Everything depends on the Frame of Reference in script theory

Berne defines life  script as “an unconscious life plan”.

The frame of reference is defined by  Schiff’s as the structure of associated responses which integrates the various ego-states in response to specific stimuli. Frame of reference can be thought of as a ‘filter on reality’. FOR provides the individual with an overall perceptual, conceptual, affective and action set, which is used to define the self, other people and the world. FOR can be thought of as skin that surrounds the ego states, binding them together. Frame of reference related to TA  concepts :

FOR and scripts : Script forms part of the frame of reference.  The script  consists of all the definitions in the frame of reference which entail discounts. When I am in  script , I am ignoring the here and now reality relevant in the situation to solve the issue. I am discounting myself and my ability and replaying outdated definitions of myself, others and the world.

E.g. : As a child Tom has received messages from his parents that he was worthless and useless. As a grownup ,when Tom has to take decisions at work ,the same message is replayed in his mind ,whereby he is discounting himself of his ability to solve the problem because in his head he still recalls being told that he was useless and worthless. So,  although Tom is an adult now,his child ego state discounts his own thinking ability making him feel inadequate and weak.

FOR and redefining : In redefining I have distorted my perception of reality so that it fits my scrip. As a child ,we make script decisions as a way to survive and get by in a hostile world. So, when we grow up ,if we continue to believe that we need to cling on to those early decisions and beliefs in order to survive , I have redefined my FOR  in order to fit the current reality in my scripty decisions. So, when my scripty frame of reference is threatened, I defend against the threat  by redefining.

E.g. : As a child Tom has constantly been hearing that he was useless. So, although he is a grown up man now, he gets into a script ,reruns this old survival strategy and he redefines reality by discounting his ability to be able to be useful and solve problems on his own.

FOR and redefining transactions: Redefining transactions is when a person is displaying behaviours as an external manifestation of discounting that is happening internally. Every discount represents a distortion of reality. The signs of discounting could be visible when a person shows grandiosity or a thinking disorder. Two distinctive transactions give clear verbal evidence of redefining ,tangential transaction and blocking transaction.

Tangential transactions: A tangential transaction is one in which the stimulus and response address different issues or address the same issue from different perspectives. In a very stressful situation ,people tend to redefine it by way of tangential transaction. The purpose is to divert the other person away from the issue which constitutes  the threat and this is outside of the person’s conscious awareness.

E.g. : My son to me ,” This is a good laptop, I think you should buy it. What do you say ?”

My reply ,”Youngsters like you are so tech savvy and find manoeuvring around the different apps so easily .”

Here I am unable to take a decision ,maybe looking at the high cost. Instead of saying no, I beat around the busy and give a very tangential reply ,that does not give him an answer to his question. Here I am discounting my ability to decide.

Blocking transaction :  In this the purpose of raising an issue is avoided by disagreeing about the definition of the issue. At a psychological level. the reason for blocking is to avoid addressing  issues that would threaten the frame of reference of either or both participants. The conversation may come to a halt in a dumbfounded silence.

E.g. : “ How did you find the food ? ,I asked my husband .

“You mean, whether it was tasty or whether it was value for money ?” replied my husband.I felt stumped at the answer. Here my question was not only avoided by conveniently bypassed.

FOR and stroke filter and stroke economy :People filter the strokes which they want to suit their frame of reference and accept strokes that help them maintain their frame of reference. Similarly stroke economy strengthens their understanding of them FOR and helps to maintain it.

FOR and games and racketeering : Every game and racket involves an attempt to establish a symbiotic relationship and begins with a discount. This is indicative of the ego state and  frame of reference sought by each game player. Every individual is responding to a situation by ignoring the reality of what is happening and how each player feels and by dealing exclusively from an internal frame of reference.

E.g. :When I tell my family ” if you want to eat chicken biryani, I will make it for you now.” Although I am saying this verbally, I am suppressing my feeling of tiredness and need to sleep.

Script forms part of frame of reference. FOR in total is made up of a large number of  definitions, some which entail discounts, others do not. The script consists of all the definitions in the frame of reference which entail discounts. People use redefining transactions to maintain an established view of themselves, other people and the world i.e., Frame of reference, in order to advance their scripts.

Yugen # 34 Transactional Analysis – A Brief Introduction

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
― Rumi

Transactional Analysis is a theory of Personality and systematic psychotherapy for personal development and personal change. This concept was given by Eric Berne.Eric Berne was born on May 10, 1910, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, as Eric Lennard Bernstein. He was the son of David Hillel Bernstein, MD, a general practitioner, and Sarah Gordon Bernstein, a professional writer and editor. His only sibling, his sister Grace, was born five years later. The family immigrated to Canada from Poland and Russia. Berne’s father died of tuberculosis when Berne was 11. His mother then supported herself and her two children working as an editor and writer. She encouraged her son to follow in his father’s footsteps and to study medicine. After completing his one-year internship in 1936, he began his psychiatric residency at the Psychiatric Clinic of Yale University School of Medicine, where he worked for two years.

He developed the tripartite scheme used today (Parent, Adult, and Child), introduced the three-circle method of diagramming it, showed how to sketch contaminations, labelled the theory, “structural analysis”, and termed it “a new psychotherapeutic approach”.By the 1970s, because of TA’s non-technical and non-threatening jargon and model of the human psyche, many of its terms and concepts were adopted by eclectic therapists as part of their individual approaches to psychotherapy. Within the framework of transactional analysis, more recent transactional analysts have developed different and overlapping theories of transactional analysis: cognitive, behavioural, relational, redecision, integrative, constructivist, narrative, body-work, positive psychological, personality adaptational, self-reparenting, psychodynamic and neuro constructivist

Berne was influenced by many teachers who influenced his thinking and inspired him to work on this field for therapy to patients. Professor Eugen Kahn, German Psychiatrist and Eric Berne teacher on psychoanalytic theories,Dr. Paul Federn Austrian ,American psychologist spoke of functions of ego formation,Professor Erik Erikson, German American developmental Psychologist and Psychoanalyst worker and taught Eric Berne on psychotherapy and Sigmund Freud, Austrian neurologist laid the foundation of phenomena of transference and resistance and multi- faceted components of personality

Assumptions  and Principles in TA :

(1)People are OK. This is the fundamental acceptance that regardless of what you do, no matter what you think, or despite your feelings you are a worthwhile, valuable person in your own right. You are special. Everyone is special. We are all as important as each other. This is a statement of essence and not behaviour.

My personal takeaways from this are

• You and I both have worth, value and dignity.
• You accept me as me and I accept you as you.
• We are all equal and no one is one up on the other.
• I recognise your presence in my life and acknowledge you for being you and vice versa.
• I will not attempt to change people to suit my needs ,although the person has a different appearance and qualities that do not fit into my frame .
• I will accept people openly for what they are over what they do and have.
• I must respect everybody and accept them as they are.
• Positive reinforcement increases the feeling of OKness in all of us.
• Each person has validity, importance and equality of respect.
• Each of us deserves positive strokes because we all co -exist.
• I must positively stroke and accept the damaged and unaccepted  parts of my personality to heal myself. I can change myself by stroking the rejected part and making it unite with the accepted part of my personality.
• My awareness of myself and my behaviour with people around me will heal me of my damages, pain and suffering.

2) We can all think. If we have all got the capacity to think then we have all got the capacity to work out what we want and work out how to get there.

My personal takeaways from this are

• Everyone who has a functional brain can think.
• Everyone can decide and live the consequences of their choices
• I should not underestimate anyone’s ability to think and decide.
• I should not look down or judge anyone’s capabilities.
• All have a basic lovable core and desire for personal growth.

3)People decide their own destiny and have the power to change these decisions at any time. If we got to where we are today because of the decisions that we made then it’s within our power to change these decisions. We can be who we want to be and achieve our goals if that’s what we choose to do. Small changes may start the process and build up to larger changes when it feels safe.  It’s about getting around the barriers to change together.  Sometimes they need kicking down, sometimes we go round them and sometimes we realise that although they look like they are there, when we examine them up close, they are not there at all.

My personal takeaways from this are

• I have only one life  and I am making my own life.
• I make my own decisions and have to face the consequences of those decisions.
• I have to take ownership of our own decisions and be accountable for the actions and results.
• The power to change my life lies with me.
• With awareness I can change my life to a more meaningful and fulfilling one.
• I will not resort to luck and fate and blame others for my problems.
• All emotional difficulties in life are curable.

PRINCIPLES OF TA:

• Contract which can be an administrative one as well as a psychological contract emphasising on mutual respect ,trust and confidentiality. This enables to set expectations and goals for parties involved in TA.
• Open communication which is free of jargons and acknowledges that you and I are on equal levels.This enables mutual acceptance, respect and non- violent communication between the parties.

Yugen #33 The Magic of studying Transactional Analysis : My Journey of discovering my script by looking within

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 ?

Yugen #22 What spirituality means to me…

2020 is the year for  survival . Homo Sapiens across the globe have spent most of the year in quarantine ,with social distancing and restricted movements. The emotional burden has been huge and called in for toughness, mental resilience, discipline and loads of self – care and hygiene. Never before have we faced a global pandemic as this year and the survivors will have a lot of tales to recall and regale audience with.  A sudden awareness for yoga, meditation and developing immunity in these troubled times have emerged. Another phenomenon had been the sudden spike in web – based knowledge sharing  events, webinars  to keep one occupied joyfully has been the endeavour of many an enterprising  trainers, speaker and motivators.

Its been once in a lifetime opportunity to spend meaningful time with our family, catch with long lost friendships and rekindle them over long chats on the phone. Many have brought out those books to read which have been on the shelves for want of time. Others have discovered their new found love for cooking ,baking, gardening and other creative arts. Over all its been a great opportunity to spend with oneself and discover the spiritual side of each one of us for mental peace and striking an emotional balance.

In these times I often wondered what does spirituality actually mean to me ?

Spirituality is about that pause that I take while doing something  and discovering that space within me that is greater than me. It is a kind of connection with everything around me, the ability to consciously observe  the power of inter connectivity and still be in a state of stillness and calmness to experience all the miracles in day to day life with awareness of the abundance .

For me spirituality is my conversations with my elder brother whom I fondly call Dadaji, expressing gratitude for my life, lone and existence. It is about the energy and inner pull that I experience and see it manifest in me and others around me. It is about my ability to detach myself and still appreciate the joys and gifts of life.

Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself .              —–   Rumi