useful things to do. But if you're only operating out of either one of those, those two ego states in their origins are archaic. They're not based on here and now reality. We're playing out behaviors that either we've been demonstrating for years, which sounds like him in this relationship, he has been sick, he has been cared for his whole life. So he's drawing on behaviors that have been with him since a kid, rather than drawing on functional, useful behaviors in terms of who he is as a grown-up in the here and now. And she's being invited to step in archaic behaviors around being a what it means to be a parent or a mother, which probably relate back to the uh maternal um role models that she was surrounded by as she was growing up. So neither of them are actually behaving in ways that are rooted in here and now reality. Both of them are drawing on behaviors which are based in archaic storytelling.

unknown 34:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

And is the goal, is this right though, is it? But it is if it's uh, you know, none of these ego states are right or wrong. They all they're they're just as they are, that they're they're just three ego states. But having said that, are we in terms of our own you know psychological development and our own, you know, cut coming to maturity and then hopefully to self-actualization and uh eventually self-realization?

SPEAKER_04 34:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:38

So is it the point of the work? Is it to become more in the adult ego state?

SPEAKER_03 34:44

Yes. So a lot of people in the um TA world these days would talk about the integrating adult. That like this rather than it being a fixed state, the adult ego state is like this sort of pulsating orb that's constantly drawing in and integrating what's useful from the parent and the child ego states in response to what's happening in the here and now. So it might be that you know, a more healthy way of this guy behaving is acknowledging from his adult ego state that there is a part of him that needs care. And it might be, from the sound of it, part of him that needs a whole lot of therapy if he needs to sort of, you know, get over the relationship with his mum. But still, there's something in the here and now that acknowledges that I have a need for care, but also acknowledges that sometimes the way I demonstrate that need is not appropriate. So, how do I find in the here and now appropriate ways of expressing the need that I want, that I would like some care, but uh but that's not about me asking this young woman to behave like my mother? So, so I would say that's the aim is that is to operate primarily out of the adult ego state, not to the exclusion totally of the parent and the child, but just drawing in the behaviors and the role models and the experiences that I have from my past that are useful to me in the here and now, rather than sort of unconsciously replaying behaviors or behaving like role models from the past, which actually don't serve me in the here and now. You know, you know, I've I've not seen the whole of that film, I've seen bits of it. And he's there's something about him as that character is there's a lot of strength and a lot of capability. And you think, God, if you weren't playing this seemingly ridiculous game, imagine what you could achieve in the world if you were putting some of that energy you put into being sick, into actually building effective relationships with the people around you. So I'd say that's the aim is to make sure that you are operating out of that, I would say, integrating adult that's drawing on what's useful from the history and that's useful to me in the now, but lets go of stuff and acknowledges there's some we talk about, you know, when you offer a transaction, that stimulus um could be a stimulus into healthy communication, or it could be a hook into old archaic ways of behaving which are not terribly useful to me. And I think it's about using our adult ego state to say, is this an invite I want to accept? Or is this a hook into something that actually I want I want to start to do differently? I want to start to communicate with this person in a different way. And just to say, one of the ways that you do that, if you realize it's not what you want to do, is to do what we call a crossed transaction. And a crossed transaction is when the ego state that you are aiming at is not the one that responds. So if you know you've got somebody who's going child to parent, go, oh, look after me, potentially somebody might come back from the adult rather than the parent and say, you know, what support do you feel you need? Or what you know, how might you help yourself? It's uh it's asking for information in the here and the now about what's going on here. What is it that means you feel like you need me to help you? It's mining for information rather than immediately slipping into carer mode.

SPEAKER_01 37:55

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've noticed there's there's uh my my daughter just reached 18. So recently I've been kind of mindful that my job is to help her to be independent. So she'll come to me and she'll say, Dad, can you do this? Or she'll do something helpless. And she'll say, Oh, I've got a problem. I'll go, uh yeah, you've got a problem there. Yeah. So I rather than respond with with the um with the parental ego state, it's just I just adult to adult, say, yeah, yeah, you've got a problem. You you need what are you gonna do to solve it?

SPEAKER_03 38:28

What you do about that? What are your ideas? Absolutely. And that's encouraging her to realise she has the capacity to parent herself, actually. You know, we can use our own parent ego state in relation to ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

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SPEAKER_01 40:04

So, Sarah, I was wondering about um intimacy model. I often find that where you're most intimate and the most free is when you're having like a child-to-child transaction with somebody. When you meet that level with somebody, but both you know behaving like children, yeah. It is first of all, it's the most fun and it's the most intimate. Is that true? Or is is an adult-to-adult transaction? What's the difference between an adult to adult and a child to child?

SPEAKER_03 40:34

Well, essentially, you know, child to child is will you come play with me? Yes, I'll come play with you. Which, you know, as children can be do you want to come and play with me in the home corner? Let's do dress up, let's draw pictures together. But as grown-ups, it's more into you know, will you be intimate with me? You know, I fancy you, do you fancy me? I love you, do you love me? Um, you know, I I talk in a professional context with clients that building rapport with somebody, getting to know them is a child-to-child exchange of complimentary transactions. If we think about particularly the free child, we said, you know, in the last session that free child is about me being who I fundamentally am, you know, being my free natural self. And therefore, when we're building relationships, if we want to build relationships which are functional and healthy, then you want to get to know that free child. You want to know who is fundamentally the person that you potentially, if it's a romantic relationship, you might end up sharing your life with. You want to get to know who they they really are. So, I mean, with the way I look at it, I would say yes, it's a child-to-child activity, but perhaps with some adults knowing that, you know, this is not just about being playful, this is actually there's something serious for me. And I really want to understand who this person is and find out who they are. And I want to know that I am safe enough to be vulnerable. You know, to be really healthily intimate with someone, that requires a degree of vulnerability. And to feel safe enough with this person that I can be my true self and that that won't be used against me, that it won't come onto what we will talk about um soon. It won't get turned into a game where suddenly I, you know, reveal my innermost, darkest secrets, and somebody goes, Oh, well, I knew you, I knew you were worthless, or something like that. But I think the child-to-child interactions can usually be pretty good at sensing, you know, if somebody's not quite being their true selves with them. And that there is probably an element of the adult knowing in that, the adult awareness of is what I'm picking up on here, does that feel genuine in the here and the now, or is there something, potentially something else going on here that I need to explore?

SPEAKER_02 42:44

Yeah. Right. And also the the I guess they're talking about the importance of the adult in the Amoke Yuroke book. They they give a few examples of child to child, say an old couple walking along the beach is a child to child, but it also took their adult to make the arrangements for that experience. Yes. On the same way that you can have a you know, a couple on a roller coaster holding on tight and enjoying the exhilarating ride, that's child to child, but they also needed the adult to pay for the theme park tickets and go in and kind of take themselves to that. And you're saying that a child-to-child relationship can't actually last long without the adult being present, it's kind of an essential part of it. I think talking about the the whole kind of like sexual experience, like child to child is is that pure kind of pleasure, but then the the best kind of sex is the one that is the adult is present as well, in which they're saying, yeah, I'm I'm here to you know make sure that you're pleasurable, not just self-satisfied.

SPEAKER_03 43:38

Yes. And if this doesn't sort of screw with people's mindsets too much, you could also argue that potentially there's an element of parent involved in it. If this doesn't sound too ick, um, in the sense that actually sexual intimacy can be an act of showing care to somebody else that you want to meet their need, that there's an element of nurture. In that, which might come through from that parent ego state about what is it that you need from me in order to be able to get the most out of this? So, you know, you could potentially make that argument as as well, though from an image point of view, many people might not want to go there at all. But you know, so I think there are there are it, you know, for me, again, it comes back to the integrating adults that the ego states model is helping us to think what behaviors do I need to draw in in order for this to be a healthy interaction, in order for this to meet my need and to meet their need, to ensure that everybody's getting what they want. What do I need in order to be able to voice what it is that I want? And what and what is it that the other person needs in order to be, you know, satisfied by this relationship and by this communication that we're having, whether that's a sexual relationship or a professional relationship or a familial relationship.

unknown 44:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:51

And if but if someone was like stuck in their parental ego state, they're stuck in that, and all their reactions are coming from unactions are coming from the parental ego state. And then you go into a child eco state and you relate to their child, often what I found it kind of knocks them out of that parental ego state. It reminds them of that. I mean, it can piss them off as well. But I suppose it's so abrasive, or it can they can remember, you know, they can lighten up.

SPEAKER_03 45:20

So what you're describing there, John, is if you've got somebody who's maybe used to communicating from parents, and let's say maybe they're used to communicating from their parent to the child of other people. So they're the person in charge, they're doing all the sensible grown-up stuff, and somebody then offers an invite to their child, you're crossing the transaction. You're inviting a change in the relationship. And Byrne's second law of communication, which related to cross-transaction, is when you cross the transaction, communication cannot effectively continue until somebody shifts to get back into a complementary pattern of transactions. So you so cross-transactions cannot continue for very long. And and one of the things I I think is helpful about cross-transactions is you feel them. I mean, if you were to do that to somebody who only ever offers from parent, it's almost like they would physically feel it. It's like almost a sort of metaphorically stumbling in the communication because they're so used to, you know, I put this foot forward and then you respond like that. So I now put this foot forward. And if you've just effectively taken their feet out from underneath them because you've not responded the way that you were meant to, it can be shocking. Sometimes what might happen is what you might find in response to you doing that, John, immediately what happens is they up the parental ante. So what they they go even more strongly into their parent ego state because what they're effectively saying is no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not how this works. I behave like that. Yes, precisely, yes, precisely. That's probably what it would say in the literal script. You know, get a group, don't be ridiculous. You know, this is how it works. But if you were to continue to offer that invitation, in extremis, we would say one of two things happen. Either they'll just stop talking to you because you're not communicating with them the way that they like, or what they might do, what you were talking about, is eventually accept the invitation and join you in that child-to-child state. What I would say would probably aid the transition is if you were to step into perhaps adult with them for a moment and say, look, I know this is not how we usually communicate, but for whatever reason, I feel it would be helpful if we started to communicate with each other differently. I don't, I feel like you you're always being the responsible one. And I don't think that actually serves you. I don't think it serves our relationship. And I want to free you of some of that responsibility. So come play with me, you know. So that's the potential of how we might you choose to use a cross-transaction is to invite somebody into a different way of being with us and to disrupt that pattern of transaction. And once it's when I'm back at my parents, I have to cross my own transaction where I can feel myself slipping into the child and inviting my mother to look after me, is to step into my own adult and say, come on, you know, yes, mum can make me a cup of tea, but I can also help with tidying up. Let's get this back into a you know healthier way of working together. But the important thing to remember is we want to be in complementary transactions with each other because that is comfortable and familiar. And and if the transaction is broken, then we will look to try and replicate complementary transactions somehow. Either we'll change the way we've been transacting to stay in relationship with you, John, if you've offered me something different, or I'll start ignoring you and go off and find somebody else who will transact with me in the way that I like.

SPEAKER_01 48:43

Yeah, I was in I was in a situation where um having dinner with with with some people and and they were talking about uh Christianity and Islam, you know, heavy sort of dinner conversation, and and there's one one person in a parental ego state said, Well, whatever it says in the Quran, I believe. Which seemed a little bit ridiculous to me, but but uh and I thought I didn't I didn't like where this conversation was going, and it was like not really the spirit of the evening. So I jumped in with, okay, yeah, but if Mohammed and Jesus had an arm wrestling competition, who do you think would win? And the others, some of the others got into the child and started playing the game. Oh, well, I reckon Mohammed would win, or I reckon you know Jesus would win, or you know, whatever, and they started playing along with the game. But the the person, the main player in the parental ego state, just looked very disorientated and just shook their head and just withdrew. But it did change the atmosphere, yes, and then I did manage to get the child out of her later. Do you see what I mean? To get her to shift from the parental back into a child eventually.

SPEAKER_03 49:53

She accepted the offer, yes.

SPEAKER_01 49:58

Yeah, yeah. We started reminiscing about the 70s, so it went into child-to-child thing, and there we found a happy, compatible transaction.

SPEAKER_03 50:07

Absolutely, absolutely, and uh and and something that you could where you could communicate in a complimentary way, yeah. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 50:13

Yeah. Well, just to cover the other uh complementary transactions before we move on to the more kind of uh complicated stuff, uh the adult to parent we've not talked about. An example I had was it's like a man who wants to lose some weight. So he has a lot of idle data about you know, if he cuts out all the sweet treats that he indulges in, then that'll be beneficial for his health. So he you but he uses his wife's parent state to hold him accountable. So he'll he'll ask her to hide the treats from him or you know, tell him off if he tries to snack, etc. And obviously that that can be a quite help helpful and beneficial, it's probably a more healthier um way to use the parent than it is parent and child to to cover the adult to adult as well, if if people haven't quite got the hang of it. The whole kind of point of adult is it's very fact-based, isn't it? That kind of these kind of transactions just stick with the facts. They don't, there's nothing judgmental or they're overly emotional in response. It's there's neither parent or child getting in the way of that.

SPEAKER_03 51:10

Um one of the um, I can't remember if I mentioned this uh last week, but there's a sort of uh development on from the ego states model called functional fluency, um, which is essentially talking about the similar thing, but it doesn't use the terminology of parent, adult, and child. And the adult ego state, um, sort of in that version is referred to as the accounting mode. So what you are doing is you are accounting for what is happening in the here and the now. And that might be being aware of what's going on for me internally. You know, am I aware at the moment that there's perhaps a bit of a hook for me to behave in a way that's not functional, that somebody said something that that's perhaps irritated me or angered me or made me feel uncertain. Also, my ability to account for how do others seem to be reacting in this moment? How is this information landing with other people? So, in the example that John was just talking about, his awareness in the moment that A, the conversation was moving in a direction that he wasn't entirely comfortable with, but also when he'd made his offer to move it into a more child place, he was aware of the impact on the person who was still very much caught in that parent ego state and started to problem solve, which again is another adult accounting behavior around and what might I do about that? How might I actually begin to draw her back into the conversation and in relationship with us? So it's not just about data-oriented, it's about problem solving, about awareness of what's going on, a rational response to what's going on. And in fact, response is a word that we tend to very deliberately use about the adult ego state or accounting. That enables us to respond to what is happening in the here and now rather than react, rather than it being a knee-jerk reaction where we've got hooked into a way of behaving, you know, subconsciously, where suddenly I'm ragingly angry and I don't quite know how I got here. I just know I'm pissed off. You know, that sometimes our emotions can seem to catch us out. You're not connected with your adult ego state if you find yourself in that position. We often say sometimes, therefore, the adult ego state can be the hardest one to spot because a lot of it is going on internally. We talk about using our head, our heart, and our gut to sense what's going on here. But it also can, in an adult-to-adult transaction, become overt. So you might say, Look, I'm uh, you know, let's say imagine it's a team meeting and you know, an issue has just arisen. Somebody might say, Look, I'm I'm not entirely sure how we manage this situation. I'm mindful that we've got to consider the impact on this client. I'm also mindful that we've got a couple of people who are going off on holiday next week. Um, so we're going to be down on resources in terms of dealing with this. And I was wondering whether we need to, you know, approach it in this way or that way, but what do others think? And so it's drawing other people in to get a sense of from a rational, grounded point of view, what is going on here? What do I think is going on here? What do others think is going on here? And then we work together to figure out a plan of action.

SPEAKER_02 54:13

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 54:14

Very rooted in the here and now.

SPEAKER_02 54:15

Yeah. For the for the adult to adult, I guess a few good examples are like person A says, Can you pass the salt? Person B says, There you, there you go. Or person A says, That's a lovely looking dress, B says, thank you very much. We've talked about the the cross transactions where if somebody says, Can you pass the salt? It could be like, Oh no, none, none for you, Fatty, that kind of thing there. Or that that's a lovely looking dress. And I guess someone who's in a not okay position can often read into a comment like that and say, like, oh well, I got it from a charity shop, but not everyone can afford fancy clothes like you. You know, that's the that's the cross transaction. What the other transaction that we're going to get to is the ulterior transaction. That's going to be really helpful in understanding the game section. Could you talk about ulterior transactions?

SPEAKER_03 55:00

Yes. So ulterior transactions, they reveal Burns' third law of communication, which is based on the fact that when we communicate, we communicate on two levels. Okay. So those two levels are there is the social level message, so the literal meaning of the words that we're using. So you might ask me how I am, and I say fine in response. So that's literally saying I'm fine. But at the same time, there's also a psychological level message, which is what I really mean. So if you ask me uh um how I am, and I say, Yeah, I'm fine. Now, you know, you guys can see my you know body language, but you know, I'm using quite a positive tone of voice, it's quite upbeat. How I really am seems to match, hopefully, if all of my acting skills have not left me, you know, how I what I'm actually saying. It's matching the words that I use. But if you ask me how I am, and I go, yeah, yeah, I'm fine, the word I've used is exactly the same. But you may, again, depending on the quality of my acting skills, get a slightly different sense of how fine I actually am. And Burns' third law of communication is that where there is a mismatch between the social level meaning, the literal meaning of the words, and that psychological level message, the behavioral response of the receiver is always to that psychological level message. We respond to that psychological stimulus that is saying to us, there is something else going on here. We might not know what it is, but we smell the rat. We know there's something going on underneath the surface. This is why it's quite topical at the moment. Um, you know, we get irate with politicians when they're on the TV, because we know they're not answering the flaming question. We may not know what the actual answer is, but we know they're fudging it. And so we get cross, you know, the literal meaning of what they're saying might be fine, but we get the sense there is something else going on underneath the surface. And ulterior transactions are what drive what we talk about in the transaction analysis world as the games that we end up playing. Psychological games that we play often, I mean 99% of the time outside of conscious awareness, which are about getting strokes, getting our needs met, but without actually volunteering our vulnerability. There is something in this relationship or in this situation, which means I do not feel comfortable quite being myself, but I still want my need to be met. So I'm gonna try and see if I can get it met in this relationship, but without actually voicing what is truly going on for me. And that's what sort of famously in the TA world is referred to as the games people play, which is the title of a book that Byrne wrote in 1964, which is really what made him famous, because it was for years it was the top of bestseller lists.

SPEAKER_01 58:10

Right. And so, what's the definition of a game?

SPEAKER_03 58:14

So there's many different factors that define a game. The first thing about a game is it's repetitious. That you know, it doesn't happen just once. It's if you like, it is a repeated pattern of ulterior transactions that we get into the habit of exchanging with maybe an individual, or it might be that we get into a habit of exchanging in sort of similar situations. So we we might play this game with several people, we might start playing this game in the way that you know we relate to our siblings, and then we also replay it in the way that we relate to supervisors. Uh, you know, when we first go into the work environment, we might replicate it in the way you know we play it in marriages and relationships and such. So partly it is it's it's about it's repeated, they are driven, as I've said, by ulterior transactions. So there is always something that is not being said, something that's being concealed, something that maybe is sort of slightly dishonest and manipulative about the about what's going on here. And also they end up in what we would call a payoff, which is where the sort of final act of the game serves our script. It serves to prove what we believe to be true about ourselves, about life, about you know, the things that always happen to me. There's something about the game that reinforces that belief for me, either about myself or about others. And that's why it's repetitious, because you know, we want repeatedly to, in one sense, to be proved right. Whether that means that, you know, we're proving right that actually I've got it all right all right and I'm sorted, I'm in that one-up position that uh I'm okay, you're not okay life position. Or it might be the opposite. It might be that actually my belief is that I'm not okay, and so I get involved in games that reinforce that message to me.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:07

It's also important to note as well that these aren't obviously the term game sounds fun, but these aren't enjoyable games to play either. These are the more often than not, they're pretty psychologically hurtful, I guess, or that because of that ulterior nature, there is always a destructive quality to these games, isn't it? They're not fun, fun games to play.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:25

They're always unhealthy. Some people might enjoy them more than others, depending on the life position that they've got. You know, if you're if you're in an I'm okay, you're not, it might seemingly be a more enjoyable experience for them. But yes, absolutely, they're it's a psychological game. You know, again, I think it's important to remember 99% of the time, unless you've just listened to this podcast, this is happening outside of your conscious awareness. But it's one of the things that can be useful to explore. You know, we all, I mean, certainly I know in my life I've had those moments where you think, why does this always happen to me? Why do I always find myself in this situation? And one thing that I suppose started to move me more towards sort of, you know, studying, I mean, having some counseling and some therapy, but also studying these sorts of things like transactional analysis is I had to admit at some point the common denominator in these situations was me. I was the, you know, can continually the protagonist in this scenario. So, what was it that was going on? I seemed to repeatedly find myself in situations where things weren't working. And so understanding um games and the roles that we can end up playing, you know, can be a very helpful way to begin to figure out actually how to stop playing the game. And people may well have heard of and come across, perhaps on training courses that they've done, something called the drama triangle. Byrne, when he wrote games people played, started sort of analysing typical games that people might get into, you know, whether that's ways in which we might play gays when we're socializing with people, um ways that we might play games typically in a marriage, sort of stereotypical situations we might find ourselves in. And uh a chap called Stephen Cartman in the late 60s, who was who worked with Byrne, analyzed these games by sort of almost like comparing them to fairy tales. And the fact that if you look in a fairy tale, there's some consistent roles that people occupy, which he then mapped onto all of these games that Byrne had identified. And he identified three key roles that turn up in most fairy tales and also turn up in these games people play. And these roles are the role of, so this is not us being these things, but we step into the role of in a game, persecutor, which means that we have an attitude that I know better than everybody else, I'll do it, or I'll make you do it. It's an attitude that discounts the competency and capability of others and assumes more responsibility for the situation than is appropriate. The other uh next role is called the rescuer, who rather than saying, right, I'll make you do it, goes, don't worry, I'll do it for you. And again, also assumes that they're more competent than the other people and also assumes more responsibility for the situation than is necessary, but takes more responsibility on themselves than they should do, and sort of, you know, literally, I mean, well, hopefully any of them metaphorically, you know, puts their underpants on over their trousers and a little red cape off the back and flies in to sort the situation out without actually asking anybody if they wanted their help in the first place. And then the third position on the drama triangle, which is drawn inverted, so the top edge of the drama triangle is pointing towards the bottom like the head of an arrow. The bottom position is the victim role. And this person discounts themselves and their own competency. So their sort of tagline is I'm hopeless, I'm helpless, I can't do it. And if you can, we can map that into the life positions that you know, somebody's in that victim position, they've stepped into an I'm not okay place. The persecutor and the rescuer are usually in the I'm okay, you're not position, because that means that they can then play games with the other people on the on the drama triangle from the comfort of that life position. So, yeah, so the so the victim position discounts themselves, discounts their capability, and is looking for other people to come and sort it out. And often what happens with a psychological game is that it is kicked off by somebody either stepping into that persecutor role or the victim role. So somebody either starts going, Oh, I can't do it, it's terrible. I'm never why does this always happen to me? And what they are doing in the way they are transacting, usually what the if we map this to ego states as well, there's usually they're operating from the negative of the child ego state, probably the negatives of the adapted child. I can't do this, I can't do this. They're sending a very strong invite to somebody's parent. And to the negatives of that parent to either step into the negatives of the controlling parent and persecute them, go, don't you ridiculous, get a grip. This is what you need to do. Or to step into the negatives of the nurturing parent and provide inappropriate care, going, oh, don't worry, darling, leave it with me. I know you're stressed. I'll sort it out for you. And people can transact like that around that drama triangle for you know ages and ages and ages. But using that drama triangle map can be quite useful to help to understand what's the role I'm playing in this relationship at the moment. And then perhaps in a moment we can think about how you might get off the drama triangle.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:26

So the game is initiated when somebody takes the position of being either a victim or a persecutor.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:34

Yes. It tends not to be initiated by somebody who is likely to step into the rescuer role, because by the very nature of the rescuer, there needs to be somebody to be rescued first before they enter the game. So, yes, it's usually kicked off by somebody stepping into that persecutor role or that victim role. And I I know previously we've had chats about the series baby reindeer. You know, if you think About the in the opening interaction at the very beginning of that series, where the character of Martha walks into the pub and there's something about her that seems lonely and friendless. And, you know, maybe something about her to be pitied. What that seems to hook in the character of Donnie initially is that rescuer role where he keeps offering her drinks for free, and which means that she keeps coming back in. And because he continues to feel bad for her, he keeps offering her free drinks. And suddenly he finds in this relationship, actually, she can switch on him. And this is another characteristic of a game, is partway through the game, there is a sudden switch of roles where people move around the drama triangle. And certainly, in in you know, what happens repeatedly in that series is Martha switches from victim to persecutor. If Donnie suddenly starts to do something that she doesn't like, she I mean, she doesn't just get cross. I mean, she's raging in in a lot of those scenes, which then means he flips into the victim position. Or there are other times in that story where you know he's been victim, but then he fights back, slips into persecutor. Sometimes they're fighting each other from that persecutor position. Sometimes when he goes persecutor, she goes victim. So, you know, we there can be these slightly confusing moves around the drama triangle where people switch roles, but in in each time the game is played, that when that switch of roles happens, usually what it does is it breaks the communication down in that moment, in that interaction in the game. And that's when people get the payoff that they were looking for in their script, that suddenly things change. And this is where you know some of the game titles, like, you know, I was only trying to help you, you know. Um that that's when people get their the the script belief is sort of stroked, if you like, is reaffirmed. And you know, I can leave feeling like yes, I'm okay and everybody else is rubbish, or I can leave feeling God, yes, aren't I a terrible person because nobody can ever help me? It's in that moment of the switch that the script belief is reinforced.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:06

Yeah, she plays rescuer as well. Yeah. When his his comedy act is dying, and she turns up when she interacts, she rescues him from his dying comedy act. And also when they go out and there's a scene in a cafe, they're having seen in a cafe, and she says, Somebody hurt you, didn't they? And who was it? And it's like now I'm gonna, I'm she's taking on the role of I'm gonna rescue you.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:32

And I also think there's elements of that in I remember that in interaction because I also thought actually there was something in that just a moment, I think there are many of these moments in that series, of authenticity, uh, where I felt to me like actually she was really seeing and responding to a vulnerability in him. And the the positive version of the drama triangle, which was uh developed in the in the 1990s by a transactional analyst called um AC Choi, says that rather than stepping into the role of persecutor, what we can do instead, and this is slightly different sort of language, but it um the language of AC Choi's model often gets changed to keep the P, the R and the V the same, because certainly for the likes of me, it makes it easier to remember. But so rather than stepping into the role of persecutor, what we do is we step into our potency and that we respond in terms of what we see is going on in the situation, and rather saying this is what you're gonna do, we say, This is how I see it. This is what I think needs to happen. It's not about forcing people to do what we want, but acknowledging what we think needs to happen. Rather than stepping into the rescuer role, what we what we do is we are responsive to the other person. So we rather than saying to you, leave it with me, I'll sort it, say, look, I can see there's a need there. What do you need me to do? What is it that you want from me? Um, this is what I feel able to do. So they don't take on inappropriate amounts of responsibility. And then rather than stepping into the role of the victim, what we do is we volunteer our vulnerability. Rather than playing games to master the vulnerability, we call it ourselves and we use our vulnerability as a strength and say, I'm uncertain, I don't know what to do here. Um, you know, I'm feeling scared or anxious or nervous. But we don't say that from a aren't I a terrible person because I don't know what to do. It's simply an honest reflection of what I am feeling. It's a sort of an adult accounting acknowledgement. And there was part of me thought that in that interaction, that there's it felt to me like Martha was responsive to something that she could see of Donnie's vulnerability in that moment. That she, in one sense, it's a very brief moment where she sort of cuts through the crap and just acknowledges something happened to you, probably because not that it's explored, but dear lord, something must have happened to her in her own history that leads her to be behaving the way that she does. You know, games can increase in volume and intensity. And certainly some of the games that she invites him into are incredibly intense. But it just felt to me like that was a real moment of authenticity when she really witnessed his vulnerability and simply responded to it. She didn't rush to say, oh, oh, there, let me make it better, which would be the rescue. It was just a responsiveness of somebody hurt you, um, which I think was a really striking moment in the drama.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:22

Yeah. Well, that was an adult transaction, was it? Or is that uh Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:26

So the winner's triangle, you're operating off adult. You might be integrating some of the healthy stuff from parent and child, but absolutely, if you're operating on the on the winner's triangle, you are responding to the here and the now, something that you have become aware of in the moment rather than just sort of playing out archaic patterns of behavior.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:43

Yeah, in that scene, there's a wonderful in that when she first comes in at the beginning, you suspect that she's actually she's suffering because of you know, the person she's been stalking, something's gone wrong there, and it's like that game has come to an end. Yes, and she's on the prowl in the new. Where she suddenly projects the whole game onto him. She's like, ah, I found someone new to play the game. Yeah, and it's a really good clear shot, you know, in in the drama that the the director's directed it really well. You see her have the thought and project her unfinished thinking onto him. But I find what's so fascinating about the thing is his part in all of it. Yeah, it's what he wanted. Yes, he wanted this, he you know, to finally somebody acknowledge and gives him the recognition that he's always wanted.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:53

Yes, yeah, we play games with people who will help us to further our own script. So there is something that both of them get out of that interaction. And and the other thing about that moment where she walks in and clocks it, and you know, I say games are repetitious. They can, you know, if this is happening outside of our unconscious awareness, we can play these games over and over again for years and years, either with the same person or with different people. And what the sort of final scene of that series, I mean, had my jaw on the floor, where in one sense that opening scene replicates itself, but Donnie's now in the Martha role. And it's sort of he's the one who sat the other side of the pub in need, and somebody offers him a drink for free. And it there's part of you thinking, whoa, he's switched positions, but we're playing this game again. We're going back round this merry-go-round. And it and it is the stuff of drama, it's the stuff, you know, that how we try and get our needs met when we're not able to be sort of really open and honest with people about what's really going on.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:54

Yeah, it's a brilliant ending because we don't know whether he's going to whether he's going to play awareness to play or not. Is he going to start the whole cycle, but now he's going to become the victim and end up stalking the guy in the bar or whatever? You know, he's learnt a whole set of transactions from Martha. He's learnt how to play the game, essentially, hasn't he?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:14

Absolutely, absolutely. And you're absolutely right. There is that. There was part we thought, no, no, no, don't end it here. I need to know that he doesn't do that. That there's not more of this that's going to go on. But this is the thing that, you know, we learn patterns of behavior from people, we absorb those patterns of behavior when we're very young and we're growing up. And then we can keep playing them with different people throughout our lives until such time as we might become conscious of the fact, do you know what, this isn't serving me, and through whatever means begin to think about well, how do I get off the drama triangle? How do I actually learn to, you know? I mean, there's so many dramas about, you know, I always choose the wrong person to go on dates with, and I always choose people who, you know, don't treat me well. Well, you know, how do you find your way onto the winner's triangle? Which so much of it comes back to how comfortable can you be with voicing your own vulnerability?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:05

Right. There's a wonderful bit at the end of the games people play where he says, um, Eric Burns says that if you've read my book and you've come to the conclusion that I'm saying to the most part, the most people, life can be reduced to playing games, you know, meaning um using ulterior motives, ulterior transactions, in order to gain certain payoffs, in order to pass the time between the cradle and the grave. He said, You've understood my book.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:41

In other words, that is that is what he said.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:44

How we pass time, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:46

Yeah, which is you know, which is quite depressing, you know, it's the decry, you know, that looks at existential problem of of life and and the human race. However, I think it is important to note that he does then go on to say, however, there are three things which go beyond playing of games.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:05

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:06

Uh, could you talk about what those three things are?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:08

Absolutely. Ben talked about the fact that the ultimate aim of transactional analysis. I mean, the aim of transactional analysis is in essence to understand that we do play games, to see that we play games, and then find ways to be able to connect with others more authentically. And he talks specifically about the fact that the ultimate aim of transactional analysis is autonomy. So that rather than getting hooked unconsciously into reacting to situations where we play these psychological games, where there's some element usually of manipulation going on, where we're masking vulnerability rather than being honest. What he wanted is for us to be able to live autonomously and that there are three key qualities that lead to us being autonomous. And the first of those qualities is awareness, that we develop the awareness to understand our own behaviors and to begin to be able to see sometimes how I might react to situations in ways that aren't healthy and don't help me and don't help other people either. So it's partly autonomy is about awareness. He also said that autonomy is also about spontaneity. And what we mean by that is being able to make healthy, spontaneous choices in the moment, that rather than reacting to a situation and getting hooked into a game, I have the spontaneity, the capacity to choose a response in the moment that serves me and serves other people. And then the final key quality for autonomy or for living an autonomous life is intimacy. That if I have the awareness to understand myself and that enables me then to make healthy, spontaneous choices in the moment, is that means that I will experience more intimacy in my life, which means I will experience relationships of greater health where I can be vulnerable with people. And so I don't need to play the games anymore. So really that is what Byrne is inviting us to do is to become more aware so that we can be more spontaneous and experience greater intimacy and therefore become an autonomous person who is able to make healthy choices in the moment rather than getting hooked into the games.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:31

Yeah, the games are all there to compensate for a lack of genuine intimacy.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:36

Absolutely. It's you're into you know the nirvana of I'm okay, you're okay. You know, I can be with you and be well with all my vulnerabilities, and that they can be one of my greatest strengths and one of the most important and potent things about me. They're not things to be hidden away, they're a valuable part of who I am, as well as all of the strengths that I come with. So absolutely, there's you know, there are there's hope, folks. There is a route out of the games, and it's the root via autonomy, by via um awareness, spontaneity, and intimacy.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:06

And they kind of come in that order as well, don't they? You have to start with the awareness before you can have the freedom. Yes, you know, it's the awareness to be able to make choices consciously rather than just to be a slave to your own subconscious patterns of thinking. Yes, and then that that leads to a greater intimacy.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:25

Yes, absolutely. It's that spon it's you know, the spontaneity, I think, is key. It's that ability to catch the hooks. Well, the awareness, I suppose, is also partly about catching the hooks and then thinking, right, I'm going to make a different choice because I want to, not because I feel I've got to, but because this is a choice I am making to live a healthier life, to live a more fulfilling life and to experience relationships, whether that's with myself or with others that actually serve me in a healthy way and also serve the community. I mean, there's um these days in the TA world, we don't just talk about autonomy, we also talk about homonomy. So um H-O-M-O-O-N-Y, rather than just autonomy. And that's about being mindful of the fact actually autonomy, if it's got a shadow side, is it could potentially lead to, well, uh, my focus is me and my own health and what I want. Honomymy is about saying, let's remember that there's a wider community in a world out there. So it's not just about how do I serve myself, but also how do I serve people uh around me. There's the African phrase of Ubuntu, I am because you are. That's what homonomy is all about. So it's not just about me serving my own purposes, but me being the best, most autonomous version of myself so I can be there to serve the wider community um around me.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:44

And to and to be able to connect.

SPEAKER_07 1:20:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:47

And and you know, you could say, well, could you do you agree with this that much of you know mental illness and sickness is people's inability to connect properly?

SPEAKER_03 1:20:58

Well, I certainly think that that can feed into people becoming unwell or feeling unwell. I was listening actually to a um a transactional analyst on the TA podcast where I'm part of the host team. Um it's not an interview I did, but I listened to the episode. He's talking about the impact of social media on the way that we relate to each other and how we build connection, because there is the risk. I mean, there's a lot of wonderful things that come through social media in the way that can enable connection, but also it runs the risk of people only connecting through social media, which means that they don't have, you know, the physical intimacy and touch of relationships with human beings. And therefore, that can lead to a lack of health because we're not connecting authentically, autonomously with each other and connecting with a phone. But he made the point, you know, what's the what's the first thing that you touch when you wake up in the morning? You know, how for how many people is it the fact you pick up your phone and check what time it is or check what phones you've got? You know, what's the last thing you, you know, that you put down before you switch light off at the end of the day? Your phone, you know, that we're so connected now into these tiny little mechanical objects giving off God knows what heat and blue light and all this kind of stuff that actually gets in the way of the natural human-to-human contact and uh you know development of relationship that can come with with true intimacy.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:22

Yeah. Well, and it there's somewhere in there. Is it true that that that when you have the babies in the orphanage that don't get nurturing and caring, the fluids in their spine begin to dry up?

SPEAKER_03 1:22:34

There's there, I cannot remember uh uh immediately the name of of the illness, but it it's literally that the the spine disintegrates. And that comes back to where we started on this episode about the one of the basic hungers is stimulation, and part of that is physical stimulation of being physically held and touched. It helps our nervous system to develop. And so, yes, those children who grew up in Romanian orphanages who were, to be fair, having some of their basic needs met, they were changed, they were given food, they had a roof over their head at night, but they had little stimulation other than that, and they had nobody just simply holding them for the pleasure of that physical contact, their spines disintegrated.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:16

There's a rocking right as well. They do a kind of uh they self-soothe in that way, don't they? Because there was an orphanage where they were just completely like on autopilot just doing that because yeah, they needed it, so they would give it to themselves.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:30

Yeah, um, and which in one sense says that is such a basic fundamental need that we have. But but again, it comes back to that thing, the importance of human-to-human contact. Um, you know, for us to be happy, healthy, functioning, connected human beings who were able to be a part of humanity, not just in an autonomous way for ourselves, but in a harmonyus way in terms of you know, serving our part in the human community.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:54

Yeah. And so the ultimate virtue in that sense then is kindness.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:59

Yeah. Well, there's so much of that. I mean, on social media at the moment, there's so many things which are saying, you know, if if you can't, you know, if you if you're going to be anything, be kind. You know, and it is, it's a part, it's an unconditional stroke. You know, something very genuine is to be kind and considerate of other people, be aware that you never know what's going on for others.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:18

Well, even the word kind, it means like, isn't it? Kindred is like. It's recognizing, you know, the self in me recognises the self in you, the human anti recognizes that, and then that's what generates my transactions.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:32

Well, it comes back to that phrase I shared with you earlier, Ubuntu. I am because you are. You know, we cannot exist as humans without the existence of others. And we get into very dangerous territory when we start to sort of you know eliminate that.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:55

Thank you for listening to the Spiritual Psychology of Acting podcast. Thank you to Sarah for providing her expertise in this mini-series. She'll be back again with us next week as we'll be taking a closer in-depth look at the psychological games that people play. Until then, as we spoke about in this episode, be kind and have an excellent week.