Life Scripts

This week’s episode is the final part of our mini-series on Transactional Analysis so if you haven’t listened to the previous three parts, do go back and check those out before listening to this one.

Our final part is all about Life Scripts – the unconscious life plans we pick up in childhood, often without even knowing it. We’ll be breaking down the different types of Scripts, find out the characteristics of each of them and how they might be playing out in your own life right now.

This chat that we had with our resident expert, Sarah Lowes, will not only help you uncover the script you might be living but also guide you on how to re-write it. Because once you know your script, you gain the power to change it!

So, if you’re ready to take a closer look at the story you’ve been living, and maybe even start drafting a new chapter, then this episode is definitely for you.

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An Awakened State production.

Transcript

Sarah Lowes 0:07

I mean, I would say your true self is who you want to be, not who you think you need to be in response to everybody else. When we're able to be autonomous, when we're able to understand ourselves fully, where we're able to see the script that we've written is not the truth of who we are, that we can change that script. What that allows is that physis to flow freely. And when that physis is flowing freely, we can let go of the weights of the injunction, we can let go of the balloons of the drivers because we don't need them to hold us up. We can swim fluently through the ocean of our life.

Jordan Turk 1:04

So if you haven't listened to the previous three parts, do go back and check those out before listening to this one. Our final part is all about life scripts. The unconscious life plans we pick up in childhood, often without even knowing it. We'll be breaking down the different types of scripts, find out the characteristics of each of them and how they might be playing out in your own life right now. This chat we had with our resident expert Sarah Lowe's will not only help you uncover the script you might be living, but also guide you on how to rewrite it. Because once you know your script, you gain the power to change it. So if you're ready to take a closer look at the story you've been living and maybe even start drafting a new chapter, then this episode is definitely for you. Let's get into it.

Sarah Lowes 2:19

I'm doing really well and delighted to be back once again. I'm getting used to this.

Jordan Turk 2:23

Yeah, exactly. I'm gonna miss it. Yeah, absolutely.

John Osborne Hughes 2:27

And how are you, John? Yeah, I'm just thinking maybe maybe we might have to squeeze out a part five, but let's see how this one goes.

Sarah Lowes 2:34

Well, it's been going on for 50 odd years. I'm sure there's something else we could get out of it.

John Osborne Hughes 2:38

Well, there is, isn't it? Just in our pre-discussion there, you there's so much comes out where like this needs to be in there, or we could do an entire episode on injunctions, and it's just been really interesting recently with some of these concepts, looking at um, well, like where we're going today with the live scripts and uh giving that a lot of thought and and sort of reading up about it. So I'm really looking forward to this, and we've got some good questions for you as well, hopefully. So great.

Sarah Lowes 3:05

As always, as always.

Jordan Turk 3:07

There's um there's a quote that I found from uh Tony Robbins, which I think is quite apt for this episode. The quote is if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got. And that kind of speaks to what scripts are. Um, but yes, we have touched on it in in in yes previous episodes. But what is a life script, first of all?

Sarah Lowes 3:28

So a life script is essentially an unconscious life plan that we develop, and it's unconscious largely because we develop the first version of it whilst we are still very young. And by that I mean before we have started school, which you know in the UK is the age of five. We have written what's referred to as the script protocol, which is the very first version of the script. And essentially, that first version of the script, which is very much based on our somatic experience of life, our felt experience of what's going on, because our brains haven't developed enough yet, our language hasn't developed enough yet for us to actually really understand what's going on around us. But we we sort of pick up on all these messages, we have these feelings, we interpret them, and we use them to write this sort of metaphorically first version of a script about what it means to be me and what I need to do to survive and thrive with these big people who seem to be around me at the moment and who seem to be quite, you know, powerful and quite important in relation to my ability to be okay or not okay. So, first draft is done by the age of five, and then we sort of keep working on it, and there's probably a second version that's developing as we move through school, and as we begin to become more aware of the different sorts of adults around us. So, as we become sort of conscious of our teachers and such like, they can start to influence the script. And then people often talk about how as we hit our teenage years, there can often be quite significant rewrites to it, depending on the environments that we find ourselves in. So, particularly as I think, if you think we hit senior school at that point, we're starting to be sort of challenged maybe to take more responsibility for ourselves. We're then moving off to university and starting to figure out versions of our sense of self. And, you know, as we come across different adults who may present quite a challenge to some of the ways that we were raised and the messages that we were got as kids, you know, we do a bit of an upgrade, a bit of a rewrite of the script. But the idea is that what it essentially does is we have got in our unconscious minds, because so much of this is developed early and without us being really conscious of what we're doing, that we have a sense of how our life is gonna play out. So it develops into what I think Byrne referred to as a life plan. So we write this script and then it becomes the plan for our life and whether that life is gonna be successful and we're gonna get what we want, or am I gonna be somebody who spends their entire life struggling? That in one sense, subconsciously, we've decided all of that. And if we never bring it into our conscious thinking, then we simply spend, simply in inverted commas, spend our life playing out that script and finding people to be in relationship with, with a nod back to the games people play that we were talking about in one of the previous episodes. Finding people to be in relationship with who will help us to play out that script, who will enable us to, you know, reach the climax of the performance and the ultimate ending, because you know, what I've got in my script also helps them with what they've got in their script. So it once everybody's happy, potentially.

Jordan Turk 6:50

Right, yeah, yeah. And so the scripts they're they're linked then to your core beliefs, I guess it is how you view the world, is that right?

Sarah Lowes 6:58

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, so I mean that your the the your early scripting will absolutely influence what you believe to be true about yourself, what you believe it means to be a man or a woman, what it means to be responsible or irresponsible, and all of those sorts of things absolutely influence what we believe are the important things in life, whether we believe we're going to succeed, whether we we believe we're not, whether we believe we've got a positive frame of reference around what's possible, or a negative frame of reference around what's possible in in life. So absolutely, you know, our first version of our beliefs will be in that early script that we develop. Well, I don't know that there's necessarily a type of live script, but there are messages that we get that inform our life script. Some way of looking at life scripts is you have winner scripts. So those are scripts where the end of the script is what we call a payoff, which is where what we've been planning all along becomes true and happens. And in a winner script, the payoff is happy, it's fulfilling, and it entails success and accomplishes you know whatever the declared purpose was for that individual's script. So it there's something sort of wholesome and fulfilling about a winner script. A loser script, in one sense, is the opposite. A losing script is where the payoff is painful or disruptive in some way, shape, or form to the individual, and it entails failure to accomplish that declared purpose, what they were trying to achieve with their script. Now, one of the things to be clear about the difference between one and the other, let's say in one sense, somebody sets out part of their script might be that they want to make lots of money, that they want to have lots of expensive things around them. That's that's sort of coded into part of their script. Somebody might succeed at that, so they might get that declared purpose. But if they are really miserable with that, so it's not fulfilling them, it's not giving them happiness, that would actually be a loser's script. So they've set out to be successful, they've and that success is predicated on money, but having shed load of money doesn't actually make them happy. That would actually end up being defined as a loser script because of the impact on them.

John Osborne Hughes 9:26

Would that be a choice? Sorry, when they first formulated the script, is would the script then run that I'm going to make a lot of money and fulfill my material needs and then still feel unhappy?

Sarah Lowes 9:41

Well, I it has the potential, yes, to be. I mean, you know, scripts are many layered, multi-layered, so you can have that sort of nuance to it if you like. And it it could be that there's a decision that we made as a child to think, right, the way out, I observe what is going on around me. Sometimes we develop a script to sort of do the opposite. So I mean, there's there's something called the anti-script. So let's say somebody grows up in a household where there is a lack of money and there's a lack of happiness. And rather than sort of repeating what's happened, perhaps in terms of the life scripts of their parents, they decide, right, I'm gonna make sure I've got money. So in one sense, it's an anti-script because they're doing the opposite of perhaps maybe what that they're being invited to do by their parents, but it's not actually dealing with the underlying issue to do with happiness. So in one sense, they go off to make all of these money, but it doesn't actually deliver them happiness. They're just doing the if they're in attempting to do the opposite of what they experienced in that original family unit, they end up still getting the same payoff at the end of it because they're just trying to do the opposite rather than really thinking about why was that environment unhappy? It was actually about something more than just the fact that there was financial deprivation there, that maybe there was unhappiness in the relationships. But what they focused on simply is the messaging around, oh, money will make it or if we had money, it would be easier. That's probably you know, things that you hear. Sorry, we can't afford that, we haven't got enough money. You think, right, if I, you know, want what I want, I need to earn money.

Jordan Turk 11:11

You've also yeah, you're kind of describing breaking bad is probably the best example of that, which Walter White does have a loser script, doesn't he? He has this chip in his shoulder that he doesn't he's not getting the respect that he deserves. Yeah, and it is your it's the whole thing, is it's that exact thing of we need more money for the family, and so I'm gonna make more money, and all that power and wealth at the end it ends tragically. He doesn't get what he wants, and it's and it's all it all ends in disaster, doesn't it?

Sarah Lowes 11:38

Yes, absolutely. And that was with losing scripts, they can have sort of different categories of severity. So there's a first degree losing script, which is where you know the things that they lose are not that consequential to them, and they are probably the sorts of things that people would be perfectly happy to talk about socially, like that, you know, they lost a job or the car broke down. You know, those sort of things that you would quite happily chat about. A second degree losing script is where actually what's going on is not something that you want to talk openly about. So it could be like, you know, what's going on in terms of the breakdown within a relationship or ways you are treating each other, which you're not terribly proud of, but it's it's absolutely leaving you in a situation where you don't feel fulfilled or don't feel happy, but you're just trying to sort of keep it under wraps. And then the third degree losing script is one where it ultimately ends in either death, injury, illness, or incarceration. It's the sort of extreme version of a losing script where it ends with really severe consequences for the individual and potentially also for other people around them.

Jordan Turk 12:45

And is that what you call the tragic script?

Sarah Lowes 12:47

Yes. That that final one. Yes, absolutely. So the third degree losing script is also referred to as the tragic script. Having said that there were not that many types of script, I'm now merry describing life.

Jordan Turk 12:59

Well, yeah, I think the tragic ones you do find often in drama because, like you say, that's that's where you find the you want to get to these ones because these are the juiciest. I think like Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader, is a tragic script, isn't it? Because he starts off with this innocent young boy with so much potential for good. Yes, but it's all this like fear and anger and a desire for like power and control, which then corrupts that it's almost interesting for us as an audience because we do know that script. We do know he does turn out to be Darth Vader. We we know that he's getting to that point, and that's the fun in almost seeing how he gets there.

Sarah Lowes 13:31

Well, absolutely, and I think for me, watching those prequels when they came out, I remember the points I found so painful to watch were the moments where you saw that Anakin as the young man had a choice, and he had you know the the healthy choices from Obi-Wan and I cannot remember his love interest, but he's got the option, yes, pardon me. That's it. He's got the option to go and stay with her and follow that line, but he gets sort of lured by the dark side, and it's one of those things where we all know what's gonna happen, but it's still so painful, those moments, because it's a moment of choice that and we know what the consequence of that choice is gonna be. And Bern often talked about live script, he linked them to theatre scripts in the sense that you know, you sit down and you watch a play, you start to watch it, and you can see how this live script is gonna play out. You can begin to see it in the way that people are and in the way they conduct themselves, whether this is somebody who's got a winner's script, so this is probably gonna work out okay for them, or somebody who's got a loser's script. You know, a lot of um Arthur Miller's plays are, you know, some, you know, that are so heartakingly tragic are often because you've got these people who, you know, who have in in one sense written for themselves, although unconsciously, a losing script where it's never going to quite work out. And I suppose the work of a transactional analyst in supporting people is try to support people to become aware of their script because the beauty of script is we wrote the first version, even when we weren't aware of it. We wrote it, and therefore, if we wrote it and we realize it's not working for us, guess what? We can rewrite it, you know, and we can start to challenge that. You know, what is it that means that we often end up with a losing script? It feels like we've got a losing script. Where is that coming from? And how might I rewrite it or update it in order to sort of move myself back into a winning direction, so to speak. Um, there is another type of script which is cunningly titled the non-winning script, sometimes also called the banal script. And that is essentially where for the individual, the payoff at the end of their script, they never win particularly big or lose particularly big. So it's they're just the sort of steady eddy, if you like. Life goes on, nothing particularly dramatic happens, either for them or against them. And so they just keep doing what they're doing and sort of plodding along, really. But there's neither great fulfillment nor great tragedy in the script.

Jordan Turk 16:03

Milhouse Van Outen from The Simpsons is a great example of that. He's uh he's uh just often settles for less, doesn't he? Avoids risk. And whenever you think of him, you always think of him trying to ask Lisa out a date and always being knocked back. And oh well.

Sarah Lowes 16:17

Yeah, yeah, it's sort of mid-table obscurity, really. You know, they're not not they're not gonna get promoted, but they're not getting relegated either.

John Osborne Hughes 16:23

Put on hotspot. Yeah, no comments. No, there's a version of the of um uh uh millhouse where he in the future, where you see him once where he's like a uh a gym guy and he's got like the massive pecs, and the he's absolutely enormous. Yes, and it really struck me as psychologically true that some someone like that would grow up and and spend all their time in a gym. And he's talking about how difficult it is to make his uh calves to develop his calf muscles.

Jordan Turk 16:56

You've also got Meg Griffin from Family Guy, she fits that mold perfectly. She's the butt of the rest of the family's jokes. She's kind of the black sheep in that way, isn't she? Just yeah, always has low self-esteem and and uh and never really makes anything of her of her life, yeah. Almost a more painfully realistic version as well, I guess.

Sarah Lowes 17:15

Yes, yes, absolutely. And probably relatable in a way that most of us would not like to admit to, really.

Speaker 6 17:24

What I find quite interesting is that with like a winning script, I think a good example of that is Rocky Balboa, because I think it's as good, isn't it? Because it's he's often seen as a bit of a loser or an underdog, but then someone like Walter White, he's becoming more and more confident and powerful and and and fearsome in the drug world, and yet they're kind of going opposite directions. It seems like one's you almost say that Rocky's the loser and and Walt's the winner, but really yeah, Rocky wins out, doesn't he? He achieves his dream of becoming champion, but that's all through like perseverance and self-belief and hard work. And you've got this other scale where Walt's kind of descending further into hell, haven't you?

Speaker 4 18:01

Well, and I suppose what you can hear in partly, I think you can hear in that the life positions that we've spoken about previously that are a part of the script. Whether I believe that I'm okay and you are okay as well, or whether I believe I'm okay and you're not. And I think the sort of Rocky character, there's a lot of warmth and love about him that yes, he he's struggled, but I think there is a sense of self and a sense of faith, uh, you know, belief in himself and the belief in what he can do. But it's not belief in one sense at any cost, it's not belief at the detriment to other people. Whereas I think a lot of the foils to the uh, you know, Rocky's character in in those movies, his enemies often end up being people who it's I'm okay, you're not, that you often see sometimes you know, playing out in sports, the different characters. I mean, certainly these days there's a greater sense, I think, of sportsmanship, where we might be enemies on the pitch, but actually at the end of the day, we shake hands, or you know, I've often I've just finished watching a bit of a Wimbledon match, you know, and you've got these two phenomenal sportsmen hammering each other and getting really frustrated when they're not winning. And then one of them wins, so one's happy, one's disappointed, but they're giving each other a hug and a congratulation over the net at the end of the match. So that which says to me that in the game, it's I'm okay, you're not, because I need to beat you. But actually, philosophically, fundamentally, they're able to hold on to that. Actually, at the end of the day, I'm okay, and so are you. So, you know, we can both we can still be in relationship with one another, even though one of us has just won a match and one of us hasn't. And I I think that you can really see how the life positions influence people's script and what then plays out, because often what happens in the film stories is it's you know, it's the big baddie, the one who's I'm okay, you're not, who ultimately will get their comeuppance. So they might look like they've got power, but they end up with a losing script because what's just come into my mind is that it's diehard, you know, when uh Alan Rickman's character ends up, you know, falling backwards off the building um at the end, having been completely in control and you know, quite terrifyingly in control of what's going on through most of that movie. But he still ends up with a, in one sense, a losing script because the payoff is not fulfilled at the end of it. But I think there's something around also in script, the difference between a winner and a loser script is often that you know, winner's script are about empowerment, about me fulfilling myself and my potential when it's a positive message, positive messages that are being played out. The more negative script, certainly the losing script, it's usually that feeling that somebody's got power over me. And I might be in my losing script trying to fight it. But if I still fundamentally believe that actually I'm not okay, you are that is probably what is going to play out in the script or in the payoff at the end. If that makes sense.

Speaker 6 20:52

Yeah, yeah. That's great. So then we can now that we kind of know a little bit about what scripts are, and some people might have even had started to identify that in their own life. But how do you find out what your core beliefs are and learn what kind of script that you've picked up along the way?

Speaker 4 21:08

Well, there are various messages that form the script that you can start to explore to think about. I wonder what the messages were that I picked up. Some will be easier perhaps to catch than others because the early version of the script, as I said before, is our felt response to what's going on around us whilst we're still pre-verbal. We get some messages in later childhood which do tend to come from verbal instructions from the people around us. So those tend to be slightly easier for us to pick up on. But we can connect this back to if you remember, I think back to the dim distant days of the very first episode, I think we recorded together, we talked about the um functional ego states model. So that's the parent adult child model. And that what we talked about primarily there was about how the parent adult child model can help us to understand how and why we behave in certain ways. You know, we you know, we operate. Of the child ego state when we're putting energy into being my own self. We operate out of the adult ego state when I'm putting energy into sort of here and now reality and deciding what it is I need to do in response to what's going on around me. And we operate out of the parent ego state when we're putting energy into sort of being in charge of what's going on. But there's another version of the ego states model that, if you like, sits behind the functional ego states model. It's called the structural ego states model, which is essentially looking at what is it that has constructed that child ego state that I have in the functional models, the adult and the parent ego state. What are the messages that helped us to develop that? And the child ego state is informed by messages that we picked up as children from the grown-ups around us. And there's two types of messages that we get that sort of inform that child ego state, one of which is called injunctions and one of which are called affirmations. You can probably tell just from the title that one's more positive than the other. So the affirmations are positive messages that we received in early childhood that give us a sense of self, a positive sense of self, a positive sense of, you know, whether I'm appreciated or loved, you know, about what people think and feel about me. So positive affirmations that we might receive as you know when we're tiny is that we're picked up and we're held and that physical contact and that we're, you know, when we cry, somebody turns up and soothes us in giving us a sense that you know we're we're valued. The injunctions are negative messages that we get from the grown-ups around us. And if you can stick with me for a potential further level of uh complexity, is that these messages that we receive in that child ego state, according to a theory called the script matrix that was developed by somebody called Claude Steiner, but also building on work by Byrne and a couple of people called the Gouldings, Bob and Mary Goulding, who were very big in the TA world when Byrne was still alive in the 60s and 70s, these messages come from the child ego state in the parent, in our parents. So it's a message from the child ego state in the big people around us at the time, whether that was mum, dad, granny, granddad, big brother, big sister, that embeds itself in the child ego state that we are developing at that point in time. And the injunctions, which are the ones that we tend to focus on, are all don't messages. So they're felt messages, they're not actually verbal instructions that we're given, but they're often felt messages that are passed on to us, as I say, from the child ego state within the parent. And I can give you some examples of what those messages are. I know Jordan, you've got an awareness of those.

Speaker 6 24:55

That would be great. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 24:57

So they are things like don't be, or which is sometimes referred to as don't exist, don't be you, don't belong, don't be close, don't be a child. You know, sometimes people feel like they've never had a childhood that they're sort of encouraged to be older than they are. Sometimes that might be developed if you know the parent feels that the actual person feels like actually they need parenting, so I haven't got capacity to look after you. The child somatically might pick up on that and think, right, I've got to, I've got to be more grown up than I am. This is a message they're getting sort of very early on in life. Or you might have the reverse, which could lead to this injunction, which is you've got a parent who wants to keep parenting forever. They might pass on to their uh child an injunction around don't grow up, always stay a child, the sort of person who might never leave home, either literally or metaphorically, that they may be, you know, 45 years old and have their own home, but they're still taking their washing home to mum every weekend or picking up some cooking to put in their freezer. We've also got things like don't think, don't feel, don't make it, don't do anything, don't be important, and don't be well. So these don't messages we are receiving as we start that early version of our script. And so you can see if you're getting more injunctions than affirmations from the big people around you, it has a huge impact on whether you're likely to be developing a winner's or loser's script in that first version.

Speaker 1 26:22

Right. That's really interesting. We we use a thing called uh psychic contracts, right? And a psychic contract is an unconscious contract that's made between the parent and the child.

Speaker 4 26:34

Yes, that's exactly that.

Speaker 1 26:36

And there'll be things like I promise not to be more successful than you are. Yes, or I promise to make you proud. Yes, uh, I I promise to waste my life like you have, or even I promise to be an alcoholic, it could be. I I promise to have failed relationships, and they're not verbal messages. As you were saying, with a lot of these, they go in. We talk about um what we call front door thinking and backdoor thinking. So front door thinking is where you see someone sitting in a certain way, you know, your uncle Jim comes to stay, and you think one day when I grow up, I'm gonna sit like Uncle Jim, who looks important, the way he folds his arms and he has his finger to his cheek. But there's backdoor thinking because Uncle Jim, the reason why he's holding the posture of a man who wants to be superior, is because he feels inferior and he has a lonely life. And what goes in through the backdoor when as a child you take on the posture of Uncle Jim is his life is lonely and uh people don't care. And that goes in through that we call that backdoor ideas, and they're really that the atmospheres we get from the people that we're around, and particularly the parents, because I always ask students on the acting course to reflect on some questions like what do I love the most about my parents and what do I hate the most about my parents? Uh uh to see what comes out there. So it seems like there's uh there's a lot of um, it's really interesting hearing it as don't injunctions, don't be, don't be you, don't be a child. Yeah, but what what's so the opposite then of an injunction would be an affirmation.

Speaker 4 28:27

Yes. So these are positive messages, which would be be you, you you know, you belong here, be well, think for yourself. It they are literally the opposite sort of messages that you get about, you know, encouraging children to think, feel. Um, I was mentioning to you in our chat earlier that I volunteer at a preschool, which you know has children there who are three and four years old. And I often have these injunctions and affirmations in my mind to try and make sure that in the way that I'm working with them, what I'm doing is encouraging them to think and feel for themselves and try things out and you know, do things the way you want to do them, don't just do them the way that Harriet's decided to do it over there or Freddie's decided to do it over there. Find your way of doing it and celebrate them for who they are rather than trying to make them feel that they've got to fit a certain format or you know, achieve a task in a certain way. But yeah, the affirmations are the positive versions of the injunctions.

Speaker 1 29:24

But but a lot seems to go in through just the atmosphere, like um my dad would be peeling potatoes uh at the sink, and he'd suddenly sigh and go, Oh, it's a hard life, John. And uh I would think, um no, it isn't, you're just peeling potatoes. But I'd got the message that life is hard, and then some years later, I was discussing this with him, and I'd say that you know, you'd sigh and you'd say, It's a hard life, and he laughed and he said, That's my mother. My mother used to say that. So it's generational, this idea. When actually life wasn't hard, he was just peeling potatoes. Um, but his mother sang the song of Life is Hard, and perhaps life was hard for her. Yeah, but probably you know, she got it from her mother.

Speaker 4 30:20

Yes, so these things are all getting sort of cascaded down the generations from you know, one child ego state to the child ego state in the next generation down, these messages sort of get transferred. So sometimes it might just be something that's coming from your parent, but I think you're right, so much of this actually gets transferred generationally about what it means to be working or not working, to, as I said before, to be a man or a woman or all that kind of stuff. It can come down the generations and we're unaware of it, but unaware of it. But you know, you will hear people talking sometimes about transgenerational trauma, these beliefs that sort of get embedded about things that have happened or things that will happen to us because of what's happened generationally before, they get translated to the next generation through that child ego states about what we believe to be true about ourselves.

Speaker 1 31:09

Well, that's the importance of you know, sort of working on yourself and developing your awareness because you can break the chain of what you're passing on. You know, there can be many generations that have passed on an idea like life is hard. Yes, um, but you can actually break that by by realizing actually that's just an illusion, and let's let's not let my daughter have those ideas.

Speaker 4 31:32

Yes, precisely, precisely, and that's where that happens, it's really potent.

Speaker 6 31:36

And it's like you guess you're not just changing your own script, but you're potentially changing the script of future generations as well.

Speaker 1 31:41

That's probably that's the work, I guess, isn't it? Yeah, well, then it's evolutionary, you know. This that's evolution, it isn't it, you know, in a way that I think that if you solve your problem with life, that's the evolution of the whole human race. Everybody seems to have some sort of problem that they've inherited in life, and that's you know, but I think that's one of our duties is to solve whatever that problem is that we have, which seems to be tied up with our birth and our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with our parents and society, etc. But through finishing off that thinking, if that's how society and indeed the human race evolves.

Speaker 5 32:19

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

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Speaker 6 33:51

So they're the same as because we have the injunctions that we've talked about, they don't grow up, don't feel, don't think. We have counterinjunctions. Are they the same thing as drivers?

Speaker 4 33:59

They are very similar. Technically, they're not exactly the same, but you might hear people referring to a driver as a counter injunction I I have sometimes. The counter injunctions are, if you like, responses to the injunction. Now, sometimes the phrase counter injunction can be quite confusing because it makes you think immediately that the counter-injunction must by definition be opposite to the injunction. But actually, sometimes the counter injunction might or might contradict the injunction, sometimes it might help you to actually reinforce it. So to explain what it is, we I was talking to you before the injunction is a message that comes from the child ego state, let's say, in the parent or in the grown-up to the child ego state in the child. The counter injunction, we're going, we're going up a couple of ego states, okay? The counter injunction is if you like a command that comes from the parent ego state in the grown-up to the parent ego state in the child. And it's a command around what to do or not to do in order to be okay around here. So that's essentially what the counterinjunction is. It's a command. And that command might, as I said, might contradict the injunction or it might re-emphasize the injunction. The driver behavior is a behavior that we develop in order to adhere to that command, to obey that instruction that we've been given in the counterinjunction. So for an example, let's say that somebody has a don't be close injunction that's been sort of give a message that's been passed to their child ego state. They might also, so the counterinjunctions, that's also important to say, these develop slightly later in life and they are verbal. So these are after we, you know, but when we've probably around, I don't know, seven, eight, something like that, this is when we start to get these counter injunctions coming in where we are hearing the commands of the big people around us. So it might be parents, teachers, um, scout troop leaders, whoever, you know, we hear these verbal instructions and we begin to think, oh, okay, this is what I need to do in order to be okay around here. So I've got this felt experience of don't be close. And perhaps maybe, let's say I've got that from, I don't know, my mum. And I get a sort of counterinjunction, which is around don't rely on other people. You know, you know, in order to be okay around here, you need to not rely on others. And what that can develop in terms of the drivers is one of the five drivers is called a be strong driver. And typically, people who who have be strong drivers do not show their emotions, they make brilliant poker players because you cannot tell what is going on underneath the surface. And so we develop these behaviors because we think, okay, in order for me to be okay around here, I need to be strong. The other drivers are just to run through them, uh, are be perfect. So I have this sense that in order to be okay around here, I need to behave in a way that is perfect. Another one is called it, it was originally called please me, but imagine the please me in adverted commas because it's not about pleasing myself, it's about pleasing the other person. So, like pleasing the grown-up. And therefore, to make life simpler these days, it's more often than not called a please others driver, because that more accurately describes what it's actually about. It's about pleasing every so long as everybody else around me is happy, then everything will be fine. Another one is called a try hard driver. So as long as I'm making an effort, it doesn't matter whether I actually achieve anything, but so long as it looks like I'm trying hard, then I'll be okay around here. And the final one is a hurry up driver, so long as I'm moving quickly. They these are usually the people who are tapping on the table in a meeting or something, who are sort of you can feel them like physically trying to rush you along with what you're doing. They're like, Yeah, yeah, we've got it. Next slide. They're they're always trying to push things to do more quickly. So the driver behavior is a response to the counter injunction. So the counter injunction comes as a command from somebody else, and the driver is how we behave in response to that command.

Speaker 6 38:17

And the we can transform it almost.

Speaker 4 38:20

Yes, absolutely. That we say, okay, so long as I behave like this, I will be all right. The thing to note in terms of how the driver behavior plays out in us as grown-ups, it usually kicks in in situations where we don't feel okay, where I don't know if I'm going to be all right. So, like maybe when I'm new somewhere, if I'm new into a job, you know, if I'm joining a new cast and I don't know what the dynamics are gonna be like, or if I'm turning up to an audition, you know, and maybe my stress levels or my anxieties up about, you know, I, you know, I've got to get this job, I've got to get this job. So you might find that the driver behavior is more present because it usually kicks in when I'm not certain if I'm gonna be okay. If you're in a situation where you're fairly relaxed, you get on with everyone, you're not worried about how you're gonna come across. It doesn't come across as this sort of compulsive behavior. And there can be a lot of strengths in the behaviors. I might have declared previously, I've got to be perfect driver. And when I'm not worried about something, the fact that I've got an attention to detail serves me beautifully. But you know, when I am worried about something and I realised I've not just pre-read that email four times before I've sent it, I've reread it twice in the sent folder to make sure that it was as accurate as I thought it was. That's when you think, yeah, that's a bit ridiculous, love. You know, this that gives me a sense that actually I'm unsettled, I'm not feeling okay here, and maybe I need to just sit and chill for a bit and figure out what is this really about.

Speaker 2 39:45

Yeah.

Speaker 4 39:47

So hopefully that helps to give you a sense of the di the sort of how the the counterinjunctions and the drivers sort of relate one to the other.

Speaker 6 39:53

No, that's great. I mean, in my own research, I came across a few examples where you have an injunction and then the counterinjunction there, and because they're they're both they're not the opposites, but they do kind of mix and mingle and create some kind of internal struggle. So I've got a few examples here of that. So the injunction could be don't be you. So that that child's being discouraged from expressing their own true interests. The counter injunction be perfect, they'd then be expected to excel academically or athletically, whatever. And then that outcome would be, even though they would achieve high academic success, they would then feel disconnected from their true passions, leading to a real sense of dissatisfaction later on down the line.

Speaker 4 40:36

Yeah, absolutely. I I'm it was making me think of a girl I was at school with who, you know, we I don't know, we would have been first or second year of GCSC and we were chatting about what did we want to be when we grow up, that sort of stuff. And I think I said before, you know, I decided at 10 I was going to be a rich and famous actress. So I may potentially have a loser script myself, folks, given the fact that that didn't quite play out. But I remember I had this really clear sense of what I wanted to do. And the reason the conversation stuck in my head is I remember asking her, and she said to me, I'm going to be a lawyer. And I said, Oh, why do you want to do that? And she said, Oh, it's what it's what my parents want me to do. She wasn't playing a pity me game about it. It was just, it was a very factual conversation. But I remember it left me feeling quite sad that because there was no negotiation about it. It was just a very clear this is what my parents want. So therefore, in one sense, she might have argued in saying, so I don't have to worry about making a decision. It's very clear to me the things I need to be studying moving forward. But I, you know, I I am not in touch with her anymore. But I've always had a curiosity about how that played out for her. And, you know, did she has she found herself, we're now in our mid-40s, a very successful lawyer? And is she happy? Yeah, you know, at what she actually wanted. But you know, she's followed, she's been the good girl, she's done as she was told. She was academically very bright. I mean, only had to flutter her eyelashes and get straight A's where I had to make my eyeballs bleed in order to get a B. Not that I was jealous or resentful at all. Um, but but so you know, I can imagine that she did very well, but it doesn't necessarily mean that she's experienced happiness or fulfillment because she's following an instruction that she was, in that sense, a clear verbal one, but decisions that other people had made for her.

Speaker 6 42:20

Yeah. Yeah, it seemed like such a clear that she almost she had full awareness of it as well. It wasn't like it backed or it was like she just knew, and that's she knew a script and she was quite happy to follow it.

Speaker 4 42:30

Yeah, almost a military response, you know, and that and that's what you know. If you get a command in the military, that's what you're meant to do. Yes, sir, no, sir. Yes, ma'am, no, ma'am.

Speaker 2 42:38

Yeah.

Speaker 4 42:39

Um, and I think that's why it always sort of struck me that it she she didn't quite seem to be responding in that moment. It was almost slightly robotic.

Speaker 3 42:48

Right, yeah.

Speaker 4 42:49

There was so much more colour to her, usually in the conversations that we had and flavor in terms of what she was talking about, her interest. In that moment, it's just like it all went this is what I've got to be, because this is what I've told. And I'll be okay if I become a solicitor.

Speaker 2 43:06

Yeah.

Speaker 1 43:07

So good parenting is is actually you know helping your child get in touch with what it is that they enjoy and what it is they have a natural talent for, and then supporting them in that, because that's where they're most likely to succeed, isn't it? Yeah.

Speaker 4 43:21

So that's what the you know, the affirmations are about facilitating growth. We've said before, transactional analysis is ultimately about achieving autonomy. You might stretch that to say about you know self-actualization, becoming your true self. I mean, you know, we're all human, and you know, as we've said a number of times, how our messaging is being interpreted by the small people around us is not necessarily always the message we intend them to pick up on. You know, if I'm having a bit of a bad day and I'm a bit stressed, a child might pick up on a you know, don't be you message. And I might be thinking, don't do that today. I haven't got the brain space. But you know, I don't mean them to interpret that as a lifelong message. I think if as Parent, if you can quite quickly get back into offering the affirmations rather the injunctions, then you know if you're getting more affirmations than you are injunctions, then hopefully it's the affirmations that will win out. And then the counter injunctions that you're getting from positive parenting are how to support yourself to achieve what you want to achieve. So it's not about be a lawyer, it's about if that's what you want to do, then how are you gonna work to achieve that? One of my goddaughters has just completed her GCSEs. I was saying to her, I'm not overly worried about the grades that you're gonna get. What I think is more important about these, because you know, in the last 20 odd years, if I dare to admit that that's how long since I took my GCSEs, how many times have people asked me for my GCSE results? I mean, twice at most. But I was saying to what I think is so valuable about this experience is it teaches you how to support yourself through something that's stressful in order to still be able to get what you want to get out of it. You know, she knows what she wants to do for A level. She's got an idea of what she wants to do for her degree. So she knows that she needs to achieve certain things. So she's worked hard to put herself in the best position to be able to achieve those things at this stage so that she can move on to the next stage. So, in one sense, the counterinjunctions that I've been trying to offer her was around supporting her to think about how do you manage stress. And, you know, I was trying to say, you know, don't work yourself into a ground. It's about self-care, it's about understanding what you've got, what's reasonable to achieve in this period of time. Those are the things I've messages I've been mindful of trying to give her, rather than saying you need perfect results, otherwise I'm resigning my godmothership, you know.

Speaker 1 45:46

Yeah. Can it work the other way in terms of if a child all they got was just affirmation, you're mummy's little soldier, what a good boy you are, how you're so clever. Can that create a shadow in itself? Because the there's a kind of reality check that the child compares their real state of being to this this heightened pedestal that they've been thrust upon by their parents, and doesn't that shortfall from the reality of their being to what what they're what's being projected onto them, that can create a shadow in the psyche of I'm not good enough and I'm not worthy.

Speaker 4 46:27

That phrase you used about being mummy's little soldier, I wonder if that's a don't, I would be thinking, I wonder if we've got a don't grow up injunction that although the wording might sound positive, like it sounds it's an encouragement, it might be actually doing the work of an injunction still about is what I need you to be, is to continue to be mummy's little soldier and still be with me and not do anything that challenges my place in your life. An injunction doesn't necessarily play out with everybody being hellish to you all the time. It's just that certain things about you are not stroked and encouraged. If we go back to thinking about strokes that we mentioned in an earlier episode. So if you've got somebody who's been given an injunction which is to say, don't feel, they might get a lot of affirmations for themselves academically about the way that they work. But as soon as they cry, it's like, you know, boys don't cry, or maybe girls don't cry either. You know, that there's something about that element of who they are gets shut down pretty damn quick.

unknown 47:27

Yeah.

Speaker 4 47:28

Because around here we don't talk about our emotions.

Speaker 6 47:30

Well, going back to that example, John, there that there is one which is very much fits that that kind of mold of that overprotective parent, which would be the injunction don't grow up, like you said there, Sarah. Overprotecting, discouraging them from taking on adult responsibilities. The counterinjunction could be try hard. They're expected to put in maximum effort in everything that they do. And that possible outcome could be that the person would then exhibit procrastination and then a fear of responsibility because of they didn't never take it on as a youngster, and then they feel pressure to also perform well in certain areas, and then that could easily lead to burnout. There's there's so much internal struggle going on there with that one, yeah.

Speaker 4 48:09

Yes.

Speaker 6 48:10

All from a well-a well-meaning parent, maybe, yeah.

Speaker 4 48:13

Well, yeah, I mean, you know, I often say when I'm sort of talking to people about transactional analysis, we talk a lot about parents. I think most of the time, most of us are doing the best that we can with the information that we've got at the time. And there's been such an explosion in the last 50, 60, 70 years since ideas like this started to be developed of understanding the self that, you know, wasn't around for previous generations or indeed encouraged. So it's not about trying to sort of water things down and say, oh, it's all all right, really. I had bloody good parents, excuse my um language, um, they won't be happier about that language, maybe, um, who to go back to something you were saying before the break, John, you know, without going into the details of their histories, in their respective ways, both of them had challenges growing up. And they have both in their marriage, individually and collectively, worked really hard through, you know, having therapy and counseling themselves to understand themselves that they've passed much less of that on to my sister and I than by rights we were owed if they hadn't gone through all of that. So I think that's the thing, isn't it? It's about understanding. It's important to understand where we've come from and why we might have certain instincts. And they've, you know, still passed some baggage on to my sister and I, but you know, much less than it would have been otherwise. And so I think there's something around acknowledging why things were done the way that they were and thinking, right, what can I learn about things that maybe I have still passed on to? I don't have children of my own, but godchildren, nieces and nephews. And actually, what can I now do differently moving forward?

Speaker 1 49:42

I think that's the yeah, it's understanding your own sort of parents' patterns of thinking rather than because then if you don't, you might blame them.

Speaker 3 49:52

Yeah.

Speaker 1 49:53

And if you blame them, then you have no real power to change, do you? Because you you've been cursed or something's been enforced upon you that's unchangeable. If you blame as soon as you blame, you give away your power to change.

Speaker 3 50:05

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 50:06

But I think it's important that you do acknowledge the psychological dynamic in them that impacted your own development of your own psyche.

Speaker 4 50:14

Yes, absolutely. And it reminds me of one thing I was gonna mention about counterinjunctions, injunctions, or or more specifically drivers and injunctions. There's a uh a model that's produced or that was uh written by a woman who I've done some training with in the TA. She's very well known in the UK TA. Well, she's known internationally, but she's a UK transactional analyst uh called Adrienne Lee. She came up with this idea of the drowning man, and this it's an image that she draws of a man in water, it's usually a stick man, in water, and he's got injunctions tied to his feet. So they are weighing him down, but he's also holding in his hand balloon strings that lead to five balloons above him, which are the five drivers. And it's this idea that the injunctions, if we allow them, can pull us down and we might sink, and or you know, worst case scenario, drown. But we develop these driver behaviors to try and keep us afloat. And so, in one sense, we can maintain a sort of sense of okayness that, yeah, they've got these things weighing me down, but I've developed these drivers so I can keep myself afloat. And that often what we're trying to do, whether it's in my work as a coach or whether it's in therapy, is not to like just suddenly cut all the strings to the drivers that are pulling us down and suddenly we fly off into the air at a speed that's probably slightly shocking, nor is it about sort of letting go of the drivers immediately, because if we still got injunctions attached to our legs, we're going to sink. First of all, it's about acknowledging that they're both there. And you know, you won't have all 12 injunctions. There's probably only a couple that you might have, and you might not have be making use of all of the drivers. It's about acknowledging which ones I've got so that you can then start to make choices about letting go of them as you rewrite the script and think, actually, I do belong. I can grow up. I am grown up, good Lord. I mean, that's the shocking thing when you suddenly realize that you are a grown-up, isn't it? Or maybe that was just me, you know, that you know, so that I am a grown-up, so I can choose to let go of that. So eventually you have in time when you're ready, let go of all of that stuff and realized you can swim yourself or you can float in the water. You don't have to be, and it comes back to this point about the autonomy, John, of understanding actually that I can make my own choices about how I respond to this. And you're absolutely right. As soon as we start blaming other people, we gift our autonomy away. We gift our power away to others. And I think that's the thing about what some people would say is when you're blaming, that is probably a sign that you are still in script. You are still operating out of your script rather than being conscious of your script and using it where it is still helpful to you. And where it's not helpful to you think, right, that's that's a bit of it. I need to rewrite.

Speaker 1 52:54

Yeah, I find in therapy sometimes that people have a, I don't know what you'd call it, but a um uh a sort of an auto-directive, which is I must not criticize my parents. Yeah, yeah. And therefore, you can't, it's difficult to get to what they really think because they there's this whole layer of what they think they think, or what they've been told to think, or what's socially acceptable, or what remains loyal to their parents by having uh these thoughts. And it sometimes it takes a little while to get beyond that and find out what do they really feel about their parents and their relationship with their parents.

Speaker 4 53:29

And the fear of the consequences of if they are critical, because you remember some of these injunctions are developed somatically, so they develop pre-verbal when our parents or the grown-ups who are around us are incredibly powerful people to us. You know, they are the difference between us living and dying when we're very small, when we're babies, you know, we can't feed ourselves, you know, we can't change ourselves. They have huge power. So sometimes I think people can be quite surprised because you start to understand the script about when you say to me, you know, what's the what is it that you fear if you if you are critical of your parents in the here and now, when you're in a say a coaching room with me, nobody else can listen, I'm not gonna tell them. What's the fear? And often it is that the fear of rejection, the fear of they won't want me in the family anymore, and they will often say it is sounds ludicrous as I'm saying it, and it's what I feel, you know, because it's these deeply somatically held beliefs that feel like they come with very heavy consequences. You know, our parents can be powerful people. It reminds me of a story that Byrne tells in one of his books about I don't know if both of these brothers were a client or one was, but they had a mother who uh some of the verbal messaging they got from her was you're gonna end up in a mental hospital to the boys. And it proved true for both of them, but in slightly different ways. One of them eventually did end up getting admitted as an inpatient to a mental facility, the other one became a psychiatrist in a mental facility. They both ended up in a mental hospital.

Speaker 2 55:02

Wow.

Speaker 4 55:04

By a very different means, but it, you know, but that but her messaging came true. And you know, the the elder brother, well, I don't know if he was older, but the brother who ends up as a psychiatrist might have been might have been a bit of anti-script of going, Well, I'm I'm I'm not gonna go mad, you know, which is sort of the underlying message. If somebody's saying to you you're gonna end up in a mental hospital, the underlying message is you're crazy. But in in one sense, trying to do the opposite of that. In one sense, he still ended up meeting the script that you know had been gifted him because he ended up working in a mental institution rather than being a patient in a mental institution.

Speaker 6 55:37

Yeah, wow. That's I mean, it's I really like that image of the drying man because it does show you how I mean, I guess people with especially lack of awareness of the scripts, people just assume I'm just the way I am and there's nothing I can do, but nothing I can change.

Speaker 3 55:51

Yes.

Speaker 6 55:52

But yet it's because I think there is a real comfort in not challenging our scripts because what we're used to, right? They feel comfortable because it feels this is right, this is because you're on a certain path. And I think it's almost like that that image of the drowning man is that you're being pushed and pulled, but you're you are you may be drowning at some stages, you might be kind of being lifted out of the water at some stages, but it is quite comfortable. You're you're you can probably exist in that level, but it's that realizing it's the awareness, it's like that you realizing that you're actually in danger either way, and and the real joy is in being able to swim, is being able to be free of these and just be able to float.

Speaker 4 56:25

Absolutely, and all you are doing in that scenario is surviving, you're not surviving because you're trying to cope with other people's view of you and what's been expected of you, but it's not actually enabling you to be autonomous, it's not enabling you to be you, and that's where a lot of the understand when we can understand our script, and and I think for people who are not one to frequent a I don't think therapists have couches anymore. I think maybe they have sofas and uh or whatever, but or or to work with a coach that I do think theatre and film and movies are ways in which for some people that's how they maybe not fully consciously, but one of the ways to maybe get a sense of what your script might be is to think back to what were your favourite stories as children, particularly as young children, what were the books that you used to really love to read and wanted to read again and again, or the the TV programmes that you really loved. And what does that tell you about actually what was important to you as a kid, perhaps who it was that you felt you needed to be? One of the ones for me, I've always loved the Robin Hood stories. And I had a particular passion for the um when I was growing up, I was probably about five or six, and I've watched some of it recently, and I can't quite believe my parents let me watch it because some of it's quite dark. But there was the um version of the um TV program with oh god, his name's gone out of my head. Uh Sean Connery's son, Jason Connery, was the second Robin Hood in that series. I can't Michael Praid, I think, was the Robin Hood in the first series, but Maid Marion in that, she could shoot arrows as well as the boys. And I loved that about it. She wasn't the Maid Marion who's stuck in a tower waiting for Robin to rescue her. It was like she had Hutzpah and she could give as good as she got with the guys around her. And I think, you know, there's something of that that I really loved her spirit, which is probably also why I spent quite a bit of my life single, really, because I was trying to prove I was better than the boys than being prepared to get into a relationship with one of them. So I didn't quite follow all of the examples of the Robin Hood Maid Marian relationship. But there is something interesting for me in reflecting on why it was that character that, and not just the Maid Marion character, but the version of Maid Marion in that story that's that really impacted me. It's not just generic stories, but there's something about the way that particular version of a tale was told that really speaks to something that felt important to us at that age. So that can be one way to start to explore what were some of the early things that were going on for me in that early version of my script that that character I really responded to.

Speaker 1 58:59

Yeah, that's fascinating. I I have a homework where I get the actors to, well, we look at what are the characters' ego ideals. In other words, what are the reference points of who do they aspire to be, and to find a really good ego ideal for the character. But in order to get good at doing that, and of course, in order for them to understand themselves better, I set them a homework, which is to do a history of your own ego ideals. And um, what were the dynamics there? Like one of my first ego ideals was the Lone Ranger. And you know, he he come he comes in and saves the day, and you know, has a trusted companion and comes in and saves the day and has a connection with nature and has all those things. And and I think that you know, I look back and I think that shaped my psychology. And and of course, the little red riding hood complex. Byrne talks about that, doesn't he? In the uh what do you say after you say hello? The wolf is like that. Actually, the wolf, the experience with the wolf is the most exciting thing, and that was the problem.

Speaker 3 1:00:06

Yes.

Speaker 1 1:00:07

And he noted that very often women with this complex would often turn up to the the session and that they would be in possession of a red coat.

Speaker 3 1:00:14

Yes.

Speaker 2 1:00:17

Script through the yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 4 1:00:20

It's it's individual for everyone, but I think it's so often we underestimate the potency of the imagination of the child, you know, the literal child, and how much capacity they have for understanding, even if what they believe to be true ends up being slightly wrong, they're still working hard to figure everything out and to make sense of it. You know, we are we are meaning makers as human beings, that what we strive to do all the time is make sense of what's going on around us. And kids, you often have to say they, you know, a child is too young to remember something difficult that's happened to them, whether that's, you know, the breakup of their parents or if there was a tragic accident. They may not remember literally what happened, but somatically they'll remember a lot. And there's never the room or the space for them to acknowledge that. It will play out in their behavior as grown-ups. They just might not be conscious that it's got it's going back to that you know event when they were very young, particularly if everybody's around them saying to them, well, it didn't affect you. You know, oh well, it mustn't have done. I must just be mad that sometimes I behave in this ways, which are to my detriment. It's powerful. If you really harness it, there's so much wonderful about the imagination of children. But I think we have to be mindful about sometimes about what we're putting in there to encourage healthy play rather than gameplay, which is you know what we were talking about in a previous episode.

Speaker 1 1:01:44

Yeah, it seems just so much as that that developmental mind, it's just trying to orientate itself. It seems that that's what's at the core, isn't it? Is just like developing a sense of self.

Speaker 3 1:01:56

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:01:56

Um, I went to see the film Inside Out 2. Um, there is this wonderful thing that at the end of the day, all the new thoughts that one of the characters, Joy, who seemed to be running things in the minds at that time, and this is pre-pubescent. She takes that these these balls and she floats them in this kind of magical lake. And when she floats them, the important ones, so some of them are just like chucked to the subconscious, and some of the important ones are put there floated on this lake, and like a string, a stream comes from them and goes up towards the ceiling in this great cavern space. And each of one of these um strings is a belief. And when they pluck the belief, when they pluck the string, it says the belief, you know, I'm not good enough, or whatever the whatever the the the idea is. But what I found really good about the model is that all these strings all come together and they in in the sort of central control area of the mind, you know, it's like the Starship Enterprise, where they're there on the patrols. Yeah, at the back of there, there's what's known as the the core of all of it, which is the sense of self. So all the beliefs together accumulate this sense of self, which, you know, as we've heard, can be not okay, okay, um, different sense of self. And um we call that within the spiritual psychology of acting, that's we call that the linchpin of the mind, is the self-image. And uh it's the primary relationship, it's who I think I am, or it's who the character thinks they are. So the self-image is who I think I am. I mean, the clue's in the word, it's self-image, it's an imagining of the self, it's a mental construct, even though it's very important, it's the you know, it's the central point of reference of the whole mind, you know, it's whose mind is it anyway? It's this is the it's the sort of core idea. However, the interesting thing is that it's an observable, nameable idea. It doesn't really do you see what I mean? It's that you can name it and it has a sound and a sound vibration within the words, but it can be observed, which proves that it is not your final real self, you're not who you think you are. In fact, if you want to know who you are, find out who you think you are and let go of that, if you see what I mean, because it's it's it's what arises, it's what remains when you let go of what you're not, is that's who you really are. And what is that really? If you if you go back, back, back, back, back, if you bring everything, it's this just witnessing consciousness, it's just awareness that is observing the mind and observing the whole show, and that witnessing consciousness, that self with a capital S, which is universal, not just individual, but it's it's the the essence of all of us, in the Himalayan tradition, it in the sort of whole Hindu tradition, they in the Sanskrit language they say the nature of that self is sat, which is truth, chit, which is consciousness, and ananda, which is bliss. And this is going beyond saying, you know, I'm okay, you're okay. You know, okay is sort of a bit like the English when you ask them how are you, they say not too bad. Um is that, you know, I'm okay, I'm just okay. Yeah. Uh, but it's more than just I'm okay, it's actually that you are consciousness itself. You are the you know, creative, universal intelligence itself, right? And you can't get better than that. There's no there's no better than that. But you know, there's no point feeling superior about it because so so is everybody else. Um Exactly. So, and what is it? How is it experienced? It's experienced as just the feeling of being that underlying all the thoughts, all the change, all the changing emotions, time, etc., is just an unchanging feeling, which you know it's a feeling doesn't even do it justice. It's kind of feelingless feeling. It's the canvas onto which everything else is painted, as it were, and it's his existence itself. It is being itself. And so what I encourage the actors do to increase this sense of being, because this is what gives them their sense of gravity, because they're grounded in the ground of being itself. As an act, never mind what the character's doing. The character could be a hero or a villain. I'm talking about the actual substance of the actor themselves. But I get them to practice coming back to just this simple feeling of being, of I amness. And it kind of um overrides all that other sort of, you know, all the sort of neurotic ideas of who I am and the complication of the contradiction of identity to just bring people to give them rest and come back to that self. I've I've observed naturally brings a lot of those, you know, neurotic patterns of thinking, it just sort of naturally settles them, but it also gives them a real sense of steadiness and confidence in who they really are. Um, and so I suppose my my question is is that obviously, you know, Eric Byrne is a psychologist and he deals with the mind, you know, psychology is the is the science of the mind and behavior. But what did Eric Byrne have anything to say about the essential witness of the mind? Which we could, this is where psych, you know, the psychology of acting becomes the spiritual psychology of acting.

Speaker 4 1:07:57

Yes, yes, absolutely. And I mean, I suppose Byrne was not working in the realm of the spirit, however you interpret that that word. I think what comes to mind for me, and what I was thinking about as you were telling that story, uh I mean, the story of the film and also further explanations on from that, is there is a notion in transaction analysis of physis or p-y-s-i-s, your innate energy. It's like your innate uh capacity to be you, and it is seen as emanating from the child ego state, so as a sort of driving force that comes up through the child ego state and drives its way through, if you like, both the adult and the parent, so that it's infusing the way that you are in the world, and that a lot of what transactional analysis is about enable people to, I mean, to build on your language to let go of some of those instructions and messages about what they should be doing and how they should be behaving to connect with what you describe as it's I mean, it might not be exactly the same analogy, but I would say to connect with their essential self. We sometimes talk about in the child ego state as the natural child in its purest form. That child ego state is unencumbered by parental messages from other people. And I think if if a child grows up with a lot of affirmation, it's got much more chance of being able to get a sense of. I mean, I would say your true self is who you want to be, not who you think you need to be in response to everybody else, but actually who am I at my most natural? What are my inclinations? What are my wants? How do I want to exist in this world? And so I think there's something about when we're able to be, to use Burns' ultimate aim for TA, when we're able to be autonomous, when we're able to understand ourselves fully, where we're able to see the script that we've written is not the truth of who we are, that we can change that script. What that allows is that thysis to flow freely. And when that physis is flowing freely, we can let go of the weights of the injunction, we can let go of the balloons of the drivers because we don't need them to hold us up. We can swim fluently through the ocean of our life, if I can extend the metaphor.

Speaker 1 1:10:18

Yeah, and that's that's grace. Yes, that's grace being in touch. That that physis, I've understood physis to be the energy that wishes to evolve. And uh what is it that you know, what why have we gone from certain simple life forms into more complex life forms? It isn't just natural selection chance of genetics, that there is uh there's an engine behind this, which is the physis, which is what makes us want to be better, makes us want to evolve within our own lifetime, makes the human race want to evolve it into something else. And and if you imagine it like a stream, yes, that's going back to the drowning man who's there that there in the seed, if he lets go and lets flow and lets the stream take him, the stream is like the physis, and it will take you. It's a bit like really the I I use an analogy if you if you plant a sunflower seed and you put it in a tank and you put earth and you see the seed start to sprout, and then you dig it out and you turn it upside down, what will happen? It will loop round and it will grow. Why? Because it's heliotropic, it wishes to grow towards the light. Yeah, but then I say, Well, what if you then got um a piece of uh metal cut and some bathroom sealant and you put it over the top of the thing so there was no you know, no light whatsoever, what would happen? Well, the the process of growing would cease then, yeah. And in a way, finishing off our thinking, which is what we call sort of dealing with our baggage, uh, it is rather like removing the obstacles, removing the obstacles, which are inner instructions, which are ideas, which you know, I'm not good enough, etc., and uh I I can't achieve this, and uh uh whatever the ideas are. But once we remove the the stones, if it were from the soil, and we naturally there's there's the sunlight there, which is a sense of our own sort of potential drawing us towards that, then the process of growth and development happens quite naturally. In the same way the energy of Physis turns a sunflower seed into a sunflower, so too that if you remove the obstacles, there's a natural development or an evolution to a finer level of consciousness that comes through removing the impediments. So it's more than just you're okay, it's your you see where you have this an enormous potentiality, which the the the way that we've been brought up and that the and the education systems and the society itself kind of makes us collectively forget uh that potentiality. And though, and indeed the political systems, they make us forget that.

Speaker 3 1:13:20

Yeah, yes.

Speaker 1 1:13:21

And it's a question of of helping people remember that, remember who they really are.

Speaker 4 1:13:26

Yes, absolutely. And I think the the potent use for me of script theory is about being able to begin to understand where your script is not helpful to you so that you can rewrite it. And I think most impactful dramas that we see on television on stage are about watching people wrestle with their script. And the ones that leave you feeling, you know, full of the joys are the ones where you've watched somebody rewrite it and realize about something and choose to do something differently. And probably the more dramatic ones are where you've watched somebody give into the script rather than or give in to the battle to try and rewrite it. Um, they've just gone along with it and it's and it's played itself out. So it's a you know, it's a very potent theory. And that I think that that idea of physis is about, you know, there's something about self-determination, about being able to decide who it is that I want to be rather than being a I mean, I can hear in some of your story about you know the oppression of the political, the educational, and sometimes the social spheres as well. It's about sort of liberation uh that's not about I'm okay, you're not, but is about I'm uh you know, me being able to take my place in life and a place of my choosing so that I can, you know, fulfill my potential and offer who I am to the rest of the world. I think in what do you say after you say hello, he talks about not just I'm okay, you're okay. He talks about I'm okay, you're okay, they're okay. And I think that's a much more sort of community-led look. I think in an earlier episode I talked about not just autonomy, but also homonomy, about you know, being able to take your place in the world. And it's not about me improving my script so that I'm all right, but everybody else can go to hell in a hand cart. It's about actually achieving autonomy so that I can be with my brothers and sisters on this land and make my contribution and and by that sense, you know, self-actualize and also help hopefully the world to actualize in a more healthy and functional fashion.

Speaker 1 1:15:26

Well, yes, well, because there must be as well as an individual script, as a script of a group and a script of a nation.

Speaker 3 1:15:35

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:15:36

And I wonder that in the collective psyche of the human race, what is the collective script? But um, because no one seems to be writing it consciously. And well, those who are writing it consciously, uh I'm very dubious of, that want to shape the world politically and want to, you know, that what are doing of that, but it it seems to be led by people who haven't finished off their thinking, essentially.

Speaker 6 1:16:03

Well, I think yeah, you think like Oppenheimer, the the ending of the film of Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan film, is so horrifying because he all of a sudden has this huge awareness of what he's done and where this is going to lead, like eventually. Like it's kind of it's almost like he's realized the weight of his decision to do this has kind of now caused this potential um future for the human race. It's like it's that bigger picture, guys, isn't it? I think we've all got lost in kind of in some aspect in our in our lives, gone away from this kind of natural free child. And it is, it does seem to be like the whole kind of transactional analysis world is almost like a roadmap to help us get to where we need to be again. But it does also require that leap of faith, doesn't it? Once we've become aware of it all, it's that let go, let it flow, isn't it? It's the realizing this is now what I need to do. It's going to be scary, but eventually it can lead to self-actualization. It could lead to happiness, yeah.

Speaker 4 1:16:57

And yeah, and it can be scary because if you change who you are and you've been in relationship with people who have served the previous version of your script can disrupt the relationships around you. I've come across a number of people who, through their studies of TA, have made different decisions to the one they've made previously about who they wanted to be in relationship with. So it can lead to big changes. And by so doing, actually, I think people learn an awful lot about themselves and who they really are and perhaps understand why they've maybe ended up in relationship with people that might have served a purpose in furthering the script but weren't actually serving their soul and weren't actually enabling them to be who they truly are. Yeah, there's there's huge, there's huge potential, I think, or potency. Maybe that's the word I'm looking for in terms of the live script to help people to understand. I think the thing that's for me is hopeful. Sometimes it can think, oh my God, am I really making these decisions because of things I decided to be true when I was two and a half? You kind of think that's just sounds bonkers. And you know, it might sound bonkers, but uh the work I've done with it has continued to convince me that there's there's worth and value in it. And also there's huge hope in the fact if, as I said earlier, if you wrote it, you can rewrite it if it's not working for you. And I think that's the interesting thing, you know, plays I've been to see where they they play out different outcomes each night. You know, there's a lot, there's various different versions of the final scene, and there's a lottery as to you know, which version of the play are you gonna see on the final night, depending on what the final scene is. And I think that's so, you know, it's the sliding doors moment, which is sort of so interesting to reflect on.

Speaker 1 1:18:30

Yeah, it seems awareness is the key, isn't it? It's uh awareness, it's uh being able to watch all of this without being involved, having some means of being able to step back and sort of fearlessly ask yourself questions and just have a look what's there without judgment or criticism.

Speaker 4 1:18:48

Absolutely, I think it's it's being careful, it's about realizing, you know, these repeated situations. I said this to myself so many times. I have to admit the common denominator in them is me, and therefore there must be something I am doing to contribute to these situations. And as you say, with love and kindness and appreciation for the fact that you were doing the best that you could with the awareness that you had at the time. But if I'm gonna look at this from a slightly different perspective, what's going on? What might be feeding into this? And essentially, I would say, you know, from from my experience some time ago now with acting, that that's so much of what you're reflecting on in the rehearsal room is what's going on, what's driving this, what's driving this behavior. You know, go out to drivers in the moment to try and understand the performance that you are giving out, but the same sort of mechanisms could be useful to you in understanding yourself. What is driving my behavior in this moment?

Speaker 1 1:19:40

Oh, this is it, absolutely. I mean, you know, within the course, we say, you know, the most important element of great acting is awareness, the ability to observe your own thoughts. And in fact, it's not just the ability, it's because it turns out that you are awareness. The self is pure awareness, it's the it's the watcher of the thoughts. But if the actor develops awareness, well, I say, you know, you're a walking laboratory on what it is to be a human character. So they become aware of their own character and how these principles have shaped their own life as their main sort of template of what a human character is. They understand their own, how their life situations in childhood created certain ideas, they imprinted certain ideas, and how these ideas have created certain desires, and how these desires have created certain courses of action in their life and certain behaviors. And what that does is first of all, it helps them to really understand what a character really is, you know, rather than just uh let's you know learn the lines and make sure we don't bump into the furniture, allows the actor to see when their own drives, you know, their own need to be perfect, their own need to prove their existence, uh, to justify their existence or to prove to their parents that they should have been an actor and not a lawyer, or whatever those sorts of drives are, yeah, to be able to see those and put them aside, yeah, so they can, and this is what it's all about, they can just think the character's thoughts.

Speaker 3 1:21:16

Yes.

Speaker 1 1:21:17

They don't have to take their own baggage on stage with them, they can leave that behind because they know none of it's real, they've done the work on themselves, and they can just do what good actors do, and that's absorb themselves in the character's psyche.

Speaker 2 1:21:30

Yeah.

Speaker 4 1:21:30

And and and that reminds me of two uh contemporaries who did a lot of work with Byrne in the early stages, Bob and Mary Goulding. They were it's part of the group that helped Byrne really to develop and refine his theories. They were the leaders of what isn't known in the transactional analysis world as the redecision school. And they wrote a book about changing lives through redecision. It's about redeciding, where you've understood that you are making decisions that's script bound in a way that's not helpful for you, being able to redecide about what you were going to do moving forward. And what was quite different about their therapy is that rather than it being long and involved sessions, that actually they would work with, I mean, maybe over a period of time, but they would perhaps work with somebody in a group. They'd work with one individual maybe just for 15 minutes. And in 15 minutes, somebody had been able to go, oh yes, actually, that's that is that is my dad's voice in that moment that makes the decision. And you know, and is that true? No, it's not true. So, you know, what are you gonna do differently? I think that's the thing that was connecting with me is that awareness gives you choice. And I think so often when we talk about things that we find difficult, we say, oh, they make me feel like this or they make me do that. And when you realize nobody makes you do anything, sometimes we behave so quickly in reaction, it can feel like somebody else has made us do something, but behavior is always a choice, even if it happens in a nanosecond. And I think once you become aware of your behaviors and aware of sometimes how you can react in a situation and take your own stuff onto stage with you rather than just the character's baggage, once you become aware of that, it opens up your choices about okay, I've understood that I do that, I understand why I do it. Now, knowing that, what am I going to choose to do differently moving forward?

Speaker 1 1:23:22

Yeah, exactly. That that that's why it's our course that I present is much about helping the actor to become free. Yes. And in the process, they're learning how the mind really works and how to to to to evolve and build a character properly. What it really is, is that it's the spiritual psychology of human life for actors. Yes, I think that's it really applies in in anything because but it's only in acting where we have to actually create, yes, you know, that the uh as Stanislavski put it, the life of a human spirit. You know, that's our job to create it. We've got to go beyond just analyzing it and actually embody it and learn how to change our physiology by changing our psychology.

Speaker 4 1:24:03

Yes, yes. Wonderful.

Speaker 1 1:24:07

Well, this has been absolutely brilliant, Sarah. This has been um I I feel like I've learned so much, I've taken so many notes. I for I forget we're doing a podcast. I think I'm in a really interesting class. It's like, hold on, that's a really interesting term. I need to explore that further. Uh, and I I think it's really rich for actors, the study of transaction analysis. Uh, it certainly served me in my understanding, as well as you, Jordan, hasn't it? In your understanding, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 1:24:38

I find it so, yeah, so so interesting. It's like that, yeah. You're saying it's the perfect mix of finding out how human beings operate to then play them convincingly on stage or screen. But then the byproduct of that is you get to you know see all your own stuff that's that's lurking and and sort your own shit out. Yeah. So it's uh yeah, this has been great. Thanks so much, Sarah, for all your time for um the great knowledge that we've uh we've poached.

Speaker 4 1:25:03

Well, well, absolutely. And um, I think most of it's been accurate, so uh that's been good. But no, it's it's I've really loved playing around with transactional analysis with you guys. It's felt a full of full of child energy in the conversations we've had, which I think is what has made them so enjoyable. So thank thank you. As my mum would always want me to say to be polite, girl, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 1:25:27

I would say thank you for being had, but that doesn't sound quite right, does it no, but sincerely though, thank you so much. And I I I really hope the that the listeners get as much from from hearing this as certainly I know that myself and Jordan have from hosting them with you.

Speaker 4 1:25:47

Yeah, well, no, it's been it's been a real joy. I'm always happy to talk about TA and it's in a delight to bring two of my passions and my loves together in in the in performance and transaction analysis. So yeah, it's been lovely. And you know, if for the series you want me to do any sort of you know, Sarah strikes back episodes, very quickly.

Speaker 1 1:26:07

Return of the Sarah, yeah. I was just thinking that that there's so much more to be explored here. So maybe we could take another specific area of of TA and and have a look at that as well.

Speaker 4 1:26:25

Well, you you know where I am, Jens.

Speaker 6 1:26:36

You've been listening to the Spiritual Psychology of Acting podcast. And thank you again to Sarah Lowe's for all of her invaluable input into this miniseries. We're off for the next few weeks, but we'll be back soon with our final episode of the current season. Until then, have a brilliant week and be excellent to each other.