We are born princes and
the civilizing process makes us frogs.
“Eric Berne“
As we grow old, expanding from our individual relationships, we begin to build relationships based on our environments. This satisfies both of our areas of physiological and emotional need, forms, and shapes our personality. In the content that improves our communicative language, we have feelings, experiences, life positions of our lives, ego states, and accordingly changing behaviors. This process, which begins in childhood, develops level by level into adulthood and then, into parenthood.
In this article, I will separately mention the theory of Transactional Analysis and the mastery of communication.
According to Berne, the founder of the Transactional Analysis theory, the need for strokes lies at the heart of human behavior. Observing the vitality of touch on humans, Berne defines stroke as a “any message that serves to recognize/ acknowledge the existence of a person,” being in the opinion that this fundamentally meets the need for recognition of existence. Strokes can be verbal, nonverbal, positive, negative, conditional, and unconditional. While physical contact is essential for life in infancy, over time, the need for psychological approval and stimulation from the external environment come into sight.
A quote I like to use by Berne, which describes the basic understanding of the Transactional Analysis theory is;
We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs.
We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs.
The objective of the Transactional Analysis theory is to help people become princes and princesses again. This theory is based on the teaching of TA Coaching sessions to ensure that the advisees reach the princes and princesses within them. In the teaching of this theory along with the philosophy of the coach, people are always OK and harmonious, everyone has the capacity to think and decide what will happen in their lives.
The difference of Transactional Analysis theory, a method of psychological change and analysis applied to solve interpersonal communication problems, from all other theories is that it deals with social psychology and individuals. Everyone is inherently good, valuable, equal, and worthy of respect.
In coaching based on Transactional Analysis, the advisee is here and now and recognizes his/ her own feelings and emotions in response to the reality of the moment that took place along with setting aside his/ her feelings of the past.
As an individual who feels free to choose between different options in terms of his/ her behaviors, he/ she takes control of his/ her communication with the awareness that there can always be more than one behavior.
In his/ her communication with other people, she/ he can show his/ her true feelings, share, live and ensure others to live in an open, safe, understanding, and respectful relationship in which he/ she is accepted as he/ she is. Knowing life script theory, he/ she understands his/ her thoughts and behaviors in the victim mentality; he/ she analyzes the attitudes, deliberately decides to leave the unconscious space and create a new life script in which he/ she will be happy to live as a prince or princess.
As we gain knowledge and awareness of our emotional hunger and needs, we learn to work on our triggers and the validation theme of our existence, as well as construct it together with our life script. We can transform these roots that reflect our view of the world with our existential positions and ego states. We can rearrange our communication according to the structural and functional distinctions of our ego states.
The functional archetypes in our Ego states are critical parental ego state, nurturing parent ego state, functional adult ego state, natural child ego state, and adaptive child ego state. Regardless of our age, in our relationships, we can have all ego states and the behaviors they reflect. Definitions and analyses we will do together while Coaching on these allow us to gain control over the types of transactions.
Think of your troubled communication with someone you are in a relationship with right now.
What is your prominent root feeling?
Describe this feeling to me and return to it. Where did you first experience this feeling in your life?
Was this feeling experienced by someone or members of your family as a child?
Does this feeling help you solve your problems today?
How big are the memories consisting of these feelings in your life?
How would you feel better about the incident, situation, and communication at the relevant moment?
What is the reality you are ignoring there?
What kind of solution would feel good for all parties?
Behaviors like hurtful, resentful, accusing, revengeful, moaning, crying fits, getting offended and running away, excessive shopping, overeating or not eating, intolerance, uncontrollable anger, manipulation are essentially the destructive reflections of these deep-seated emotions.
Communicating with ourselves, it reflects as; I am OK if I do not embrace my feelings and wishes in my communications, I am OK if I force myself, I am OK if I please others, I am OK if I do everything right.
But you are good as you. If you make yourself happy first, not others, you are OK; if you are open and express your wishes, you are OK; if you do as you can, using your time comfortably, you are OK.
Then you will be free, like all birds in nature, able to fly wherever you want and sing in open communication with all living things.
Have you ever thought about how parakeets can talk like us?
If you were to buy a parakeet to your house today, how would you train it to talk?
In these times of change and transformation that life brings, we all go through challenging periods. Especially in this time of physical distances, we were obliged to notice emotional distances even more.
In these processes of difficult situations they encounter, the individuals can be shocking, critical, or confusing in their discourse, with unexpected manners and attitudes in their communication. They can react to the entire history of the emotional wound within that event instead of the current situation they are experiencing.
If they experience a situation that threatens the emotion they have yet to resolve, they can be tougher and more disproportionate in their reaction than ever before. You will notice with a coaching session that when you encounter such a situation, you focus on your entire relationship, not only one moment, and how you can give yourself a healthy position until you reach an equilibration in the triggered emotion.
If you are experiencing a similar trigger of emotion, you can observe what you need to heal yourself. Problems are guides for us, so we see the limitations ahead of our progress, not stop signs.
If the individual you are communicating with is defensive and destructive with a harmful attitude rather than taking responsibility in cycles of being responsive, you may need to get out of this situation until a healthy communication connection is established again.
Getting out of this cycle will give you a new chance of observation. What is this side of you that constantly exposes you to others’ mistreatments? Identifying with the victim mentality, which we call the role of the frog, the increased reactivity of the individuals around you, and the feeling of embarrassment after some time create a much bigger problem than the incident itself.
With the control of the life positions and the ego selves reaching the adult status for all parties, the energy and consciousness change that take place will create the necessary space for healing.
In times when these triggering emotions and past experiences are on the surface, not everyone can find a way of expression with wisdom and grace. With this session, having reached the wisdom within you, you can see what is a temporary situation and what is a permanent or an unacceptable one.
You can manage problematic communication with new perspectives and decide whether you can continue the relationship you are in healthily. You can remove conscious harms from your life and capture a new harmony with the person with whom you are experiencing a mismatch.
You will know how to approach the field of understanding and awareness for new and healthy communication, without being punitive.
Meanwhile, you can decide whether you want to maintain this connection, or whether you will come together with a new energy.
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