Procrastination and the Parent contract (Part 3)

In order to gain a more robust understanding of the Parent ego state contract one must eventually examine the phenomena of procrastination as the two are closely linked. It also highlights how humans can be self defeating even when they are quite aware of doing so.

Procrastination has its origins with some kind of Parent ego state ‘telling off’ by either the person them self or from some outside source. This moves the person from the Free Child to the Adapted Child ego state. The pathological procrastinator is the person who has forgotten what they want. They have become caught up in what others want them to do.



As soon as one is told to do something that makes it harder for them to decide if they want to. As soon as one told to do something their Adapted Child ego state is being enlivened. Pressure is put on the person to go into that ego state which makes it harder for them to respond from the Free Child ego state or the Adult.

Pressure is put on the person to respond from CC or RC (which are both subsets of the Adapted Child ego state). In either instance they are not responding from a decision on what they want. That comes from an understanding of the FC need, then an Adult decision on that FC need.



This diagram shows how a Parent ego state directive moves the FC away and stimulates the AC in the personality.


The FC does not reject the the parental directive it simply does not listen to it. It is hard to respond from FC if someone else is repeatedly telling you what to do. Each time a Parent transaction is perceived the AC is more alert.

The problem for the procrastinator is he has lost sight of what he wants. His AC has been stroked so many times by the Parent transactions from self and others that the FC is lost. He has forgotten what his FC wants.

This is why the “telling” type of therapies can have trouble. The therapist that tells the client what to do negates the client being aware of their own Free Child need.

For example the therapist who says to the client; “Stop smoking marijuana”. The client is put into a position where it is harder for him to know if his FC wants to stop smoking. Then the Adult can not make a decision on what the FC need is. The therapist is pressuring him to respond from either CC or RC.



Long term behavioural change will happen when there is a FC want. The client may have even wanted to start giving up marijuana but if told to do so he will begin to loose sight of that. Regaining an understanding of one’s own FC is one central component to dealing with pathological procrastination.

The procrastination transaction.
All Parent contracts involve an internal transaction that forms the basis of procrastination.



As the client makes a Parent contract one knows there is an internal CP transaction inside telling the client he is bad. The client then will most likely respond from either CC or RC.

If they respond mainly from CC they will slowly descend into depression or a sense of low self worth. If one tells a child repeatedly that it is wrong or bad eventually the child will take it on and develop a low self esteem. This is particularly so for the child who does not fight back.

We are all born with one primary response to stress either fight, flight or freeze. The child who freezes is the most vulnerable as they will tend to take on the external criticism from a CC position. Those who have a basic sense of fight in their temperament will tend to respond from RC to parental directives. Thus we have the basis of the pathological procrastinator as shown by the procrastination transaction.



The procrastination transaction is quite a simple. It involves a CP transaction to the Child ego state. This is responded to by the RC in a disguised way. It is not open rebellion against the Parent ego state. If that happens then procrastination cannot occur. Indeed this is another way to deal with procrastination. To bring the hidden rebellion out into the open.

The chronic procrastinator initially gives the perception of agreeing to the parental directive. Often they will be convinced of such a thing them self but underneath the RC has no intention of complying. Hence you end up with procrastination.

The woman brings work from the office home. She has to write a report which she plans to do after the evening meal. She is complying to a Parent ego state directive to work at home this evening to catch up at the office. She prepares well by putting her paperwork next to the computer ready to go. She then has dinner which tends to drag on with a long coffee and discussion with hubby afterwards.



Eventually she sits down at the computer, turns it on and realises she has to go to the restrooms. On the way back she makes herself a little snack and notices a magazine on the side board which she flicks through for a while. Eventually she gets back to the computer, is ready to go when she notices a new incoming message in her email. It is a long lost friend from high school who has found her on FaceBook and requested her as a friend. She immediately confirms the friend request and must chat with her as they were such good friends such along time ago. She goes onto Facebook and that is the next two hours gone. Finally at 11pm she quickly types half a page of the report before she has to go to bed feeling angry and frustrated with herself.

All along she gives the appearance of complying to the CP directive and all along the RC is sabotaging the plan making sure it is not going to happen or only happen in a half arsed form. These transactions can (and often do) go on endlessly for many years. Hence we end up with the pathological procrastinator.

1. Lost touch with what the FC wants
2. Tries to comply with the CP directive
3. Has an active underhanded RC which will not comply

Procrastination is the consequence of an internal Parent contract. In the example of the woman above she made a Parent contract with herself, “I should take the report home tonight and finish it so I can catch up at work”. She made this contract with herself and as we can see she has an active RC and thus considerable procrastination eventuated.

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Parent contract and counterscript action (Part 2)

In Transactional Analysis terms a contract can be made from any of the three ego states. They are worded in three different ways. A client is contracting to loose weight.



If the novice client comes to therapy and says, “I should loose some weight” the therapist knows that is a Parent contract. A contract that is motivated by the Parent ego state. The bottom line of human nature is that the Child ego state will always win out in the long run. What the Child ego state wants is what the person will end up doing in the long run.

In Parent the client may say they should loose weight and from their Adult ego state confirm that it makes sense to loose weight, which it does. This will all amount to nothing unless the Child agrees in some way or form. If the Child ego state says it likes food and does not like exercise then in the long run it is going to eat nice tasting food and not do much exercise.



In most cases the Child ego state wants will predominate fairly quickly. The person may start a new diet and within a week or two or three it is pretty much forgotten. The person may take out a new six month gym membership and after a month they don’t get there very often. In each case the power of the Child in the personality dominates over the influence of the Parent and Adult ego states. Even when the Adult thinks it is perfectly rational and sensible to loose weight, which it usually is, that does not matter as far as the Child aspect of the personality is concerned.

There is an exception to this which is called counterscript action. Some people can exert considerable influence over self from the Parent ego state. They may be highly self controlled people or have a severe self punitive attitude. They are capable of depriving their own Child needs for an extended period of time.

If this is the case then the Parent contract will work for longer periods of time than the customary few weeks or months. The person may loose 20 kilos for a year or two. However still the Child will win out in the end and the weight goes back on as the Parent ego state looses dominance in the personality over time. In these cases one gets what is called yo-yo weight loss. They can loose significant weight for an extended period of time but eventually is put back on. People who do this are capable of severely clamping down on their own Child needs which indicates some significant psychological maladjustment. It can indicate significant self loathing or anger.


Child ego state

One can now see how important it is for the therapist to identify when a client is presenting a Parent contract. If missed the client can do work on a piece of behaviour over a number of weeks and it is never going to work in the end. Indeed if the therapist gets a sense of the work not going anywhere this may be a sign it is a Parent contract and thus one goes looking for it.

Some are easy to identify. In any contract to loose weight, exercise more, stop drinking, reduce drug taking, working harder it is highly likely there is a Parent contract in there somewhere. They are easy to identify when a client makes a contract that uses Parent ego state language. “I should loose weight”, “I must go to work on Saturday mornings”, “My wife says I need to say what I am feeling” are all relatively easy to identify as Parent ego state contracts.

These are contracts which obviously the Child ego state will not like. Other Parent contracts come from a significant rather than one the client wants to make. For example, “My wife says she will leave me if I don’t get counselling” is very likely to be a Parent contract. With any coerced client there at least partly a Parent contract to the therapy.


The Child ego state will always win out in the end



Novice clients make it easier to identify Parent contracts because of the language they use. That is Parent ego state language as stated above. With the experienced client it is not so easy. As the client learns about Parent contracts and the words used by the Parent ego state they can then change the language. They learn the culture of the therapy approach and fit in with that and that includes using the language.

What the therapist is wanting a client to say in a contract is something like, “I want to stand up to my mother” or “I want to take some time off work”. “Want”, is a good word to have in a contract as it reflects Child ego state investment in the contract. As clients become more experienced they learn the language and may unconsciously change the language to fit the culture or to try and convince self they want it when really they don’t.


The Child ego state wants what it wants - whether good or bad


The experienced client may say, “I want to complete my thesis” when underneath the real contract is, “You should finish your thesis you lazy bum”. A Parent ego state contract is presented as a Child ego state contract because the experienced client knows the language and culture of the therapy. They are not setting out to deceive the therapist they are just wanting to do the right thing.

Any contract can have a Parent contract hidden in it. A mother may come to therapy and say she wants to learn boundary setting with her son. That seems like a very reasonable request. Behind it however there is the belief, “I am a bad mother who is hurting my children and should know better”. The therapist needs to ascertain if there is any Parent ego state involvement in the contract being presented.

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