Timur Batrutdinov and Garik Kharlamov relationship. A huge scandal: Timur Batrutdinov is in no hurry to defend Olga Buzova, who was called a prostitute
What is a life script? What impact do parenting programs have on a person’s life plan? Keys of fate - we find our main scenarios. The article “Correcting the Life Scenario” continues the posts “Freedom or Predestination?”, “How are people programmed? ”and thematically intersects with “Map of life - algorithms of fate”, “Our killers are “cockroaches” in the head”.
With this article I am opening a practical course on changing your destiny. The materials on the topic published before have a lot of useful information, but there are no step-by-step practices. Over the years of work, an effective and efficient system has developed, which I will introduce you to.
Life Scenario - Basic Programs
Psychology, psychoanalysis and psychosynthesis, as well as all applied areas with the prefix psycho- agree that the child develops initial ideas that subsequently determine values and life position. In many ways, they determine fate. Some schools call them basic guidelines, others call them frameworks or programs.
These are the first programs that form attitudes to events. All subsequent ones, as a rule, fit within these frameworks and never violate their boundaries.
It turns out that basic programs build the boundaries of our attitude and, accordingly, behavior. It is these programs that determine the scenario of fate. The last point is worth clarifying.
Is our conscious behavior may go against unconscious programs. However, it will contain sabotaging elements that we most often will not even notice. These are aberrations of behavior or state, which, most likely, will cross out the opportunity to achieve the result desired by consciousness, but contrary to unconscious programs. A lot has been written and filmed about this, I don’t see the point in giving examples.
What forms the basic programs?
The framework within which we develop is a consequence of imprinting. First of all, it is a reaction to the trauma of birth and childhood physical and mental trauma. The second most important is direct and indirect suggestion at the moment of imprint vulnerability. Take a look at the diagram:
The size of the circle determines the significance of the factor.
Types of basic programs
Basic programs formed in the first years of life are aimed at survival. Psychologists identify the main group associated with human well-being in the world. These are existential positions that form all the basic values and, accordingly, the worldview of the individual. A program for the well-being of yourself, your environment and the world as a whole. It can have four forms, schematically it is a matrix:
People with a position in the green and yellow square claim and achieve. In gray - they claim, but do not achieve. In red - they don’t even pretend to be. For all people, except those in the green square, fear and violence permeate the mental organization and, accordingly, fate.
Attitudes are unconscious beliefs. Accordingly, our thoughts, dreams, expectations and behavior bear the imprint of these beliefs. Sometimes obvious, but most often subtle.
The bottom two squares are for people with chronic basal anxiety. Yellow square - paranoid fears, similar to the search for conspiracies and intrigues in the environment and the world as a whole. The people in the green square make up less than 3% of the world's population.
Belief Clarification Practice
Theory must contribute to the implementation of applied tasks, otherwise it is fruitless. I also talk about basic programs for a reason. The exercise below is mandatory. If you skip it, working through further material is a waste of time.
Exercise “Your beliefs about people”
Step-by-step instruction:
- Take a piece of paper and a pen.
- Relax. The main thing is to relieve fatigue from your back and eyes, stretch, bend over, massage your eyelids. If some thoughts haunt you, remember a silly song or rhyme. Repeat it for a few minutes or focus on your breathing.
I block of questions
1. When you think about people, what is the first thought that comes to your mind?
It is necessary to write down a negative thought, and not a thought in general.
2. Second?
3. Third?
4. Fourth?
6. Sixth?
8. At what point did the negative end? Why? What came to mind?
This must be stated in detail, even if the answers are like “I can’t find the words,” “I said everything,” and the like.
II block of questions
1. Which thoughts from those written out in the first block came from childhood?
Write them down, indicate whether they were generated by your own sad experience or copied from peers, parents or relatives. We need to be clear on this issue.
2. Which one do you think is the best? negative thought about people at your mom's place?
Write what comes to mind. What matters is not what she thought or really thinks, but your thoughts.
3. What do you think your dad has the most negative thought about people?
4. What about your friend?
5. Let me down common denominator– write down a sentence made up of phrases that come to mind.
The next step in our program is to find out what you think about yourself.
Your beliefs about yourself
Step-by-step instruction:
- Treat with full responsibility for the upcoming exercise.
- Find at least 20 minutes of quiet time internal work.
- Mute your phone or turn it off.
- Take a piece of paper and a pen.
- Relax. Relieve back and eye fatigue - stretch, bend, massage your eyelids. If some thoughts haunt you, remember a silly song or rhyme. Repeat it for a few minutes or focus on your breathing.
- Answer questions honestly and impartially. When a person deceives others, it’s theater; when he deceives himself, it’s a clinic.
- Don’t construct the answer, it will come on its own, almost instantly. All answers are blanks that we have used many, many times.
- Not only thoughts are important, but also their order. Therefore, write it down immediately and clearly number it.
Questions:
1. What is the first negative thought about yourself that comes to your mind?
2. Second thought?
3. Third?
4. What did/does dad think about you?
These can be both his thoughts and your guesses about them. The degree of compliance does not matter, what matters is what you think about it.
5. What did/does your mother think about you?
6. What do your friends think of you?
7. What do your ill-wishers think of you?
These can be not only enemies, but also simply envious people, grumpy neighbors and the like.
8. What did your classmates think of you?
Be specific in at least two paragraphs.
When you write it down, switch to another activity. The answers should be left to rest. We will analyze it later.
Parental messages and life scenarios
A few words about scripts
At all times there have been people inclined to analyze reality. Some of them had extraordinary intelligence and insight. The latter became recognized sages and philosophers. These people, long before psychologists and psychotherapists, noticed that the life of every person is subject to a certain plan. It is full of patterns, which, once identified, can successfully predict the course of further events.
Nowadays, researchers have given this definition. A psychological script is an unconscious life plan that prescribes what the outcome will be and how we will get there.
A scenario in psychology is a person’s life plan, created by him in childhood under the significant influence of his parents or loved ones.
Repeated events and therefore repeated results indicate a scenario.
Eric Berne's script analysis revealed the basic scripts passed on to us by our parents and developed before the age of 12. Most schools of psychology agree that such scripts are implemented in the life of every person, whether he realizes it or not.
The degree of subordination to the script depends on the strength of the individual, his intelligence, independence and criticality of judgment. There are people whose movement through life is no different from the movement of a robot. Blind implementation of programs laid down in childhood. Other people experiment and go beyond their predefined role. Those who completely erase old scripts and write new ones on their own are few out of millions. This is impossible without knowledge and application of special psychotechniques.
The form in which scripts are placed is the basic position. We have reviewed them. The scripts themselves are statements that become commands. They become such in moments of imprint vulnerability, psychological dependence, or from frequent repetition over several years. Call a man a pig a hundred times and he will grunt.
Parents, deliberately and unconsciously, impose their expectations on the child. Learn to be such and such, work there, be friends with so and so, live like that. When such directives are assertively expressed in moments of imprint vulnerability, they become commands. The child, accordingly, becomes hostage to the parents’ models. Models that are most often inadequate to reality.
Scripts are stitched in four ways - by repeating directives and pointing to events that confirm the logic of the script, and by influencing significant information from the outside.
The first option is “Don’t imitate Vasya. His parents are rich and thieves. We are poor, but we are honest.”
An example of the second option is “I told you he was a scumbag.”
The third option is fairy tales that the child believes in.
The fourth option is cultural programming. These are national, subcultural and family scenarios:
Programming scenarios in time corresponds to this scale:
By the age of three, the cores of all life scenarios have been formed. From 3 to 7 years old, they acquire details, stick together and balance. Then we implement these scripts throughout life.
A person with a weak mental constitution will not be able to break the embedded script without outside help. Strong man capable of implementing an anti-scenario. On the one hand, this is a victory, on the other, he is forced to back side script. If we act contrary, we are still not free.
A person with a strongly expressed script acts adequately in the rarest of cases. His unconscious is based on the decisions laid down in the scenario plan. For example, no matter how much effort the poor guy makes towards financial growth, this is not included in the script. Therefore, his worldview will be distorted in such a way as to reject the right decisions, even if they lie on the surface. Moreover, he will constantly seek confirmation of the dishonesty of partners, bribery of officials, unreliability of colleagues, and so on. Naturally, he will find them in abundance.
Now we will conduct practical work on catching “cockroaches” in the head. You will think about the phrases below and write down those that are typical for you.
Exercise “My Scenarios”
Write down what you agree with. What constitutes your beliefs.
I'll never get what I really want.
I can rejoice today, but tomorrow I will have to pay for it.
Every cricket knows its nest. I know mine.
Nothing or something good will happen until I... (do this and that, for example: graduate from university, start receiving such and such an amount, meet the woman/man of my dreams, and so on).
The next article will detailed analysis your scenario depending on the answers you gave to the exercise questions. In addition to diagnostics, methods for erasing negative scenarios will be given, weak sides popular methods. Naturally, I’ll introduce you to an alternative.
Let's not get lost!
With respect and gratitude, Vladimir Darov.
Psychotherapists Bob and Mary Goulding noticed that the basis of early negative decisions in different people twelve prohibitive themes are revealed again and again. They compiled a list of these twelve prohibitions, which we present below.
For every prohibition there is a corresponding permission. When analyzing a scenario, it is customary to write down prohibitions starting with the word “not”, and permissions starting with the word “can”.
Note that “not” and “that’s good” are not just opposites. “Not” expresses a complete prohibition, an instruction not to do something. On the other hand, the expression “that’s good” does not contain an instruction to do something. On the contrary, it invites the person receiving this message to decide for himself: to do it or not to do it.
It is also important to take into account that the names of prohibitions and permissions are only verbal labels used for convenience during the analysis of the scenario. As such, inhibitions and permissions are conveyed to the child primarily through nonverbal channels.
TWELVE PROHIBITIONS
"Don't Live (Don't Exist)"
If you have ever thought about suicide, then most likely your script messages include this ban on existence. This is also likely if you have ever felt worthless, useless, or unworthy of love.
You may remember a parent once telling you something along the lines of “I’ll kill you for this!” or “It would be better if you weren’t born!” The memory of such verbal messages can serve as confirmation of the presence of this prohibition in you, but its main content was learned through non-verbal signals at an earlier age.
Why do parents forbid their own child to live? As a rule, this happens because the parent in the Child state feels that the child is depriving him or her of something. Suppose a young man gets married and becomes a father. Seeing that the wife is giving most strength and attention to the newborn, the father may find himself abandoned by an elastic band to childhood. Without knowing it, he again experiences what he experienced at the age of two, when new baby. At the age of two, he was very afraid that he would never get enough attention again. How could he get Mom's love back? Apparently, he saw the only possible chance for himself in the death of the baby. Now, as an adult, he may non-verbally display the same murderous tendencies towards his own child.
Or, let’s say, a woman already has several children and she doesn’t want to have any more. Under family pressure or “by accident,” she still gives birth to another one. Her inner Child screams: “No! No more! I want them to pay attention to my needs now!” Most likely, she will suppress her Child’s anger without admitting it even to herself. However, she communicates her rejection to the baby in a roundabout way. She may do whatever is necessary to meet his physical needs, but she never smiles at him and rarely speaks to him.
In cases where a parent abuses or hits a child, the message “don't live” is communicated openly.
When analyzing a scenario, a ban on life is found quite often. Considering its possible deadly consequences, this may seem strange. But let us remember that an infant easily perceives the threat of death in those behavioral manifestations of parents or external events that seem completely harmless to an adult. Let us also remember that a small child can confuse actions with motivations to action. Let's say, wishing death for his brother, the child decided: “I am a murderer and deserve death.” That is, he imposed this ban on himself.
The same thing can happen if the mother implicitly tells the child: “You caused me a terrible wound by your birth.” (Byrne called this the “Ripped Mom Scenario.”) As a result, the child may decide, “I hurt or even killed Mom by being born. Therefore, I pose a danger to people, since I can injure or kill them with my very presence. This means that I myself deserve to be maimed or killed.”
A child may hear such statements from parents: “If it weren’t for you, I could have graduated from college, gone to travel, married a decent person...”
Since the ban on life is imposed all the time, why do most people not commit suicide? Fortunately, people in highest degree inventive in terms of reasons to stay alive. A child who carries within himself a prohibition on life, as a rule, makes compromise decisions very early in order to protect himself from a fatal outcome. These are decisions like: “I can well continue to live as long as ...” The ellipsis can be filled with anything, for example: “... I will work a lot” or “... I will not get close to people.” We'll look at trade-offs in more detail at the end of the chapter.
"Don't Be Yourself"
This prohibition can be imposed on a child by parents who gave birth to a boy and wanted a girl, or vice versa. Non-verbally they communicate to him: “Don’t be of the same sex.” This can be expressed in the choice of name: a girl can be called male name, and the boy - female. Parents can dress a girl “tomboyish” and dress a boy in lace collars with bows. In adult life a person with such a prohibition can continue to wear clothes and cultivate manners characteristic of members of the opposite sex.
The ban on being oneself can have more general character and simply mean “don’t be yourself, be some other child.” Parents may choose a younger child over an older one, or a brother over a sister. A mother who does not accept her child may constantly compare him with other children: “Little Johnny is already riding a two-wheeled bicycle - what a smart girl! But he’s a year younger than you.” In this case, the mother may have a certain image “ perfect child" that she would like to have. Therefore, she reacts positively only to those manifestations of her actual child that remind her of this image, and treats the rest with disdain.
Parents may also make comments such as "You're just like Uncle Harry, a loser." Accordingly, than bigger baby His behavior reminds him of Uncle Harry, the more strokes he receives.
"Don't Be a Child"
This is another prohibition imposed by parents who, in the state of the Child, feel threatened by their own baby. But instead of wanting to get rid of this baby directly, the Child in the parent says, “There is only room for one baby here, and that baby is me. However, I am willing to tolerate you if you behave like an adult and not like a child.” In the future, this can be expressed in the following verbal messages: “You’re already too big to…” or “Big boys don’t cry.”
The ban on being a child is also imposed by those parents who, as children, were not allowed to behave like children themselves, and who therefore feel threatened by childish behavior. They could be brought up in strict families, where the measure of a person’s value was only specific deeds and actions.
Sometimes this ban is imposed on themselves by older or only children in the family. Watching the squabble between Dad and Mom, only child may decide: “There is no one around except me. This means that the conflict arose because of me. Therefore, I need to do something with it. I need to grow up quickly so I can deal with this.” Likewise, older children may decide that they are responsible for their younger sisters and brothers.
If you feel uncomfortable in your relationship with children, then perhaps you carry within you a prohibition on being a child. This may also be true if you behave awkwardly at parties and similar adult leisure situations. Sometimes "Don't Be Happy" and "Don't Be Merry" are mentioned as variants of the "Don't Be a Child" prohibition. Of course, in order to rejoice or have fun, we do not have to be in the state of a Child. But if as a child you decided that only children are happy and have fun, and you should be a serious little adult, then you can now cling to this childish decision with an elastic band whenever you have the opportunity to have fun.
In some families, if a child is too cheerful, they may be called lazy or a sinner. There may be magical beliefs here that if you feel very good, something bad will surely happen. Accordingly, the magical means of averting evil is to feel not very good.
"Don't Grow Up"
Often this ban is imposed on the youngest child in the family. Parents in the state of Child may resist the idea that there will be no one left in the family. Perhaps they see their value only in their ability to be a good father or mother. If their child grows up, they will lose their sense of self-worth. Conversely, this prohibition can be imposed by parents who never became adults themselves. They want the child to remain their little “playmate.”
Sometimes the prohibition “Don’t Grow Up” is perceived as “Don’t Leave Me.” A middle-aged woman who devotes herself to caring for her elderly mother, who is always dissatisfied with her, may carry within herself a prohibition of this kind.
Another version of the ban on growing up is the ban on sexuality. Often such a ban is imposed by a father on his daughter in childhood when her body begins to take on distinctly feminine features. In the Child state, the father is frightened by his sexual response to her. He sends her nonverbal signals of physical withdrawal, which can be perceived by a little girl as a prohibition on growing up and becoming a sexually attractive woman.
"Don't Get It"
This prohibition is imposed by a parent who, in the state of a Child, is jealous of the achievements of his son or daughter. Suppose the father grew up in poor family. He was forced to work from the age of fifteen and did not have the opportunity to study at the institute. Now, as a result of his many years of work, he and his children have achieved material well-being. He pays for his daughter to go to a prestigious school, after which she will be able to go to university.
Seeing his daughter's achievements, a father can be proud of her as a parent. However, in the state of a Child, he, without realizing it, experiences black envy of the prospects opening up for his daughter, which he never had. What if she actually succeeds in her studies? Wouldn't this prove that she is better than him? The father may non-verbally forbid her to achieve this, although superficial level makes you study well.
A student who has made a scripted decision to obey the “Don’t Achieve This” injunction usually does well in school and diligently completes all assignments. But when it comes to exams, he usually finds some way to ruin his efforts. He may get worried and run away from the exam. He may “forget” to hand in some important work. He might even make money breakdown or discover that he cannot read.
"You Can't (Don't Do Anything)"
The all-encompassing message of “Don’t!” means: “Do nothing, because whatever you undertake is so dangerous that it is better not to do anything at all.” If a person in adulthood cannot decide what to do, all the time feeling that he is stuck in dead center, and yet doing nothing to get out of this situation, it is quite possible that he carries such a script message.
Prohibition “No!” imposed by a parent who, in the Child state, is terrified at the thought that his child will harm himself if he does something outside of parental care. The basis for this horror is the parent’s own scenario, and not objective reality. Such a parent might say, for example: “Johnny, go see what your younger sister, and tell her not to do it."
"Keep your head down"
People who carry such a message are terrified of taking on any leading role. They "swallow their tongue" when asked to speak in a meeting. At work, they can perform well in a subordinate position, but never achieve promotion or shy away from it. Another version of this prohibition is “Don’t Ask for What You Want.”
This is another script message driven by the parental impulse to reject the child. The Parent in the Child’s state nonverbally lets him know: “I will tolerate your presence, baby, as long as you understand that you and your desires mean absolutely nothing here.”
"Don't Mess"
Indian statesman Pandit Nehru said: “When I am among Europeans, I feel like a Hindu. When I am among Indians, I feel like a European.” It is possible that Nehru’s parents imposed a “Don’t Mess” ban on him. Submitting to this prohibition, a person feels like an “outsider” in any group, and he is likely to be considered “unsociable” and “unsociable.”
This message can be conveyed in the form of definition, when parents constantly tell the child that he is “withdrawn,” “difficult,” or “not like other children.” The latter can be associated with reproaches (“black sheep”) or emphasized as a positive sign of “exclusivity”, “unusuality”. In addition, this prohibition can also be learned by imitating the social withdrawal of parents.
"Don't Be Close"
This may involve a ban on physical intimacy. Often this prohibition is learned by imitating parents who rarely touch each other or the child. Another form of this prohibition is “Don't Be Emotionally Intimate.” This message can be passed down from generation to generation in families where it is not customary to talk about your feelings.
A child may self-impose a “Don’t Be Close” ban on himself in response to a parent’s constant refusal of physical contact. The child may reach out to the parent again and again, again and again without meeting reciprocity. Ultimately, he may decide that the intimacy he desires is not worth the pain of rejection.
A variant of the prohibition on intimacy is the script message “Don’t Trust.” Sometimes such a message for a child is the sudden departure or death of a parent. Unable to understand the true reasons for the parent's disappearance, the infant may come to the conclusion: “I will never again trust anyone to be there if necessary.” The “Don’t Trust” prohibition can also be learned in cases where a parent insults, tries to deceive or use the child for his own purposes. The child decides: “To protect myself from this, I will stay away from you.”
Following similar decisions in adult life, such a person may be invariably suspicious of the people around him. Even if they treat him warmly and fully accept him, he will still try to look for any signs of rejection in this regard. If the other person refuses to reject him, he may test the relationship to the point of destruction and then say, “I told you so!”
"Don't Be Healthy" (Don't Be Mentally Healthy)
Let's imagine that Dad and Mom are busy people who disappear all day at work. They love their daughter, but when they return home in the evening, they are unable to pay enough attention to her.
Then my daughter fell ill and was unable to attend kindergarten. Mom stays at home to take care of her. Dad does something he almost never did before - he reads her stories before bed.
In her insightful Little Professor, the girl concludes: “To get the attention I need, I have to be sick.” Without knowing it, her parents impose a ban on her being healthy. If she submits to him in adulthood, she may use the scenario strategy of malaise when things go wrong in her relationships with people or at work.
Sometimes the ban on being healthy is imposed with the help of definitions constantly repeated by parents to relatives and neighbors: “You know, this is a weak, sickly child.”
A version of this prohibition, “Don't Be Mentally Healthy,” is often learned by imitating a parent or relative suffering from some kind of mental disorder. In addition, the child could only manage to attract attention if he behaved crazy enough. This prohibition may be reinforced by the unspoken rules of the family “relay race of madness.”
"Do not think"
A "Don't Think" ban may be imposed by a parent who continually undermines the child's ability to think. Little James proudly shows Dad his first attempt at writing. given name. The father chuckles contemptuously: “Hmm, I’ve found a literate person.” Sometimes the prohibition to think is learned by imitating, say, a hysterical mother, observing whom the daughter comes to the conclusion: “When women want to achieve something from men, they turn off thinking and give in to feelings.” The prohibition to think can also mean: “Think about anything in the world, just not about what you are dealing with at the moment.”
Following the prohibition “Don't Think,” an adult usually gets lost in the face of problems or laments over them instead of thinking about solving them.
Two other options for prohibiting thinking are: “Don't think about X” (where X can mean sex, money, etc.) and “Don't think what you think - think what I think.”
"Don't Feel"
This ban can be imposed by parents who themselves suppress their feelings. There are families where any manifestation of feelings is prohibited. But more often, some feelings are allowed, and some are prohibited. Therefore, the prohibition to feel can be interpreted as “Don't feel anger,” “Don't feel fear,” and so on.
Sometimes this message can be read as "Feel it, but don't show it." Other children face a more stringent ban, obliging them not to experience any specific emotions at all. Little boys, for example, are constantly taught: “Big boys don’t cry” or “Be brave like a soldier!” These slogans translate to "Don't feel sad" and "Don't feel afraid."
In some families, the message "Don't Feel" means "Don't experience physical sensations." Often such a ban is imposed in early childhood. If it is strong enough, it can become a source of serious problems in adult life. For example, a child who is required not to feel hungry may later develop eating disorders. According to a number of TA therapists, the message “Don't have sensations” lies at the heart of some psychoses.
Another version of this prohibition: “Don’t feel what you feel, feel what I feel.” At the same time, the mother may say to her son: “I’m hungry. What will you eat?" or “I’m kind of cold, go put on a sweater.”
EPIC SCENARIO
Fanita English described one particularly destructive type of script message, which she called the episcript. In this case, the parent imposes the prohibition, accompanied by the nonverbal message: “I hope this happens to you so it doesn’t have to happen to me.”
For example, a mother who was given a “Don’t Live” ban as a child may subsequently impose it on her son or daughter. In her Little Professor, she believes that she will thereby find magical release from her own spell. On psychological level she tells the child: “If you bend, maybe I won’t have to.” Thus, the ban in this case resembles a “hot potato” passed from one generation to another.
Sometimes an episcenario can take the form of a family task or a family curse, with each successive generation expected to have the same outcome. Fanita English describes the case of a young man who had been using drugs for some time. Then he became interested in psychology, quit drugs and began working as a psychotherapist. However, it soon became apparent that he was working against some of his clients, sending them implicit messages: "Don't persist and go to the madhouse!"
His supervisor discovered this and the young man himself became a client of the psychotherapist. Through analysis of his script, he realized that he had been instructed to "go to the madhouse" (Not Be Mentally Healthy) as a "hot potato" by his mother. To comply with this ban, he had to take drugs. He became a psychotherapist in an attempt to sell his “hot potato” to clients. When he analyzed his family history, he discovered that the same "crazy" scenario had been passed down in his family for at least the last two generations. The case never ended up in a madhouse. Each generation believed it had avoided this outcome through the magical act of passing the "hot potato" to someone else.
HOW DECISIONS ARE RELATED TO PROHIBITIONS
We have repeatedly emphasized that parental prohibitions cannot force a child to write a specific script. The child decides for himself what to do with the prohibitions imposed on him. One child may accept the ban in its original form. Another may creatively transform the imposed prohibition to soften its impact. The third may simply refuse to take it.
Suppose a little boy received from his mother the “Don’t Live” ban. He can accept it literally and unconditionally, committing suicide as a child or adult. This suicide may be overt or take the form of an "accident", such as driving fast while drunk.
Or the child may make a magical decision to shift the effect of the Do Not Live prohibition by killing someone else in his place. This will lead to the writing of a fatal scenario, the outcome of which will not be suicide, but murder.
A magical solution can also take the following form: “If I can stop living the way they live normal people, then I may not actually have to die.” This gives a fatal scenario with a “crazy” outcome.
Along with such tragic decisions, another extreme is possible, when the baby is able to realize: “This is a message about my mother’s problem, and it does not concern me,” thereby completely rejecting the ban on life. Children who come to such decisions, according to the Gouldings, “...become little psychiatrists or priests as they examine their family and try to heal it, saving their lives by realizing the fact that all this pathology has nothing to do with them.” Many of these “little psychiatrists and priests” eventually become big psychiatrists and priests, and quite good psychiatrists and priests.
A child always has the opportunity to turn a ban to his advantage so that it brings him positive rather than negative results. For example, a little boy who received the message “Don’t be the same sex” can grow up to be a man with many traditionally “feminine” positive qualities - empathy, warmth, depth of feeling.
Another way to avoid the effects of prohibitions is to make compromise decisions. In this case, the child, with the help of the inventive Little Professor, combines different script messages in order to stay alive and satisfy his needs as fully as possible. Such trade-offs, which are often discovered during scenario analysis, serve important element to understand the internal mechanisms of the script. Next we will look at different types compromise solutions and see how they are used to protect against destructive prohibitions. Practice shows that most often children are protected from the ban on life, so we will use it in most of our examples.
The ban is covered by a counter-ban
Consider the scenario matrix shown in the figure
As you can see, Jack got a ban on life from Mom. Little Professor Jack's main task is to find a way to stay alive. How can he do this?
One way is to cover up the prohibition on life with some kind of counter-prohibition. Jack can take advantage of his mother's counter-injunction, “Work hard!” and make the following compromise decision: “As long as I work hard, I can stay alive.”
What are the likely consequences for Jack as an adult? Most likely, he will become a person who does everything, sparing no effort. At work he will be considered a tireless worker. By playing sports, he can work hard in training room. In personal relationships, he will work hard to be an interesting conversationalist, and in his sexual life, he will most likely work hard to satisfy his partner.
Now suppose that Jack has high blood pressure, a stomach ulcer, or other symptoms of stress. He decides not to work as hard. Perhaps he is reducing his working hours or delegating some tasks to other people. For the time being, everything is going great. But, oddly enough, Jack finds it very difficult to stay within the confines of his new lifestyle. Almost involuntarily, he fills his rest with new activities. After a week or two, he begins to take them so seriously that he forces himself to work more than before. What's happening?
It turns out that Jack has upset the dynamic balance of his script. Consciously, he believes that he took the right step by relieving himself of some of his work responsibilities. However, his Little Professor, whom he is unaware of, perceives this change as a threat to his life. His script belief is: “Now that I’ve stopped working hard, I have to obey Mom, and she tells me to die.” It is not surprising that he soon finds reasons to start overworking again.
As was said, Jack covered Mom’s prohibition “Don’t live” with the counter-prohibition “Work hard.” By starting to work less than usual, he reveals this prohibition.
Often this organization of the scenario leads to paradoxical results. Continuing to work hard, Jack follows the Little Professor's strategy to stay alive. But exhausting himself from year to year with work, he may die of a heart attack or become disabled due to illness, losing his ability to work. The very organization of the script, designed to serve as a defense against the fatal outcome, leads to this outcome.
To figure out what Jack can do to truly break this vicious cycle, we need to understand the dynamics of his compromise decision. If he decides not to overwork himself with work, while ignoring the hidden prohibition on life, then soon he will probably begin to overwork again. An outside observer may consider that he is “ruining himself” with his work. But to Little Professor Jack this seems to be something exactly the opposite, namely, the only way avoid the threat of death that comes from Mom.
To remove this part of the script, Jack must first defuse the Don't Live message. Once he allowed himself to live independently of Mom's curse, he could take the next step and reduce his workload. Now he will discover that he can actually stop “pushing” himself, and this does not cause him any discomfort.
The ban is covered by another ban
The ban on life was not the only one that Jack received from his mother. She also placed a "Don't Be Close" ban on him. Jack could use this lighter ban to protect himself from a heavier one. As a baby, he could make a compromise decision: “I can easily continue to live, as long as I don’t get close to anyone.”
As an adult, Jack himself will, without knowing it, carry out this scenario decision. Those around him will find him a physically distant person, not inclined to share his feelings. In all likelihood, he will have difficulty giving or receiving strokes, especially physical ones.
Jack may not be happy with this aspect of his life. He may feel neglected or lonely and will try to form a more intimate relationship with someone. But he probably won’t allow himself to maintain them for any length of time. Then he will most likely find a way to break them by organizing circumstances that would provide a reason to reject the partner or be rejected by him.
In his mind, Jack is sad and upset that he is alone again. But as the Little Professor, Jack breathes an unconscious sigh of relief. By continuing this relationship, he would be violating Mom's "Don't Be Close" order, and he would have to deal with her murderous "Don't Live" order.
As in the previous case, if Jack wants to get out of this scenario situation and taste the joy of intimacy, he must first overcome the ban on life. He can do this by deciding to live whatever it takes.
Using one parent against the other
Father did not forbid Jack to live. Instead, he imposed a lighter "Don't Think" ban on him. The latter allows Jack to use another infantile survival strategy. He may decide: “As long as I play the fool for Dad, I won’t have to die for Mom.”
In adulthood, Jack can sometimes seem to “turn off” his thinking. At this time, he looks confused and says something like: “Nothing comes to mind. Apparently he's gone completely crazy." Without realizing it, he clings to Dad to protect him from Mom's deadly ban.
ANTI-SCENARIO
Some people can take one of their script messages and turn it into their own opposite. In the future, they follow not the original message, but the opposite. Most often this is done within the framework of a counter-script. When we behave this way, we are said to have entered into an anti-script.
A person can enter or exit an anti-script at different periods of life, reacting to any script message. As usual, the anti-script is played out in adolescence. A typical example: a girl spent her entire childhood following the counter-script “Be quiet and do what mom and dad say.” At fourteen, she suddenly changes, becomes impudent and cheeky, comes home late and, according to her parents, hangs out with “bad company.”
At first glance, it may seem that she has freed herself from her counter-script. In fact, she follows him as before. She simply turned it over, just as we turn over a colored slide to look at the other side.
The anti-script can be interpreted as the activity of a rebellious child who is tired of the script and the counter-script. In the context of the anti-script, our girl does not care what happens if she does not follow her original script decisions.
Later, after marriage, she can leave the anti-script and re-enter her script and counter-script. She will again become quiet and decent, this time playing “wifey” for her husband.
DRAFTING A MATRIX FOR YOUR SCENARIO
Take a large piece of paper and draw on it a blank scenario matrix like the one shown in the figure.
You will be able to write script messages received from your parents into it.
This self-analysis is not an exercise in the strict sense of the word. It is also not designed to receive any given answers once and for all. Your script matrix should be considered an important source of information about your past. It provides you with a map of paths that you can follow to change your future. As received new information the matrix, like any map, can be revised and supplemented. And, like a map, it can change as new roads are built and expanded and old ones are razed.
Work quickly and rely on intuition.
Prohibitions
Review the list of "twelve prohibitions." Think about whether you have ever experienced any life problems or inconvenience in connection with each of them. Mark the prohibitions that you think were significant to you. Enter them into the matrix, linking them with the parent from whom they came. Some of them may have come from both parents. Do you remember how one of them banned you? by example? Did he give you any prohibitive instructions or definitions? If you doubt something, turn to your intuition.
When indicating your prohibitions on the matrix, use the generally accepted names from Goulding's list. If you find that in some case another name option is more suitable for you, indicate it in parentheses after the generally accepted one. For example: “Don’t Be a Child (Don’t Be Happy).”
Counter-scenario
Remember all sorts of slogans and calls to do this and not do that, which your parents often repeated to you as a child. In what cases were each parent happy with you? Angry with you? What words did they use to let you know that they were pleased or dissatisfied with you? What did they advise so that you can achieve success in life and become the pride of your family?
Based on this, enter your counter-scenario into the matrix. Apparently, it will not be difficult for you to determine which parent came from this or that instruction. Listen to the voice that sounds in your head. If you can't figure it out, just try to guess. Sometimes the counter-script may come from other relatives, older siblings, or school teachers.
Program
When filling out the scenario matrix, it is customary to enter into it only negative part programs. (There would not be enough space to write down all the thousands of positive "how to" messages we received from parents.) Recall that the negative program comes from the infected Adult parent, although the diagram shows that it simply comes from circle of the Adult.
Did any of your parents serve as an example for you on how to achieve some scenario results? Often one parent will show how to follow the injunctions or counterinjunctions received from the other parent. For example, Mom might be telling you, “Don't Feel,” and Dad might be showing you, “Here's how to suppress your feelings.”
Write your negative program into the matrix as a series of sentences that begin with the words “Here’s how...” Some people do not have any clearly negative program messages in their script. If you cannot find them, leave this part of the matrix blank.
Dreams, fantasies and fairy tales
Now review the material you learned from the exercises using fantasy, fairy tales, and dreams in Chapter Ten. These materials were written down in free form as something came to mind.
Consider them now from the point of view of the formal scenario matrix. Try to understand and feel how they relate to the data that you have already entered into the matrix diagram. Change or supplement this information accordingly.
(Text taken from the book Ian Stewart, Vann Joines. Modern transactional analysis. /Translation by Vladimir Danchenko/)
Family scripts are patterns of behavior of family members that are repeated from generation to generation, which are formed and supported by family history. These are a person’s ideas, conscious or not, about how it should be, how it should be in their family.
They can cover a very wide range of ideas:
Marital relations: “all men need only one thing,” “all husbands cheat,” “the family must be preserved in any case.”
Linking events to a specific age: when to get married, give birth to children, die, etc.: “in our family, all the girls got married before 25”
Professional activity“we are a dynasty of doctors,” generations of musicians, military men, etc. And, also, the level of income or professional aspirations.
Child-parent relationships: how to behave with children, parenting style. “We have always had very talented children.”
Money “everyone in our family worked hard and knew how to earn money”, “we will die of hunger, but we will not borrow).
Status in society, relationships with others “she’s not in our circle,” “he’s not your match.”
Family scenarios work especially strongly in those areas of a person’s life where he is not very aware of his Self. This is expressed in the following features:
1. A person does not know his true desires in the field of relationships, does not have a clear picture of how it should be in his family, which he himself creates, leaving his parents’. There is an idea that “everything will be fine for him,” but at what cost is not very clear. Sometimes, the only guideline is the desire for “it to be different from the parents.” But due to the fact that there is no desired image, relationships develop according to the usual family scenario.
The young man spoke very negatively about his family; he did not like the relationship between his parents. Imagine his surprise when, after 3 years of marriage, he discovered that his relationship with his wife was very much like the relationship of his parents.
2. A person does not correlate his behavior with the results he receives in the end. And he does not take responsibility for building relationships. In this case, it is much easier to see the cause of failure in the actions of the partner.
A woman comes for a consultation and complains that “there are no real men left” and there is no one to marry. During the consultation, it turns out that she had a very strong mother who shouldered everything in the family and was essentially the head of the family. And the daughter copied her mother’s behavior in relationships, choosing softer men as partners. As a result, over time she stopped respecting her men, believing that she “was deceived again and chose the wrong one.”
3. The child, growing up, has not gone through the process of psychological separation from his parental family and still strongly identifies with his parents. Puts the interests and opinions of parents, or one of them, with whom the closest emotional contact is closest, above their own, preferring not to identify their desires. Thus, the parent, as it were, lives a second life - for the child, and the child repeats the scenario of mom / dad. After all, life choices are the same.
The girl's mother and grandmother, with whom she lives, lived with their husbands for a very short time after the birth of the child. And then they raised their daughters alone. The girl is already over thirty, but relationships with men are not working out.
Reasons why scenarios occur
One of the reasons for the emergence of a family script, according to E. Berne, the founder of transactional analysis, is the child’s unconscious choice of a way to survive and adapt in this world, looking at the behavior of parents or under the impression of some role fairy tale characters supported by parents.
For example, Berne argued that a girl, learning the script of her parents, grows up and plays one of two roles - mother or daughter.
If the parental family was dominated by a strong and energetic mother, who, moreover, gave her daughter maximum warmth and care, albeit sometimes in a strict form, then the girl, through her example, develops a maternal position in relation to her family. She strives to become reliable and reliable for her loved ones. caring mother who knows everything better than others, who is always ready to help, and sometimes even rein in.
If the primacy in all family affairs belonged to the father, and the mother was in the family as a dumb Cinderella, then the girl, growing up, will most likely learn the daughter's role. For the rest of her life, she will retain within herself a little girl, for whom it is easier to lean on someone’s strong shoulder than to bear the burden of solving life’s problems herself. When choosing a future husband, she will subconsciously look for a strong and caring “father” in him, who will shield her from all the hardships of life.
The key criterion for family scenarios is their repeatability from generation to generation. Also, the script has a certain set of roles and a predictable end to the development of events. For example, my mother saved my father from alcoholism, and in the end she became an alcoholic herself. And the daughter chooses men with a criminal past and tries to rehabilitate them, periodically falling into various dangers because of them, from financial to physical.
It often happens that in the first generation a certain set of actions and decisions had a logical basis, but, passed on from generation to generation, lost its relevance, leaving only an order of steps that was not supported by the real situation and actual necessity.
Anecdote on topic
Soon after the wedding, the husband noticed an interesting detail: before putting a piece of meat in the oven, the wife always cuts off small pieces from both sides. And only when cut is baked. My husband asked: why cut off two completely normal pieces of meat? The wife replied that this was their family recipe; This is how her mother and her mother’s mother always cooked meat, and this is how they taught her. When asked what taste qualities this adds to the meat, my wife could not answer. She promised to ask her mother. Oddly enough, the mother told the same story: this is a family recipe, her grandmother also cooked it. The young wife also achieved nothing from her grandmother. At this point everyone was wondering: where did the recipe come from? Fortunately, the great-grandmother was alive. They asked her. “This is not a recipe at all,” the great-grandmother was surprised. “It’s just that when I was young, we had a small oven and a tiny baking tray. The whole meat didn’t fit, so we cut it off on both sides.”
Anti-script phenomenon
It happens that a child, having suffered in his parents’ family, and knowing for sure that he does not want to live like his parents, chooses the exact opposite line of behavior. For example: the father married early and suffered as a couple, the son does not marry. The father drank, the son does not drink alcohol at all. The mother worked a lot and did not love herself at all, she sacrificed herself completely to the family, and the daughter chooses the role of a “fluttering bird”, living for her own pleasure. Choosing an anti-scenario, unfortunately, is not a way out of the scenario. Because often, an anti-script is chosen with the goal of “proving” parents that they were wrong; this is a manifestation of teenage rebellion. It also forces a person to make decisions within strictly defined frameworks, without giving him freedom of choice.
Thus, a mature child can rush between the script and the anti-script at different periods of his life, either rebelling against the messages of his parents, or again following them. This may be due to dual messages from parents - opposite statements, one of which is given verbally, and the other non-verbally. For example, a mother tells her daughter that she should be a decent girl, while she herself has affairs with married men and leads a rather free lifestyle.
How to work with scripts
The method of working with scenarios at the first stage is analysis family history and identifying all overlaps and repeating situations. It is possible to use the genogram method - graphic image information about the family for at least 3 generations.
At the second stage, a comprehensive analysis of the scenario itself is carried out. What it gives a person, what it protects from, and what it deprives. In the process of work, one recognizes one’s own responsibility for one’s life and the right to choose. After this, a conscious decision is made to what extent a person would like to implement this scenario in his life.
Working with a family script is not quick, but it allows us to choose what kind of life we want to live.
We are talking about family scenarios, life scenarios - parental scenarios, which are familiar to those who have read the works of the American psychologist and psychiatrist Eric Berne. “Life script - parental script” is an unconscious life plan that a person basically creates for himself in childhood under the influence of parents, people and events that are important to him. More details The “scenario” is “written” by the age of 18, and... is carried out throughout life, provided that the person does not want to realize it and meaningfully change it. The “script matrix”, with the help of which the script is created, contains messages from parents about how to live, how to behave in certain situations, what prohibitions and permissions there are, what behavior patterns, norms, morals, feelings, etc. are acceptable and “wrong and forbidden”, and, of course, information about how parents behave, what they do, what and how they say, and what they are silent about and hide. Here you can also remember about family secrets, about which they are silent, but which are felt in the family field. It turns out that we can inherit not only certain models, patterns (samples) of behavior in certain situations, but also “move reality” so that we end up in exactly such stories.
Family tradition, like some aspects of the “life script - parent script”, differs in that real reasons its appearances faded into the background a long time ago, often more than one generation ago, but the set of actions remained, although from the outside it may look completely meaningless. Natalya Kravchenko told me a parable that quite accurately describes where scripts come from and why. A certain man once remarked that his wife never fries a whole chicken, but always cuts it into pieces. He asked why she did this and received the answer: “This is how my mother always cooked.” He went to his mother-in-law, asked her the same question, and received the answer: “I got this recipe from my mother.” The restless young man got to his grandmother, and she told him: “Yes, I really always cook chicken this way. But that’s only because when I was young I had a very small stove, and a whole chicken simply wouldn’t fit on it.” Everyone has their own way of cooking chicken. Only we, unlike our parents and grandparents, have a choice: cook the way we were accustomed to since childhood, or try a different recipe, because we have a bigger stove! However, we do not always notice this choice from our picture of the world.
The easiest and the straightforward embodiment of the life scenario - the parental scenario - is a repetition of the “life line” of the parents, with girls repeating the fate of the mother, and boys - the father, or other significant adults, if the family was incomplete or the parents were present in the child’s life sporadically. But most often, parental behavior patterns in new conditions are refracted in a unique way. Let's say a mother, wishing her daughter a successful marriage, inspires her that family happiness depends on the woman insofar as she is wiser and is capable of gradually controlling a man, and the stronger sex are just stupid boys. The girl grows up, gets a good education, makes a scientific career - and it turns out that she simply cannot find a worthy life partner, because, according to the attitude learned from her mother, she a priori considers men to be creatures more stupid than herself, and tries at every opportunity to point out to her male colleagues and acquaintances his own intellectual superiority, and tries to manipulate fans - with varying success. She will have to independently or with the help of a psychologist learn other behavior that is more appropriate for her. modern society, moving away from the patriarchal model of the family, from which the “secret female wisdom” comes (when power in society belongs to men, a woman tries to gradually take hers, at least within the narrow confines of the home).
Children are much better remember what parents do rather than what they say. And mom and dad often contradict themselves or each other, causing an almost schizophrenic duality in children. Let's say a mother instills in her daughter that in order to be successful, a woman must get married and have children, and she herself treats her alcoholic husband, to put it mildly, without respect. Most likely, the daughter is in her sincere desire to fulfill the mother’s instructions, she will choose men similar to her father and similarly build relationships with them, which will collapse every time. The situation will probably be repeated more than once or twice, leading the woman to what seems to her a logical conclusion about the worthlessness of the entire male sex. By the way, many lesbians have a similar life scenario - the parental scenario determined that they chose women as partners, being disappointed in men.
Another typical reaction to the life scenario is the parental scenario - an attempt to turn it around, to do everything the other way around, not the way they were taught: to date men who do not resemble their father in any way, to get a profession that parents are horrified by... But the anti-script, as he wrote Bern, it’s the same scenario, just with a different sign. Neither one nor the other will make us happy, because both the script and the anti-script do not take into account our own desires, which are unique, unlike our parents’, and often even contradict them.
Although the anti-script- this is a normal stage in building your own (and not your parents’) life plan. Typically, anti-script behavior is observed in adolescents.
The fact that this or that model of behavior does not belong to us can be noticed by the inconvenience that a repeating story causes us (as if you put on a coat from someone else’s shoulder and it’s too tight for you), or indeed by serious problems, sometimes on a somatic level. As sad as it may be, most often only such troubles force us to look at our lives from an unusual angle and see those same repeating situations or similar people, time after time “visiting” us. However, careful attention to events and observation help to track such repetitions. And understand that if history repeats itself, it means that there is something wrong with it, and you need to realize what exactly it is and correct it, if necessary, with the help of a specialist. After all, our lives are too short to allow ourselves the luxury of wasting time on the same mistakes.
Living our lives, working, communicating, raising children, we have clear ideas about how to properly carry out these types of activities. Sometimes our ideas bring us benefit, sometimes harm. However, most of them, in any case, came to us from childhood. E. Bern identified 12 of the most dangerous parental scenarios that we offer for study. In addition, we provide versions of cartoons and fairy tales that can have a corrective effect if the child is characterized by this scenario.
Parent scripts
- The most destructive scenario is when parents tell their child “ It would be better if you weren't here» .
He begins to be tormented by a guilt complex. At some point, the child makes the decision “I need to free my parents from me.” Suicidal tendencies arise.
(Mistress Blizzard, Morozko) - « Don't be yourself" Parents instill in their child “you are wrong, you are somehow different...”. As a result, the child begins to develop the consciousness that he is not like everyone else. The child is tormented by a feeling of inferiority and puts an invisible wall between himself and the world around him. Existential depression arises - a lack of vital energy, lack of desires. (Ugly duck)
- The child is constantly told “Oh my little son/daughter, I gave birth to you for myself, you won’t leave me, etc.". The result is complete immaturity and lack of motivation. There is a fear of something new, because under my mother’s skirt it is warm and cozy.
(Varvara is beautiful, long braid(about the infantilization of the royal child)) - The 4th scenario is the complete opposite of the third scenario, the parents say “ Don't be a child, be an adult and serious.". The free flow of vital energy fades.
- « Don’t do it, you’ll still do everything wrong, and then I’ll have to redo it for you.”. As a result, in one case, the child’s sense of initiative begins to atrophy, and the confidence arises that he is good for nothing, that all his endeavors will not lead to the desired result. In another case, the strategy “To spite my grandmother, I’ll freeze my ears off” is formed.
(Losers, Pinocchio) - « Do not trust anyone" The result is that it will be difficult for a child to build a family, how can you trust an unfamiliar girl/boy. She/he probably has only one goal - to claim living space.
(The legacy of the wizard Bahran) - « How can you feel so good when your mother/father is suffering?" Often similar situations occur when parents have some problems, and the child wants to share his joy. Most likely next time, the child will keep his successes to himself.
(Cipollino (story about a cherry)) - « Don't be a leader" The principle “Keep your head down, it’s better not to stand out, don’t be an upstart…” works here. Attitudes toward leadership and new ideas are extinguished; one must be like everyone else.
(The little goat who could count to ten) - When parents tell their child “ You are not mine, you are completely different from us...“The child loses his sense of belonging. Suspiciousness increases, gullibility decreases.
(Crocodile and bird, Mowgli) - A child discovers the world, and they tell him “ Look, you're so smart, it's too early for you to think about it..." The result is a reluctance to explore anything.
- Installation " Don't feel" Example: Parents say “I’m cold, so put on a sweater!” A direct ban on feelings, sensations. The child begins to think: “Why should I feel anything? The feelings are still wrong. I’d rather crush them inside me.”
(Naked King) - « Don't make progress" When a child achieves something on his own, he gets hit in the face. As a result, the child decides that it is impossible to be successful and joyful. And why? But because my parents stop loving me at this moment.
(Losers)
