Category Games People Play

How each of the Game Positions Plays Out “I’m Not OK, You’re Not OK”

Aggressors are not OK, and for them, no one else can be OK either. They need someone Helpless to persecute. The Aggressors hope in putting someone else down is as a vain attempt to feel a little better about themselves. And as this is only ever for just a moment, generally their harassment becomes more frequent and intense.

However, at some level within themselves they really do know the truth: that this momentary boost is usually only acquired through someone else’s fear of what might happen if they don’t give in to the Aggressor.

The Helpless is also not OK. The have to believe that the world is always mistreating them...

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The Games People Play – The Aggressor, The Helpless, The Martyr

The Aggressor

It’s often said that to survive in today’s world we need to be a little more Aggressive. That may be, though I would be more inclined to say we need to be more Assertive.

Aggressor is used here to denote a game position which is never OK. The Aggressor presents in one of two ways: as hostile, or outwardly aggressive, or as manipulative, or passive-aggressive.

A wife’s constant nagging her husband is an example of a hostile Aggressor’s relationship game. This game might be called “You Can Never Do Anything Right.” She ridicules him for everything he does to try to please her. This may extend to insulting him for what he wears or how he looks after the children.

On the other hand, an example of a manipulative Aggressor’s game might be when a wife pul...

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The Games People Play

The life that you ultimately come to live, and all that you think, feel, say, and do in it, is for the most part lived out subconsciously through the psychological games you play, and which are especially evident in your relationships.

Games are subconsciously created, subconsciously driven, and subconsciously played out. They are the outward expression, played out in your relationships, of the inwardly held set of beliefs that define your script.

Eric Berne, the same person who developed script theory, proposed that we play these psychological games for one reason only: as a way to find confirmation or validation for our deeply held values and beliefs about ourselves and about others: our life script.

To clarify this further, let’s refer back to the life positions Victor, Vi...

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The Story of Vanessa and Mark – How Did It Come to Be?

The answer may be not just in what Vanessa and Mark observed in their families of origin but also in how they were treated. Once we began working together what came to light was two very important points. For Vanessa being shielded from arguments, as well as criticism of any type, in her family also meant that she had not learnt any skills for managing conflicts now as an adult in her most important relationships. Consequently, any raised voices or criticism was felt as a personal insult leaving Vanessa feeling constantly bruised and battered.

For Mark, on the other hand, his unrelenting exposure to conflict in his family also left him feeling bruised and battered as he was constantly made the victim of his parents and siblings’ tirades...

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The Story of Tamara and Alex

“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 ...

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Unconscious Decisions versus Conscious Decisions – Part 2

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...

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Unconscious Decisions versus Conscious Decisions – Part 1

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...

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Distractions That Keep Us from Looking at Our Scripts

You might even think that if only the other person could change or be more like they used to be when you first met, then everything would be OK. On the other hand, you might distract yourself by having an affair, or by doing any number of other things to fill in time and thereby remove yourself from the conflict. Many people use distractions instead of confronting what the conflict may mean for them and what they could learn or change about themselves that could improve the relationship between them and their partners.

Some of the things people do to distract themselves from reviewing their script beliefs and behaviors could include working more hours, spending more time at the gym, eating more, eating less, shopping more, gambling, drinking to excess, reading cheap novels or spend...

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Do As I Say Not As I Do!

One important lesson to learn here is that because your script for life and the rules or guidelines it contains are subconsciously passed on to you, you are most likely to copy exactly what your parents do, even if what they say seems to contradict it.

Without a doubt, this is where “Do as I say, not as I do!” does not work.

While kids might not know what goes on behind closed doors consciously, they know exactly what is happening subconsciously. Even a child who has not yet been born is picking up messages from their environment which marks him for life. Events will then likely play out in their own lives as they grow and enter their own adult relationships.

What I am saying here is that you are scripted to choose your partner to be a certain kind of person...

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A Rose By Any Other Name

A Rose By Any Other Name

I would like to say something about the title of my book Love, Lies, and the Games Couples Play. Put simply, love, and all that it embodies for us, is what each of us seeks in life above all else. It is the main reason we enter into relationships in the first place because it gives us a place to belong and to feel connected to others.

The “lies” in the title refers to the mistaken attitudes and beliefs that we hold about ourselves and about others. These are most likely based on someone else’s thinking which in the first instance were probably our parent’s. And as these beliefs were presented to us at a time when we were not able to make well-considered decisions for ourselves, they are not necessarily reflective of our current subjective truth.

Those beliefs, and the w...

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