What does “good with people” look like in practice? A successful person must understand what is going on in the mind of those they interact with and be able to respond appropriately, on purpose, rather than react out of a subconscious desire to get his/her own emotional needs met. That’s a tall order!
How many times have you encountered an angry or impatient person, only to wimp out or become angry in return? Where do these patterns of behavior come from?
According to the TA theory developed by Dr. Eric Berne in the mid-1950’s, we all carry around scripts recorded in our brains from the time we were children. The Parental scripts are full of how to’s, do’s and don’ts, from our Parents. The Child scripts are from the intuition, feelings and physical being of the Child we used to be. These ego states are called Parent and Child. At the same time, from about 10 months of age, we start to analyze and evaluate the world around us, comparing it to the things we are taught by our parents and updating the feelings stored in our Child. This ego state is called the Adult.
These Parent, Adult and Child tapes are stored in our subconscious, and we tend to react automatically to people and circumstances from one of these three ego states.
The bad news is that our Parent and Child tapes can’t be erased. The good news, however, is that our Adult can record new information and decide to turn on and off those tapes at will. This freedom to choose our response in a given situation is the key to overcoming negative behavior patterns. If we can slow down and get our Adult out in front as a referee between our Parent and Child, we can consciously choose an appropriate response to the situation in front of us.
Are you stuck in self-defeating behavior patterns? Will you commit to building your understanding of your own life scripts, how they developed and what you can do about them? Developing an awareness of your internal transactional analysis is a good first step to gauging the appropriateness of how you react to others.
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