December 23, 2022,  Family, Life, Love, Relationship, Script  No comments

The Theories behind Choosing Your Partner

Several theories aim to explain why we are attracted to some people and not to others. Some say that attraction is usually based on an interest in complementary qualities or characteristics—those we feel we may not have ourselves but subconsciously would like to have.

Subconsciously, you might even believe that if you do not have certain characteristics, then maybe you can somehow live them vicariously through someone else, just like when you get really excited about something your kids have achieved. So excited even that it can bring you to tears.

You may be genuinely excited, but you might be so involved in your children’s lives and successes that you almost feel as if you yourself are performing and getting the credit.

Other...

October 17, 2022,  Family, Life, Love, Script  No comments

The child’s response to the possibility of zero-sum love is simply to do whatever is required to survive. Sometimes, this is to be as compliant as possible to get the love to return. Sometimes it is to become loud and demanding. Sometimes there is a secret wish (and even an attempt) to rid the family of the “alien” child.

In a situation like this, it is really important to understand that the child’s thinking pattern is different from that of an adult. Very young children can really only think in concrete terms. That is, to them, something only exists if it can be seen, and it only exists in one form. The expansion in thinking follows a developmental path just as physical growth does...

September 19, 2022,  Family, Fundamental Human Needs, Life, Script  No comments

The question still begs to be asked: “Why does a child make such sweeping and self-limiting choices in the first place to become a Visitor or a Victim instead of a Victor?” Surely we would all choose to be a Victor first.

Visitors and Victims exist simply because survival is the prime concern for the child we all once were. In the story of Alex and Tamara, as well as in the story of Beth and Roger (remember them?), the way they conduct themselves in an adult relationship is determined by how they decided their lives would be when they were still children.

It does not take long for a child to figure out that since he or she cannot take care of him- or herself, the adults nearby must meet all the child’s needs...

August 19, 2022,  Family, Games People Play, Life, Love, Relationship, Script  No comments

“Tamara” and “Alex” met each other when they were both seventeen and still at school. They married when they were twenty. They live in a modest home in the suburbs with their son.

Tamara was mainly a stay-at-home mother, working occasionally as a receptionist and assistant to a local doctor. Alex worked in science and technology at an office in the city.

Many of Alex’s colleagues and business associates were young men who were either single and living it up, or just recently married; there were plenty of invitations to socialize and join in their brand of fun after work, often at bars and nightclubs. They would drink, socialize, and flirt with the women who also came to unwind at the bar at the end of their busy and stressful days.

Alex enjoyed the lifestyle of the ...

July 19, 2022,  Family, Life, Script  No comments

Victims

Then sadly, there is the Victim. This is a person who never makes it in the first place. Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward describe a Victim as “One who fails to respond authentically to those around him.” In this context, “authentically” means genuinely or openly and honestly—as a Victor would.

What if a businessman has a wife with him on vacation? While the businessman is off attempting to enjoy the day fishing, she has decided that there is no joy in that for her and decides to spend the day by the hotel’s pool. Shortly after settling in, she becomes agitated so decides to go shopping. That also doesn’t interest her as the shops don’t really have much to offer. She makes a hair appointment but that has no appeal either...

June 16, 2022,  Life, Script  No comments

Visitors

If you are a Visitor, you will set goals for yourself, just as a Victor would. But unlike a Victor, you never quite accomplish them, and even if you do, not predictably.

For example, you might want to be a top executive at a Fortune 500 international corporation, but you lack the qualifications. You waver indecisively between going back to school part time or full time or neither, and cannot quite figure out what courses to take even if you did go back to school.

You seem to suffer from a perpetual mid-life crisis, but instead of doing something about it you become complacent and satisfy yourself with what you have, which is often second best or second rate.

As a Visitor (which, it must be noted, is not the same as a Victim), you actually make the best employee...

May 2, 2022,  Life, Script  No comments

Victors, Visitors, and Victims are the three principal life positions we live out in response to our life scripts. The script is the driver, while the life position is how the script is presented to the world. Let’s take a closer look at each of these positions and the behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that underpin them.

Victors

The Victors of the world are those who live out all the positive things from their scripts. They are the leaders of industry as well as the person on the street who does nice things for others for no reason other than from the goodness of his or her heart.

Victors may become world famous or just recognized within family and friendship circles as being genuinely caring of others while also taking care of themselves.

Muriel James and Dorothy Jonge...

March 28, 2022,  Counselling, Family, Games People Play, Life, Script  No comments

Let’s say Aaron, a two year old out shopping with his dad, wanders off in the shopping center. Dad needs Aaron to learn that this is unsafe, so Aaron is told that he or she shouldn’t do it.

Very often, children like Aaron will not understand the information itself, but will grasp something from the parent’s tone of voice, and from the fact that he is made to sit down and listen, that something is wrong.

If Aaron is sufficiently alarmed by his dad’s response, he may get the idea of the message and not reoffend though this may be out of fear of a further reprimand. Alternatively, he may retaliate as a way of testing the limits of permitted behavior.

Whatever the response, i.e...

February 17, 2022,  Counselling, Family, Games People Play, Life, Script  No comments

There are a couple of other considerations regarding script development that should not be overlooked.

First, I use the word “decision” broadly to describe decisions made both in or outside of conscious awareness, including those made by every child even when too young to put what they are deciding into words.

In fact, despite their preverbal nature, the decisions made during a child’s first years of life are the most persuasive and potentially the most long-lasting decisions of all. This also makes them the most resistant to change.

Nevertheless, all of these decisions can be reviewed and changed as life is lived, though resistance to change is powerful because we usually seek to reconfirm what we already hold to be true. The alternative for many is too uncomfortable...

January 17, 2022,  Family, Life, Script  No comments

From the moment of your conception, you were already making distinct self-interested and self-aware decisions for and about yourself as well as about others.

By the time you were eight years old, you were beginning to make major decisions not only for yourself and about yourself, but also about other people and the world you experienced—the things you saw, heard, touched, tasted and smelled, and about the emotional reactions you had to those experiences.

Depending on the particulars of your earlier life experiences and your reactions to them, the decisions you made included both positive and negative ones—from the sensible and practical to the absolutely absurd and unrealistic—because, as Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward explain in their 1978 book, Born to Win, “Children can...