This article is to inspire and ignite our minds and realise the lives we live in complete or partial unawareness of how scripts dominate most of our decisions. I am a diploma student of Transactional Analysis and the decision to study TA has been one of the best decisions I have made for myself in my life. I have always been a careful spender of time and money and always thought that I am born to struggle. I have been trying to get answers for myself, why do I behave the way I do, dealing with the complexity of my polarities and many a times confused with my own behaviour. I have studied psychology to help me get answers to this inner conflict in my mind and I am so glad that TA has helped me to make a beginning in this self -discovery. What we commonly call as faith and destiny is a script that we have written for ourselves and received as a gift from our parents and elders at home. That we are the owners of our own life and have the ability to rewrite it instead of continued unhappiness and suffering ,has been the most important discovery for me.
As I was growing up ,since early childhood I have experienced the exclusions and differential treatment from my parents as compared to their male heir, my brother. I lived for more than 52 years of my life thinking that this was my destiny. TA has given me the answers of how this has impacted my self-esteem and self-worth. The fact that I have been punishing myself by thinking that I do not deserve something good or that I am not good enough is only a frame I choose to live my life by and that it is not too late to regain control of my life. I quote from the wisdom of Panchatantra.
These 5 are fixed for every man
Before he leaves the womb
His length of days, his fate, his wealth,
His learning and his tomb
— Panchatantra 200 BC
I have read a lot of self- help and motivational books that emphasised the importance of positive outlook in life and the gift of gratitude. This failed to satisfy my inner turmoil and reading and studying TA has provided me with a scientific understanding of the reasons and impacts of certain parental injunctions, the drivers I continue to pursue and helped unleash my energy and hidden potential when I have discovered that I could give myself the permission to be autonomous, happy and free. It helped me realise how I let my parents control me and my life all these years. Today I choose to become consciously aware of all the passivity and unhealthy symbiosis in my life.
It set me thinking. What is my life story ? Is it sad, happy, satisfied, fearful resentful, filled with grief and hurt ? What would be the title of my story? How would I choose to write the closing scene ?
As Eric Berne said “The destiny of every human being is decided by what goes on inside his skull when he is confronted with what goes on outside his skull. Each person decides in early childhood how he will live and how he will die.”
TA helped me to understand how I have been seeking comfort in my outdated beliefs and strategies about myself and others around me. The urges were actually racket feelings and not genuine expressions, thus I was living a scripted life. The inherent desire to be accepted and be loved by my parents was the reason for my behaviour that was pushing me always to please my parents, many a times at the cost of impacting my marital life in an adverse way. It has taken me years to gain the strength to say no and be assertive about things I want in my life for myself and not what others want me to do for them. I have also realised that many a times I have been trying to escape from taking personal responsibility of my actions, by blaming my parents. I have understood the reasons that decisions made by me as a kid ,then with my child like intellect ,as I was growing up influenced and impacted me in a very destructive way, I continued to live a scripty life based on what I felt when I was about 6-7 years old, just the time when my sibling was born and I experienced neglect and hatred. I also have become aware of the games that I have been a part of like Kick me, Blemish and a few more ,out of my awareness. Today I am more enduring of how the parental injunctions and drivers have influenced my decisions and mannerisms. Many of the harsh statements still ring in my ears .I acknowledge now that I have a choice to choose my way ahead and not continue to be a victim and lament about it. The freedom ,joy and autonomy that I have been experiencing in the past one year has been very liberating.
To get into the depth I looked within and asked myself these questions .
What did my parents tell me about life when I was little ?
What did my parents say to me when they were angry ?
What kind of conversations did I have with my parents ?
The answers were not pleasing but I understood what lead me to scripty behaviours in my life. The parental programming determined how and when my urges were expressed and how and when the restraints were imposed. I understand today how parental programs sets up the circuits in a certain way in order to get certain results or payoffs. This in turn sets up a lot of passive behaviours, unhealthy symbiosis, racket feelings and games. Such is the influence that all the responses of a child are determined by parental directives even as the child grows up into an adult. It’s like a voice inside the head that constantly tells you what to do and what not to do. The lack of autonomous decisions steals away our opportunity to be free and happy. It’s like a broken record that keeps on playing inside our head telling us that if we do something we are going to hurt somebody. It was a discovery and sheer delight to realize the formula of my script.
Early parental influence : influence of early authority figures on us
Program: denotes how script is organised
Compliance: does the script comply with parental influence or not ?
Important behaviour : behaviours that maintain the script
Payoffs : all scripts have payoffs that maintain the frame of reference
A scripty life steals away from us the ability to live life filled with awareness, spontaneity and impacts the intimacy in our relationships. The drivers and process scripts influence how we discount our ability and potential in decision making and problem solving. The frame of reference itself is distorted. TA helped me to deep dive and realise this . The curses, injunctions, provocations ,prescriptions, adult instructions, demonic impulses and finally the spell breaker is the magic of self-discovery.
When you replace “Why is this happening to me?” with “ What is this trying to teach me ?” everything shifts.
The study of TA has helped me to shift , what about you ?
Suparna's Yugen 