Category Family

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...

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...

December 30, 2021,  Family, Games People Play, Life, Script  No comments

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...

November 15, 2021,  Family, Life, Relationship, Script  No comments

Couples who come into my office are often surprised that the partners they fell in love with seem to have become quite different people. Sometimes, knowing the mistakes their parents made in their relationships, couples have openly vowed not to become those people. But guess what so often happens? They end up becoming those people after all. 

So often, the couples I meet notice that everything they ever vowed not to become, they have become, and they are surprised to find out how powerful their subconscious scripting is.

This is usually how it is for most of us until we become aware enough of our own patterns of being to review our scripts so we can make better-informed, conscious decisions about keeping the part of the script that is working well (the positive script) and about...

October 21, 2021,  Family, Life, Love, Relationship, Script  No comments

As I now understand it as an adult, one of my script beliefs came to be that my needs are not important. I felt that I was only as good as the cog in the wheel that drove the machine that was our family business.

The interesting thing to note here is that it was fairly likely that my parents never actually intended for me to acquire this belief, let alone having it be one that I would grow up with and take into my own adult relationships. My perception of my life as I was growing up created my script beliefs, regardless of my parents’ intentions.

And, of course, this belief did go with me into my adult relationships and into my fi...