Life script over the life span

Kahless says

Our development goes back to childhood but we do evolve in adulthood. So the 'issues' (lack of va va vroom) in my forties is not something I remember feeling in my twenties. So I have 'evolved' for want of a better word. I am not sure I repressed my child ego state in my twenties.

Life script

0 - 6 years - life script formation


All children have to learn to trust, but are the parents trustworthy?

6 - 12 years - latency period. Crystallisation of the life script decisions made previously

12 - 20+ years - antiscript period where the life script is rejected to some degree. Emotional pain can be ignored or seen as a temporary aberration and thus counselling in a serious way may be avoided. Teens and twenty somethings can still think they can handle it and outside assistance is not necessary. If things don’t get better by the late 20s or early 30s they can’t cope anymore and seek counsel. For instance if there are panic attacks or depression this can be the case.

20+ - late 30s - Implementation of the practicalities necessary for conclusion of the life script to be lived out. A whole series of decisions over an extended time will be made to guarantee the life script comes to its final chapter. Financial decisions, relationship decisions, career decisions, where I live decisions, how I live decisions, how I recreate decisions, educational decisions and so forth.


Each of these women will construct the practicalities of their life such that their life script will be fulfilled.

40+/50+ years - The life script becomes clearer as the person ends up in the in the life circumstances that were decided on in the first 6 years of life.

In the period from 0 to late 30s years of age the actual outcome of the life script has not occurred and thus one could argue that in one sense the person is kind of script free. In that period the person is still collecting all the life experiences (reinforcing memories and feelings) and structuring the practicalities of their day to day living that are necessary for the final chapter of the life script to come to fruition.



Sometimes the teens, 20s and 30s can be quite good times that are at odds to the final life script outcome. But as one hits about 40 years of age the life script begins to show it self clearly. Both the healthy life scripts and unhealthy life scripts.

Graffiti

Lifestye and the repetition compulsion

Roses says in a comment on the last post

“Why then, is it that we need so badly to be locked in to a script?”

Our current leader of the opposition in Australia, Tony Abbott, got himself into hot water last week. He made the comment that for some homeless people it was a matter of lifestyle choice. That some chose that lifestyle to live.

The opposite argument to this is that it is not their choice but a result of poor economic conditions, neglectful government for the homeless and so forth. The psychologist would say that it is neither but it is something else altogether.

I worked in a prison for three years and without a doubt if an inmate wants to acquire work skills, improve their education level and so forth the opportunity is definitely there. There is a small group who do use their prison time to improve self but the majority do not tend to. Is that their choice? Most would say yes.

The good life

As one works with people over the years one finds that people will create lifestyles that are reflective of how they view themselves. If one has a good perception of self and respects self then over time they will create a lifestyle and relationships that reflect that belief of self. They create a good quality of life.

If one has been told they are useless, not wanted, beaten and neglected then they will tend to have a poor view of self. If this happens then as they go through life they will create relationships and lifestyles that reflect that poor view of self.

Hence those with a poor view of self will tend to end up destitute, in prison, a habitual drug user and so forth. However it is not always the down and outers. Having worked most of my life in private practice my clients have tended to be those who are financially stable. I have seen plenty of rich people who have horrible lives in terms of relationships, emotions and the predicaments they get themselves into. So its not just about homelessness and money.

Successful boxers a notorious for ending up with tragic lives

It is the long term out come that reflects ones level of self esteem

Just look at man of the moment - Tiger. His father drove him relentlessly and was swinging a golf club by age 2 and he has not been able to stop until just recently. He has plenty of money but what is the quality of his life? What it is in the long run will be a reflection of how he views himself. If he comes out of this and falls on his feet as they say then we know he has at least a reasonable opinion of himself. If he does not then he views himself in a much less favourable light and will create a crappy life for himself.

However the point at hand is that people will do this relentlessly. It is a very powerful driving force in them such that one could call it a compulsion and indeed Freud coined the term - repetition compulsion. People will tend to compulsively repeat the same over and over again and thus over time they end up with the same sort of lifestyle, relationships and so forth.

So it is a compulsion to adopt the same life script over and over. This means some of the homeless (like prisoners) will not take up the opportunities available to ‘improve’ their circumstances. This does happen and thus one can understand why some see it as a choice. The opportunities are there and they will not take them in the long run.

Is that a choice or a compulsion to create a lifestyle that reflects the current self image? If one decides it is a choice then the homeless are to blame. If one decides it is a compulsion to repeat the life script then it is not their fault and they are victims of unlucky circumstances.

Can it be a bit of both? Some do take up the opportunities and create a better life for self. Each and everyday I work with people who do precisely that. The goal is to improve ones view of self. If that happens then it is inevitable they will create better lifestyle for self. It will only be a matter of time until that is achieved.

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Antiscript and the male mid life crisis

Eric Berne in his book “What do you say after you say hello” talks about the Antiscript. Here is a diagram of the antiscript. The child is born and from that point on it needs to make sense out of the world and who it is. In Transactional Analysis terms the child does that by making a whole series of early decisions based on how it is treated by its parents. As these are being made the child then comes to the conclusion about its life position or its basic understanding of its worth and the worth of others.

After these have been establish the child then is on the path of his life script. Some simply stay on that path and live their life following their script to its conclusion. Others when they reach adolescence veer away from the life script path onto the path of the what Eric Berend called the antiscript. At this point they stop following the life script, rebel against it and stop living by the injunctions and drivers given by the parents.

This will include the Rebellious Child ego state doing the opposite of the script programme as well as the Free Child trying out new non-script bound behaviours, feelings, attitudes and decisions.

The antiscript in adolescence usually lasts about 5 to 6 years and then we have the most important part of the antiscript process. When the teenager starts to get to the end of their antiscript period what do they do then? The main question is how much do they just swing back to the life script path and live that life out. This is where the counsellor can be of considerable use to the teenager. At that point where the antiscript period is ending.

Some people swing back one hundred percent to the life script path and spend the rest of their days living it out. Others swing back in varying degrees, that is they use the experience of their RC rebellions and their Free Child experimentations of the antiscript period to make non-script bound decisions on how they want to live their life. Using various therapy techniques the counsellor can help the teenager at this time in this way. From what I have seen most often the therapeutic opportunities afforded by the antiscript process are lost in counselling as the counsellor does not seize the moment to the advantage of the adolescent.

Some people spend much longer periods in the antiscript and will live a life style that is very contrary to what the parents programme was for them. For instance the man whose parents groomed him to be an accountant ends up living like a feral in the bush on a commune, living off the land. He does not swing back at all to the life script and stays stuck in the antiscript which can last for many years.

The other thing the counsellor needs to be advising, is for the teenager to avoid making major life decisions whilst in antiscript. For instance never choose a marital partner whilst in antiscript. My suggestion is that for Australian conditions never get married before the age of 25 years. The swing back from antiscript to script can be quite rapid and involve quite a marked change in personality, life goals and so forth. In a matter of 12 months a person can change quite dramatically on occasion. The person you married may all of a sudden go through major changes in their views, attitudes and goals of life.

This also applies in a choice of career which people in their late teens and early 20s are often considering. Letting the teenager know that they have time to choose and indeed may try a variety of occupational paths before ending up with the one they want. This can be a problem for some parents who want the child to get on a career path by age 19 when they go to university, take up a trade and so forth. The counsellor of the teenager can find it difficult going because of difficulties with the parents of the teenager rather than the teenager.

After the adolescent antiscript period ends once again people will continue on their life path with much less disruption to the person’s life script that occurred with the antiscript. Sometimes however there can be another period of antiscript disruption later in life. For some men this occurs with the mid life crisis.

The man has spent the past 20 years being responsible, working diligently, doing the right thing by supporting the family and so forth. At around 40 he realises this, looks at the next 30 years of his life and sees the same looming for him. For some this can be very disturbing such that they again move into an antiscript period. He leaves his wife, starts dating women half his age, buys a sports car, starts going to night clubs and hanging out with the ‘tragic’ singles set. He is doing the same as the teenager in that he realises what his life script is and thus makes a loud and unsophisticated attempt to alter it and veer onto a different life path.

From a therapy perspective the goals are the same as for the teenager. With the use of various therapy techniques the man is afforded the opportunity to use the experience of his RC rebellions and Free Child experimentations of the antiscript period to make non-script bound decisions on how he wants to live his life.

As with the teenager from what I have seen most often the therapeutic opportunities afforded by the mid life crisis antiscript period are lost in counselling as the counsellor does not seize the moment to the advantage of the middle aged man.

The key from a counselling point of view for any antiscript period is when the person is coming to the end of it one uses it to the therapeutic advantage of the client in the ways that I have described. Indeed there are many therapeutic interventions the therapist can use with the client when they are in the heights of the antiscript process that will also assist when the antiscript process in coming to its closure.

Graffiti

Highs, lows & life

I like it when an idea comes together. This post has its roots in two separate writings that are far apart but that I did just happen to read at about the same time. They worked as a catalyst for each other and bingo!! I ended up with this.

My delay in writing this is because it comes from a Parent ego state contract given to me by Kahless - yes it’s all her fault!

She wrote about her teenage years (see here) and then said that I had to because she did. She says that her teenage years were a bit boring. Well I must admit, from what she wrote one could conclude that but I suspect there were bits that she deleted or didn’t elaborate on that could have spiced it up a bit.

So I thought about my teenage years and what I could write. As I did this I also read a brief article written by a psychologist about what in essence amounts to a meditation and relaxation approach to therapy. It stated that when ever one had a negative emotion (she actually used that phrase) like anger or sadness or fear then one can basically meditate it away, and she describes how that is done.

This disturbed me and made me question what I do as a therapist.

My teenage years weren’t boring, like some others may have been. It was charged with a lot of highs and a lot of lows (and a few mediums as well). There were not a lot of dull moments and there was plenty of action both physically and emotionally. The good times were great and the low times were sometimes very low.

Then I thought, well if I successfully did the meditative therapy as suggested by this woman then there would be very few low times. I would of only had highs and mediums in my teenage years.

OMG!! Is that what I am doing with my clients? I hope not.

But then I was left with another conundrum. As I reflected on my teenage years I felt good about them because there were highs and also because there were lows. I wouldn’t want a life where I only had highs and mediums so I felt good about the lows as well. It made me feel like I had lived that part of my life such that it had texture and varied experience which is what I want in my life. It gave me a feeling that my life at least at that time had some depth and was full flavoured. I liked that.

But then came the conundrum. The low times gave my life some depth and also it allowed me a more fuller and complete understanding of the highs and the mediums. If I had never had any lows then my understanding of the highs and mediums would be limited and one dimensional.

Upon reflection I was glad that I had had the lows but at the time of the lows I was not glad at all and wanted the lows to go away. If I had successfully done the mediative therapy then I would have achieved that but then on later reflection my life would only have highs and mediums and thus be one dimensional and boring.

So are the lows a good thing or a bad thing?

As a therapist am I stopping clients having lows so their lives are more one dimensional, lack a depth and rich texture?

Graffiti

Working with the indecisive client.

At times clients present with the difficulty of not being able to make a decision about something. Life has offered them a fork in the road and they cannot decide which path to take. It may be to leave a job or stay, to move to another state or not, what course of study to take and so forth.

Of course the problem is not the actual decision but the psychological forces at work in the decision making process. In a decision about whether to do A or B there are actually three solutions.

1. Decide to do A

2. Decide to do B

3. Stay undecided or as it is called in psychotherapy - to stay stuck.

This child has made a decision why can’t some adults

Sometimes people can’t take solution 3 for very long because the circumstances mean a decision has to be made. For instance a new job is offered to you and you are given a month to decide. In this case one can make a decision by not making a decision. If the person remains undecided then they don’t take the new job. The decision is forced upon them and they don’t actually make any decision. Sometimes people can take solution 3 for many years such as in deciding to leave a marriage, or deciding to look for a new job or not.

So why would a person choose solution three? There could be a number of reasons.

They may have what is called a “stuck racket”. The person remains stuck or undecided and then agonises over and over about it. Here they are getting plenty of psychological strokes which we all need and it will also be proving to them some life script decision they made as a child. That early decision could have been something like, “Life is never easy”. They then set about establishing a life that is hard work and one way to do that is by agonising over decisions. This client needs to change the early decision and get their strokes in other ways.

Some people have what is called an “Always’ life script. This person was told by their parents - “Now you have made your bed you have to lie in it”. Once you have made a decision you have to live with it forever. As you can imagine this person will be very cautious about making big decisions because they have the view that they can’t change their mind later on. Which of course is a nonsense. This client needs the permission that it is OK to change their mind later on which of course one usually can.

There are times however when the decision is a one off and one cannot change their mind later, such as with a one time job offer. This raises another possible feature of the indecisive person. They think - “What if I make the wrong decision and regret it for the rest of my days”. I have always found this an odd sort of thought. This person needs to live in the Here & Now as the diagram shows. This person lives too much in the past rather than the Here & Now.

If I look back at my life in hindsight I can see that I made some bad decisions along the way but isn’t that the tapestry of life? What would my life be like if I had always made the right decision? However this is still missing the point. If I made the decision to go path A and in hindsight it probably would have been better to go path B what does that matter. I am now on path A and that means there will be whole set of life events and circumstances that are going to come my way. I have never been one to see the glass half empty, or to see if the neighbour’s grass is greener. It is a change in focus from regretting the past to looking at what one has now and what the future holds.

Some are indecisive because they have lost touch with their Free Child ego state. The Free Child knows what is the right decision to make. Those who are so shut off from that aspect of their personality can end up indecisive because they don’t get a feeling of what is the right decision. With such clients I sometimes flip a coin.

They have worked out all the pros and cons for decision A and decision B and they weigh up fairly equal. So the person remains undecided. I set the scene. I get out a coin and say heads is decision A and tails is decision B. By this time the client is wide eyed and feeling “Holy s**t my life is based on the flip of a coin!”.

The coin is flipped and it comes up heads so decision A it is. At that point sometimes the client will respond in one of two ways.

1. “Damn I wanted it to be tails!”

2. “Phew that’s a relief”

We have found out what decision the Free Child wanted.

Finally we have the indecisive client who is a dependent personality and basically wants me to make the decision for them. Do I make it for them? Watch this space.

Graffiti