Life Scripts

0:00I mean, I would say your true self is who you want to be, not who you think you need to be in response to everybody else. When we're able to be autonomous, when we're able to understand ourselves fully, where we're able to see the script that we've written is not the truth of who we are, that we can change that script. What that allows is that physis to flow freely.

0:31And when that physis is flowing freely, we can let go of the weights of the injunction. We can let go of the balloons of the drivers because we don't need them to hold us up. We can swim fluently through the ocean of our life. Hello, how are you doing? Welcome back to the Spiritual Psychology of Acting podcast. This week's episode is the final part of our mini series on transactional analysis. So if you haven't

1:05listened to the previous three parts, do go back and check those out before listening to this one. Our final part is all about life scripts. The unconscious life plans we pick up in childhood, often without even knowing it. We'll be breaking down the different types of scripts, find out the characteristics of each of them and how they might be playing out in your own life right now. This chat we had with our resident expert Sarah Lowe's will not only help you uncover the script you might be living, but also guide you on how to rewrite it. Because once you know your

1:39script, you gain the power to change it. So if you're ready to take a closer look at the story you've been living, and maybe even start drafting a new chapter, then this episode is definitely for you.

1:53Let's get into it.

2:09Here we are, part four, our final part of our mini series on transactional analysis. Thankfully, joining John and I again is Sarah Lowe's. How are you doing today? I'm doing really well and delighted to be back once again. I'm getting used to this. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to miss it. Yeah, absolutely. And how are you, John? Yeah, I'm just thinking maybe we might have to squeeze out a part five, but let's see how this one goes. Well, it's been going on for 50 odd years. I'm sure there's something else we could get out of it. Well, there is, isn't it? Just in our pre-discussion there, there's so much comes out.

2:43We're like, look, this needs to be in there. Or we could do an entire episode on injunctions. And it's just been really interesting recently with some of these concepts, looking at, well, where we're going today with the life scripts and giving that a lot of thought and sort of reading up about it. So I'm really looking forward to this. And we've got some good questions for you as well, hopefully. So great. As always, as always. There's a quote that I found from Tony Robbins, which I think is quite apt for this episode. The quote is, if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.

3:17And that kind of speaks to what scripts are. But yes, we have touched on it in previous episodes. But what is a life script, first of all? So a life script is essentially an unconscious life plan that we develop. And it's unconscious largely because we develop the first version of it whilst we are still very young. And by that, I mean, before we have started school, which, you know, in the UK is the age of five, we have written

3:50what's referred to as the script protocol, which is the very first version of the script. And essentially, that first version of the script, which is very much based on our somatic experience of life, our felt experience of what's going on, because our brains haven't developed enough yet, our language hasn't developed enough yet, for us to actually really understand what's going on around us. But we sort of pick up on all these messages, we have these feelings, we interpret them, and we use them to write this sort of metaphorically first version of a script about what it means to be me,

4:25and what I need to do to survive and thrive with these big people who seem to be around me at the moment, and who seem to be quite, you know, powerful and quite important in relation to my ability to be okay or not okay. So first draft is done by the age of five. And then we sort of keep working on it. And there's probably a second version that's developing as we move through school. And as we begin to become more aware of the different sorts of adults around us, so as we become sort of conscious

4:57of our teachers and such, like they can start to influence the script. And then people often talk about how as we hit our teenage years, there can often be quite significant rewrites to it, depending on the environments that we find ourselves in. So particularly, I think if you think we hit senior school at that point, we're starting to be sort of challenged maybe to take more responsibility for ourselves. We're then moving off to university and starting to figure out versions of our sense of self. And, you know, as we come across different adults who may present

5:29quite a challenge to some of the ways that we were raised and the messages that we got as kids, you know, we do a bit of an upgrade, a bit of a rewrite of the script. But the idea is that what it essentially does is we have got in our unconscious minds, because so much of this is developed early, and without us being really conscious of what we're doing, that we have a sense of how our life is going to play out. So it develops into what I think Ben referred to as a life plan. So we write this

6:02script, and then it becomes the plan for our life, and whether that life is going to be successful, and we're going to get what we want, or am I going to be somebody who spends their entire life struggling, that in one sense, subconsciously, we've decided all of that. And if we never bring it into our conscious thinking, then we simply spend, simply in inverted commas, spend our life playing out that script, and finding people to be in relationship with, with a nod back to the games people play that we were talking about in one of the previous episodes, finding people to be in

6:33relationship with, who will help us to play out that script, who will enable us to, you know, reach the climax of the performance and the ultimate ending. Because, you know, what I've got in my script also helps them with what they've got in their script. So in one sense, everybody's happy. Right, yeah, yeah. And so the scripts, they're linked then to your core beliefs, and I guess it is how you view the world. Is that right? Yes, absolutely. Yes. I mean, your early scripting will absolutely influence what you believe to be

7:05true about yourself, what you believe it means to be a man or a woman, what it means to be responsible or irresponsible. And all of those sorts of things absolutely influence what we believe are the important things in life, whether we believe we're going to succeed, whether we believe we're not, whether we believe we've got a positive frame of reference around what's possible, or a negative frame of reference around what's possible in life. So absolutely, you know, our first version of our beliefs will be in that early script that we develop.

7:38To then dive deeper, then what are the different types of life scripts that we encounter in people? Well, I don't know that there's necessarily a type of life script, but there are messages that we get that inform our life script. Some way of looking at life scripts is you have winner's scripts. So those are scripts where the end of the script is what we call a payoff, which is where what we've been planning all along becomes true and happens. And in a winner's script, the payoff is happy, it's fulfilling, and it entails success and accomplishes, you know,

8:16whatever the declared purpose was for that individual's script. So there's something sort of wholesome and fulfilling about a winner's script. A loser's script, in one sense, is the opposite. A losing script is where the payoff is painful or disruptive in some way, shape or form to the individual. And it entails failure to accomplish that declared purpose, what they were trying to achieve with their script. Now, one of the things to be clear about the difference between one and

8:47the other, let's say in one sense, somebody sets out part of their script might be that they want to make lots of money, that they want to have lots of expensive things around them, that's sort of coded into part of their script. Somebody might succeed at that, so they might get that declared purpose. But if they are really miserable with that, so it's not fulfilling them, it's not giving them happiness, that would actually be a loser's script. So they've set out to be successful, and that success is predicated on money. But having shed a load of money doesn't actually make them happy.

9:20That would actually end up being defined as a loser's script because of the impact on them. But would that be a choice? Sorry, when they first formulated the script, would the script then run that I'm going to make a lot of money and fulfil my material needs and then still feel unhappy? Well, it has the potential, yes, to be. I mean, you know, scripts are many-layered, multi-layered, so you can have that sort of nuance to it, if you like. And it could be that there's a

9:51decision that we made as a child to think, right, the way out, I observe what is going on around me. Sometimes we develop a script to sort of do the opposite. So, I mean, there's something called the anti-script. So let's say somebody grows up in a household where there is a lack of money, and there's a lack of happiness. And rather than sort of repeating what's happened perhaps in terms of the life scripts of their parents, they decide, right, I'm going to make sure I've got money. So in one sense, it's an anti-script because they're doing the opposite of perhaps maybe what they're being

10:25invited to do by their parents. But it's not actually dealing with the underlying issue to do with happiness. So in one sense, they go off to make all of these money, but it doesn't actually deliver them happiness. They're just doing the, they're in attempting to do the opposite of what they experienced in that original family unit. They end up still getting the same payoff at the end of it because they're just trying to do the opposite rather than really thinking about why was that environment unhappy? It was actually about something more than just the fact that there was financial deprivation there, that maybe there was unhappiness in the relationships. But what they focused on

10:58simply is the messaging around, oh, money will make it, or if we had money, it would be easier. That's probably, you know, things that you hear. So we can't afford that. We haven't got enough money. You think, right, if I, you know, want what I want, I need to earn money. You've also, yeah, you're kind of describing Breaking Bad is probably the best example of that, which Walter White does have a loser script, doesn't he? He has this chip in his shoulder that he doesn't, he's not getting the respect that he deserves. Yeah. And it is, you're, it's the whole thing is, it's that exact thing of we need more money for the

11:28family. And so I'm going to make more money and all that power and wealth at the end, it ends tragically. He doesn't get what he wants and it's, and it's all, it all ends in disaster, doesn't it? Yes, absolutely. And that was with losing scripts. They can have sort of different categories of severity. So there's a first degree losing script, which is where, you know, the things that they lose are not that consequential to them. And they are probably the sorts of things that people would be perfectly happy to talk about socially, like that, you know, they lost a job or the car broke down,

12:01you know, those sorts of things that you would quite happily chat about. A second degree losing script is where actually what's going on is not something that you want to talk openly about. So it could be like, you know, what's going on in terms of the breakdown within a relationship or ways you are treating each other, which you're not terribly proud of, but it's, it's absolutely leaving you in a situation where you don't feel fulfilled or don't feel happy, but you're just trying to sort of keep it under wraps. And then the third degree losing script is one where it ultimately ends in

12:32either death, injury, illness, or incarceration. It's the sort of extreme version of a losing script where it ends with really severe consequences for the individual and potentially also for other people around them. And is that what you call the tragic script? Yes. That final one? Yes, absolutely. So the third degree losing script is also referred to as the tragic script. Having said that there were not that many types of script, I'm now merely describing loads. Well, yeah, I think the tragic ones you do find often in drama, because like you say, that's, that's where you find the, you want to

13:05get to these ones because these are the juiciest. I think like Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader is a tragic character, isn't it? Because he starts off as this innocent young boy with so much potential for good. But it's all this fear and anger and a desire for like power and control, which then corrupts that. It's almost interesting for us as an audience, because we do know that script. We do know he does turn out to be Darth Vader. We, we know that he's getting to that point. And that's the fun in almost seeing how he gets there. Well, absolutely. And I think for me, watching those prequels, when they came out, I remember the points I found so painful to watch were the moments

13:41where you saw that Anakin as the young man had a choice and he had, you know, the, the healthy choices from Obi-Wan. And I cannot remember his love interest, but he's got the option. Yes, pardon me. That's it. He's got the option to go and stay with her and follow that line, but he gets sort of lured by the dark side. And it's one of those things where we all know what's going to happen, but it's still so painful, those moments, because it's a moment of choice that, and we know what the consequence of that choice is going to be. And Byrne often talked about

14:14life script. He linked them to theatre scripts in the sense that, you know, you sit down and you watch a play, you start to watch it and you can see how this life script is going to play out. You can begin to see it in the way that people are and in the way they conduct themselves, whether this is somebody who's got a winner's script, so this is probably going to work out okay for them, or somebody who's got a loser's script. You know, a lot of Arthur Miller's plays are, you know, that are so heartakingly tragic are often because you've got these people who, you know, who have,

14:46in one sense, written for themselves, although unconsciously, a losing script where it's never going to quite work out. And I suppose the work of a transactional analyst in supporting people is try to support people to become aware of their script because the beauty of script is we wrote the first version, even when we weren't aware of it. We wrote it. And therefore, if we wrote it and we realise it's not working for us, guess what? We can rewrite it, you know, and we can start to challenge that, you know, what is it that means that we often end up with a losing script? It feels

15:19like we've got a losing script. Where is that coming from? And how might I rewrite it or update it in order to sort of move myself back into a winning direction, so to speak? There is another type of script, which is cunningly titled the non-winning script, sometimes also called the banal script. And that is essentially where, for the individual, the payoff at the end of their script, they never win particularly big or lose particularly big. So they're just the sort of steady eddy, if you like. Life goes on, nothing particularly dramatic

15:52happens, either for them or against them. And so they just keep doing what they're doing and sort of plodding along, really. But there's neither great fulfilment nor great tragedy in the script. Milhouse Van Outen from The Simpsons is a great example of that.

16:08This often settles for less, doesn't he? Avoids risk. And whenever you think of him, you always think of him trying to ask Lisa on a date and always being knocked back in a while. Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of mid-table obscurity, really. You know, they're not going to get promoted, but they're not getting relegated either. Tottenham Hotspur. Yeah. No comment. No, there's a version of Milhouse where he, in the future, where you see him once, where he's like a gym guy and he's got like the massive pecs and he's absolutely enormous.

16:40Yeah. And it really struck me as psychologically true that someone like that would grow up and spend all their time in a gym. And he's talking about how difficult it is to make his calves, to develop his calf muscles.

16:56You've also got Meg Griffin from Family Guy. She fits that mould perfectly. She's the butt of the rest of the family's jokes. She's kind of the black sheep in that way, isn't she? Yeah. Always has low self-esteem and never really makes anything of her life. Yeah. So almost a more painfully realistic version as well, I guess. Yes. Yes, absolutely. And probably relatable in a way that most of us would not like to admit to, really.

17:24What I find quite interesting is that with a winning script, I think a good example of that is Rocky Balboa, because I think it's good, isn't it? Because he's often seen as a bit of a loser or an underdog, but then someone like Walter White, he's becoming more and more confident, powerful and fearsome in the drug world. And yet they're kind of going in opposite directions. It seems like one's, you almost say that Rocky's the loser and Walt's the winner, but really Rocky wins out, doesn't he? He achieves his dream of becoming champion, but that's all through like perseverance and self-belief and hard work. And you've got this

17:56other scale where Walt's kind of descending further into hell, haven't you? Well, and I suppose what you can hear in partly, I think you can hear in that the life positions that we've spoken about previously that are a part of the script, whether I believe that I'm okay and you are okay as well, or whether I believe I'm okay and you're not. And I think the sort of Rocky character, there's a lot of warmth and love about him that yes, he's struggled, but I think there is a sense of self and a sense of faith, you know, belief in himself and the belief in what he can do, but it's not belief in one sense at any cost. It's not belief at the

18:32detriment to other people. Whereas I think a lot of the foils to the, you know, Rocky's character in those movies, his enemies often end up being people who it's I'm okay, you're not, that you often see sometimes, you know, playing out in sports, the different characters. I mean, certainly these days, there's a greater sense, I think, of sportsmanship where we might be enemies on the pitch, but actually at the end of the day, we shake hands or, you know, I've often, I've just finished watching a bit of a Wimbledon match, you know, and you've got these two phenomenal sportsmen hammering each other and

19:05getting really frustrated when they're not winning. And then one of them wins. So one's happy, one's disappointed, but they're giving each other a hug and a congratulation over the net at the end of the match. So that, which says to me that in the game, it's I'm okay, you're not, because I need to beat you, but actually philosophically, fundamentally, they're able to hold onto that. Actually, at the end of the day, I'm okay, and so are you. So, you know, we can both, we can still be in relationship with one another, even though one of us has just won a match and one of us hasn't. And I think that you can

19:35really see how the life positions influence people's scripts and what then plays out. Because often what happens in the film stories is it's, you know, it's the big baddie, the one who's I'm okay, you're not, who ultimately will get their comeuppance. So they might look like they've got power, but they end up with a losing script because what's just come into my mind is that it die hard, you know, when Alan Rickman's character ends up, you know, falling backwards off the building at the end, having been completely in control and, you know, quite terrifyingly in control of what's

20:06going on through most of that movie. But he still ends up with, in one sense, a losing script because the payoff is not fulfilled at the end of it. But I think there's something around also in script, the difference between a winner and a loser script is often that, you know, winner's script are about empowerment, about me fulfilling myself and my potential when it's a positive message, positive messages that are being played out. The more negative scripts, certainly the losing script, it's usually that feeling that somebody's got power over me. And I might be in my losing script

20:40trying to fight it. But if I still fundamentally believe that actually, I'm not okay, you are, oh, that is probably what is going to play out in the script or in the payoff at the end. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. So then now that we kind of know a little bit about what scripts are, and some people might have even had started to identify that in their own life, but how do you find out what your core beliefs are and learn what kind of script that you've picked up along the way? Well, there are various messages that form the script that you can start to explore to think about.

21:13I wonder what the messages were that I picked up. Some will be easier perhaps to catch than others because the early version of the script, as I said before, is our felt response to what's going on around us whilst we're still pre-verbal. We get some messages in later childhood, which do tend to come from verbal instructions from the people around us. So those tend to be slightly easier for us to pick up on. But we can connect this back. If you remember, I think back to the dim, distant days of the very first episode, I think we recorded together, we talked about the

21:44functional ego states model. So that's the parent adult child model. And what we talked about primarily there was about how the parent adult child model can help us to understand how and why we behave in certain ways. You know, we, you know, we operate out of the child ego state when we're putting energy into being my own self. We operate out of the adult ego state when I'm putting energy into sort of here and now reality and deciding what it is I need to do in response to what's going on around me. And we operate out of the parent ego state when we're putting energy

22:15into sort of being in charge of what's going on. But there's another version of the ego states model that if you like sits behind the functional ego states model, it's called the structural ego states model, which is essentially looking at what is it that has constructed that child ego state that I have in the functional models, the adult and the parent ego state, what are the messages that helps us to develop that. And the child ego state is informed by messages that we picked up as children

22:47from the grownups around us. And there's two types of messages that we get that sort of inform that child ego state, one of which is called injunctions, and one of which are called affirmations. You can probably tell just from the title that one's more positive than the other. So the affirmations are positive messages that we received in early childhood that give us a sense of self, a positive sense of self, a positive sense of, you know, whether I'm appreciated or

23:23loved, you know, about what people think and feel about me. So positive affirmations that we might receive as, you know, when we're tiny is that we're picked up and we're held and that physical contact and that we're, you know, when we cry, somebody turns up and soothes us and giving us a sense that, you know, we're valued. The injunctions are negative messages that we get from the grownups around us. And if you can stick with me for a potential further level of complexity is that these messages that we receive in that child ego state, according to a theory called the

23:58strict matrix that was developed by somebody called Claude Steiner, but also building on work by Byrne and a couple of people called the Gouldings, Bob and Mary Goulding, who were very big in the TA world when Byrne was still alive in the 60s and 70s. These messages come from the child ego state in the parent, in our parents. So it's a message from the child ego state in the big people around us at the time, whether that was mum, dad, granny, granddad, big brother, big sister, that embeds itself in the child ego state that we are developing at that point in time. And the injunctions, which are

24:35the ones that we tend to focus on, are all don't messages. So they're felt messages. They're not actually verbal instructions that we're given, but they're often felt messages that are passed on to us, as I say, from the child ego state within the parent. And I can give you some examples of what those messages are. I know, Jordan, you've got an awareness of those. That'd be great. Yeah. So they are things like don't be, or which is sometimes referred to as don't exist. Don't be you. Don't be long. Don't be close. Don't be a child. You know, sometimes people feel like they've never

25:11had a childhood, that they're sort of encouraged to be older than they are. Sometimes that might be developed if, you know, the parent feels that the actual person feels like actually they need parenting. So I haven't got capacity to look after you. The child somatically might pick up on that and think, right, I've got to, I've got to be more grown up than I am. This is a message they're getting sort of very early on in life. Or you might have the reverse, which could lead to this injunction, which is you've got a parent who wants to keep parenting forever. They might pass on to their child an injunction around don't grow up. Always stay a child, the sort of person who might never

25:44leave home, either literally or metaphorically, that they may be, you know, 45 years old and have their own home, but they're still taking their washing home to mum every weekend or picking up some cooking to put in their freezer. We've also got things like don't think, don't feel, don't make it, don't do anything, don't be important, and don't be well. So these don't messages we are receiving as we start that early version of our script. And so you can see if you're getting more injunctions and affirmations from the big people around you, it has a huge impact on

26:16whether you're likely to be developing a winner's or loser's script in that first version. Right. That's really interesting. We use a thing called psychic contracts. Right. And a psychic contract is an unconscious contract that's made between the parent and the child. Yes, it's exactly that. And there'll be things like, I promise not to be more successful than you are. Yes. Or I promise to make you proud. Yes. I promise to waste my life like you have. Or even I promise to be an alcoholic, it could

26:52be. I promise to have failed relationships. And they're not verbal messages. As you were saying with a lot of these, they go in, we talk about what we call front door thinking and back door thinking. So front door thinking is where you see someone sitting in a certain way, you know, your uncle Jim comes to stay. And you think one day when I grow up, I'm going to sit like uncle Jim, who looks important the way he folds his arms and he has his finger

27:24to his cheek. But there's back door thinking because uncle Jim, the reason why he's holding the posture of a man who wants to be superior is because he feels inferior and he has a lonely life. And what goes in through the back door when as a child, you take on the posture of uncle Jim is his life is lonely and people don't care. And that goes in through the, that we call that back door ideas. And they're really that the atmospheres we get from the people

27:56that we're around and particularly the parents. Cause I always ask students on the acting course to reflect on some questions like, what do I love the most about my parents? And what do I hate the most about my parents? Uh, to, to see what comes out there. So it seems like there's a, there's a lot of, um, it's really interesting hearing it as don't injunctions. Don't be, don't be you, don't be a child. Yeah. What, what, so the opposite then of an injunction would be an affirmation. Yes. So these are positive messages, which would be, be you, you know,

28:32you belong here, be well, think for yourself. It, they are literally the opposite sort of messages that you get about, you know, encouraging children to think, feel. Um, I was mentioning to you in our chat earlier that I volunteer at a preschool, which, you know, has children there who were three and four years old. And I often have these injunctions and affirmations in my mind to try and make sure that in the way that I'm working with them, what I'm doing is encouraging them to think and feel for themselves and try things out and, you know, do things the way you

29:03want to do them. Don't just do them the way that Harriet's decided to do it over there or Freddie's decided to do it over there. Find your way of doing it and celebrate them for who they are rather than trying to make them feel that they've got to fit a certain format or, you know, achieve a task in a certain way. But yeah, the affirmations are the positive versions of the injunctions. But, but a lot seems to go in through just the, the atmosphere, like, um, my dad would be peeling potatoes, uh, at the sink and he'd suddenly sigh and go, Oh, it's a hard life, John.

29:42And, uh, I would think, um, no, it isn't. You're just peeling potatoes, but I'd got the message that life is hard. And then some years later I was discussing this with him and I'd say that, you know, you'd sigh and you'd say it's a hard life. And he laughed and he said, that's my mother. My mother used to say that. So it's generational, this idea when actually life wasn't hard. He was just peeling potatoes. Um, but his mother sang the song of life is hard and perhaps life was hard for

30:16her. Yeah. But probably, you know, she got it from her mother. Yes. So these things are all getting sort of cascaded down the generations from, you know, one child ego state to the child ego state in the next generation down these messages sort of get transferred. So sometimes it might just be something that's coming from your parent, but I think you're right. So much of this actually gets transferred generationally about what it means to, to be working or not working to, as I said before, to be a man or a woman or all that kind of stuff, it can come down the generations and we're unaware of it, but unaware of it. But, you know, you will hear people

30:51talking sometimes about transgenerational trauma, these beliefs that sort of get embedded about things that have happened or things that will happen to us because of what's happened generationally before they get translated to the next generation through that child ego states about what we believe to be true about ourselves. Well, that's the importance of, you know, working on yourself and developing your awareness because you can break the chain of what you're passing on. You know, there can be many generations that have passed on an idea like life is hard, but you can actually

31:25break that by, by realizing actually that's just an illusion and let's, let's not let my daughter have those ideas. Yes, precisely, precisely. And that's where that happens. It's really potent. And it's like, I guess you're not just changing your own script, but you're potentially changing the script of future generations as well. That's probably, that's the work I guess, isn't it? Yeah. Well, then it's evolutionary, you know, that's evolutionary, isn't it? You know, in a way that I think that if you solve your problem with life, that's the evolution of the

31:55whole human race. Everybody seems to have some sort of problem that they've inherited in life. And that's, you know, I think that's one of our duties is to solve whatever that problem is that we have, which seems to be tied up with our birth and our relationship with ourself and our relationship with our parents and society, et cetera. But through finishing off that thinking, if that's how society and indeed the human race evolves. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

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33:43I think it was a couple of episodes ago, you spoke a little bit about drivers, and so are they the same as, because we have the injunctions that we've talked about, they don't grow up, don't feel, don't think. We have counter-injunctions. Are they the same thing as drivers? They are very similar. Technically, they're not exactly the same, but you might hear people referring to a driver as a counter-injunction. I have sometimes. The counter-injunctions are, if you like, responses to the injunction. Now, sometimes the phrase counter-injunction can be

34:17quite confusing, because it makes you think immediately that the counter-injunction must, by definition, be opposite to the injunction. But actually, sometimes the counter-injunction might contradict the injunction. Sometimes it might help you to actually reinforce it. So, to explain what it is, I was talking to you before, the injunction is a message that comes from the child ego state, let's say, in the parent or in the grown-up to the child ego state in the child. The counter-injunction, we're going up a couple of

34:51ego states, okay? The counter-injunction is, if you like, a command that comes from the parent ego state in the grown-up to the parent ego state in the child. And it's a command around what to do or not do in order to be okay around here. So, that's essentially what the counter-injunction is. It's a command. And that command might, as I said, might contradict the injunction or it might re-emphasize the injunction. The driver behavior is a behavior that we develop in order to adhere

35:31to that command, to embay that instruction that we've been given in the counter-injunction. So, for an example, let's say that somebody has a don't-be-close injunction that's been sort of, a message that's been passed to their child ego state. They might also, so the counter-injunctions that's also important to say, these develop slightly later in life and they are verbal. So, these are after, you know, but when we've probably around, I don't know, seven, eight, something like that, this is when we start to get these counter-injunctions coming in,

36:04where we are hearing the commands of the big people around us. So, it might be parents, teachers, scout troop leaders, whoever, you know, we hear these verbal instructions and we begin to think, oh, okay, this is what I need to do in order to be okay around here. So, I've got this felt experience of don't-be-close and perhaps maybe, let's say I've got that from, I don't know, my mum and I get a sort of counter-injunction which is around don't rely on other people. You know,

36:35in order to be okay around here, you need to not rely on others. And what that can develop in terms of the drivers is one of the five drivers is called a be-strong driver. And typically, people who have be-strong drivers do not show their emotions. They make brilliant poker players because you cannot tell what is going on underneath the surface. And so, we develop these behaviors because we think, okay, in order for me to be okay around here, I need to be strong. The other drivers are just to run through them are be perfect. So, I have this sense that in order to be okay around

37:09here, I need to behave in a way that is perfect. Another one is called, it was originally called please me, but imagine the please me in adverted commas, because it's not about pleasing myself, it's about pleasing the other person. So, like pleasing the grown-up. And therefore, to make life simpler these days, it's more often than not called a please-others driver because that more accurately describes what it's actually about. It's about pleasing every, as long as everybody else around me is happy, then everything will be fine. Another one is called a try-hard driver. So, as long as I'm

37:42making an effort, it doesn't matter whether I actually achieve anything, but so long as it looks like I'm trying hard, then I'll be okay around here. And the final one is a hurry-up driver, so long as I'm moving quickly. These are usually the people who are tapping on the table in a meeting or something who are sort of, you can feel them like physically trying to rush you along with what you're doing. They're like, yeah, yeah, we've got it, next slide. They're always trying to push things to do more quickly. So, the driver behaviour is a response to the counter-injunction. So, the counter-injunction comes as a command from somebody else, and the driver is how we behave in response

38:15to that command. Right, yeah. We can transform almost. Yes, absolutely, that we say, okay, so long as I behave like this, I will be all right. The thing to note in terms of how the driver behaviour plays out in us as grown-ups, it usually kicks in in situations where we don't feel okay, where I don't know if I'm going to be all right. So, like, maybe when I'm new somewhere, if I'm new into a job, you know, if I'm joining a new cast, and I don't know what the dynamics

38:45are going to be like, or if I'm turning up to an audition, you know, and maybe my stress levels or my anxiety is up about, you know, I've got to get this job, I've got to get this job. So, you might find that the driver behaviour is more present, because it usually kicks in when I'm not certain if I'm going to be okay. If you're in a situation where you're fairly relaxed, you get on with everyone, you're not worried about how you're going to come across, it doesn't come across as this sort of compulsive behaviour. And there can be a lot of strengths in the behaviours. I might have declared previously, I've got to be perfect driver. And when I'm not worried about

39:18something, the fact that I've got an attention to detail serves me beautifully. But, you know, when I am worried about something, and I realised I've not just proofread that email four times before I've sent it, I've re-read it twice in the sent folder to make sure that it was as accurate as I thought it was. That's when you think, yeah, that's a bit ridiculous, love. You know, that gives me a sense that actually, I'm unsettled, I'm not feeling okay here. And maybe I need to just sit and chill for a bit and figure out what is this really about? Yeah. So hopefully that helps to give you a sense of the sort of how the counter injunctions and

39:51the drivers sort of relate. Yeah. No, that's great. I mean, in my own research, I came across a few examples where you have an injunction and then the counter injunction there. And because they're both, they're not the opposites, but they do kind of mix and mingle and create some kind of internal struggle. So I've got a few examples here of that. So the injunction could be, don't be you. So that child's being discouraged from expressing their own true interests. The counter injunction be perfect. They'd then be expected to excel academically or athletically, whatever. And

40:25then that outcome would be, even though they would achieve high academic success, they would then feel disconnected from their true passions, leading to a real sense of dissatisfaction later on down the line. Yeah, absolutely. It was making me think of a girl I was at school with who, you know, I don't know, we would have been first or second year of GCSE. We were chatting about what did we want to be when we grow up, that sort of stuff. And I think I said before, you know, I decided at 10, I was going to be a rich and famous actress. So I may potentially have a loser script myself, folks, given the fact that that didn't quite play out. But

40:58I remember I had this really clear sense of what I wanted to do. And the reason the conversation stuck in my head is I remember asking her and she said to me, I'm going to be a lawyer. And I said, Oh, why do you want to do that? And she said, Oh, it's what my parents want me to do. She wasn't playing a pity me game about it. It was just, it was a very factual conversation. But I remember it left me feeling quite sad because there was no negotiation about it. It was just a very clear, this is what my parents want. So therefore, in one sense, she might have argued in saying, so I don't have to worry

41:28about making a decision. It's very clear to me the things I need to be studying moving forward. But I, you know, I, I have not in touch with her anymore, but I've always had a curiosity about how that played out for her. And, you know, did she, has she found herself, we're now in our mid forties, a very successful lawyer and is she happy? You know, what she actually wanted, but, you know, she's followed, she's been the good girl. She's done as she was told. She was academically very bright. I mean, only had to flutter her eyelashes and get straight A's where I had to make my eyeballs bleed

42:02in order to get a B. Not that I was jealous or resentful at all. But, but so, you know, I can imagine that she did very well, but it doesn't necessarily mean that she's experienced happiness or fulfillment because she's following an instruction that she was in that sense, a clear verbal one, but decisions that other people had made for her. Yeah. Yeah. It seemed like such a clear, like she almost, she had full awareness of it as well. It wasn't like it backed her. It was like, she just knew and that's, she knew her script and she was quite happy to follow it. Yeah. Almost a military response, you know, and that's what, you know, if you get a command

42:34in the military, that's what you're meant to do. Yes, sir. No, sir. Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am. Yeah. And I think that's why it always sort of struck me that it, she, she didn't quite seem to be responding in that moment. It was almost slightly robotic. Right. Yeah. There was so much more color to her, usually in the conversations that we had and flavor in terms of what she was talking about, her interest in that moment. It's just like, it all went, this is what I've got to be, because this is what I've told and I'll be okay if I become a solicitor.

43:06Yeah. So good parenting is, is actually, you know, helping your child get in touch with what it is that they enjoy and what it is they have a natural talent for, and then supporting them in that, because that's where they're most likely to succeed, isn't it? So that's what the, you know, the affirmations are about facilitating growth. We've said before, transactional analysis is ultimately about achieving autonomy. You might stretch that to say about, you know, self-actualization, becoming your true self. I mean, you know, we're all human. And,

43:36you know, as we've said a number of times, how our messaging is being interpreted by the small people around us is not necessarily always the message we intend them to pick up on. You know, if I'm having a bit of a bad day and I'm a bit stressed, a child might pick up on a, you know, don't be you message. And I might be thinking, don't, don't do that today. I haven't got the brain space, but, you know, I don't mean them to interpret that as a lifelong message. I think if, as a parent, if you can quite quickly get back into offering the affirmations rather than injunctions, then, you know, if you're getting more affirmations than you are injunctions, then hopefully it's

44:08the affirmations that will win out. And then the counter injunctions that you're getting from positive parenting are how to support yourself to achieve what you want to achieve. So it's not about be a lawyer. It's about if that's what you want to do, then, then how are you going to work to achieve that? One of my goddaughters has just completed her GCSEs. I was saying to her, I'm not overly worried about the grades that you're going to get. What I think is more important about these, because, you know, in the last 20 odd years, if I dare to admit that that's how long

44:42since I took my GCSEs, how many times have people asked me for my GCSE results? I mean, twice at most. But I was saying to what I think is so valuable about this experience is it teaches you how to support yourself through something that's stressful in order to still be able to get what you want to get out of it. You know, she knows what she wants to do for A-level. She's got an idea of what she wants to do for her degree. So she knows that she needs to achieve certain things. So she's worked hard to put herself in the best position to be able to achieve those things at this

45:13stage so that she can move on to the next stage. So in one sense, the counter injunctions that I've been trying to offer her was around supporting her to think about how do you manage stress? And, you know, I was trying to say, you know, don't work yourself into a ground. It's about self-care. It's about understanding what you've got, what's reasonable to achieve in this period of time. Those are the things I've messages I've been mindful of trying to give her rather than saying you need perfect results. Otherwise, I'm resigning my godmothership. Yeah. Can it work the other way in terms of if a child, all they got was just affirmation,

45:54you're a mummy's little soldier, what a good boy you are, how you're so clever, can that create a shadow in itself? Because there's a kind of reality check that the child compares their real state of being to this heightened pedestal that they've been thrust upon by their parents. And doesn't that shortfall from the reality of their being to what's being projected on them, that can create a shadow in the psyche of I'm not good enough and I'm not worthy.

46:27That phrase you used about being mummy's little soldier, I wonder if that's a don't, I would be thinking, I wonder if we've got a don't grow up injunction. That although the wording might sound positive, like it sounds it's an encouragement, it might be actually doing the work of an injunction still about is what I need you to be is to continue to be mummy's little soldier and still be with me and not do anything that challenges my place in your life. An injunction doesn't necessarily play out with everybody being

46:58hellish to you all the time. It's just that certain things about you are not stroked and encouraged. If we go back to thinking about strokes that we mentioned in an earlier episode. So if you've got somebody who's been given an injunction, which is to say, don't feel, they might get a lot of affirmations for themselves academically about the way that they work. But as soon as they cry, it's like, you know, boys don't cry or maybe girls don't cry either. You know, that there's something about that element of who they are gets shut down pretty damn quick. Because around here,

47:28we don't talk about our emotions. Well, going back to that example, John, there is one which is very much fits that kind of mold of that overprotective parent, which would be the injunction, don't grow up, like you said there, Sarah, overprotecting, discouraging them from taking on adult responsibilities. The counter injunction could be try hard. They're expected to put in maximum effort in everything they do. And that possible outcome could be that the person would then exhibit procrastination and then a fear of responsibility

47:59because of they didn't ever took it on as a youngster. And then they feel pressure to also perform well in certain areas. And that could easily lead to burnout. There's, there's so much internal struggle going on there with that one. Yeah. Yes. All from a well-meaning parent, maybe. Well, yeah. I mean, you know, I often say when I'm sort of talking to people about transaction analysis, we talk a lot about parents. I think most of the time, most of us are doing the best that we can with the information that we've got at the time. And there's been such an explosion in the last 50, 60, 70 years since ideas like this started to be developed of understanding the self

48:33that, you know, wasn't around for previous generations or indeed encouraged. So it's not about trying to sort of water things down and say, oh, it's all right, really. I had bloody good parents, excuse my language, won't be happy about that language, maybe, who, to go back to something you were saying before the break, John, you know, without going into the details of their histories in their respective ways. Both of them had challenges growing up and they have both in their marriage individually and collectively worked really hard through, you know, having therapy and counselling

49:05themselves to understand themselves that they've passed much less of that on to my sister and I than by rights we were owed if they hadn't gone through all of that. So I think that's the thing, isn't it? It's about understanding. It's important to understand where we've come from and why we might have certain instincts and they've, you know, still passed some baggage on to my sister and I, but, you know, much less than it would have been otherwise. And so I think there's something around acknowledging why things were done the way that they were and thinking, right, what can I learn about things that maybe I have still passed on to? I don't have children of my own, but godchildren,

49:38nieces and nephews. And actually, what can I now do differently moving forward? I think that's the... Yeah, it's understanding your own sort of parents' patterns of thinking rather than... because then if you don't, you might blame them. Yeah. And if you blame them, then you have no real power to change, do you? Because you've been cursed or something's been enforced upon you that's unchangeable. If you blame, as soon as you blame, you give away your power to change. Absolutely. But I think it's important that you do acknowledge the psychological dynamic in them

50:10that impacted your own development of your own psyche. Yes, absolutely. And it reminds me of one thing I was going to mention about counter injunctions, injunctions, or more specifically drivers and injunctions. There's a model that's produced or that was written by a woman who I've done some training with in the TA. She's very well known in the UK TA. Well, she's known internationally, but she's a UK transactional analyst, called Adrienne Lee. She came up with this idea of the drowning man. And it's an image that she draws of a man in water. It's usually a stick man in water,

50:44and he's got injunctions tied to his feet. So they are weighing him down. But he's also holding in his hand balloon strings that lead to five balloons above him, which are the five drivers. And it's this idea that the injunctions, if we allow them, can pull us down and we might sink or, you know, worst case scenario, drown. But we develop these driver behaviours to try and keep us afloat. And so in one sense, we can maintain a sort of sense of okayness that, yeah, I've got these things weighing

51:17me down, but I've developed these drivers so I can keep myself afloat. And that often what we're trying to do, whether it's in my work as a coach or whether it's in therapy, is not to like just suddenly cut all the strings to the drivers that are pulling us down. And suddenly we fly off into the air at a speed that's probably slightly shocking. Nor is it about sort of letting go of the drivers immediately, because if we still got injunctions attached to our legs, we're going to sink. First of all, it's about acknowledging that they're both there. And you know, you won't have all 12 injunctions. There's probably only a couple that you might have. And you might not be making use

51:50of all of the drivers. It's about acknowledging which ones I've got, so that you can then start to make choices about letting go of them as you rewrite the script and think, actually, I do belong. I can grow up. I am grown up, good Lord. I mean, that's the shocking thing when you suddenly realize that you are a grown up, isn't it? Or maybe that was just me. You know, so that I am a grown up, so I can choose to let go of that. So eventually you have in time when you're ready, let go of all of that stuff and realized you can swim yourself or you can float in the water. You don't have to be,

52:20and it comes back to this point about the autonomy, John, of understanding, actually, that I can make my own choices about how I respond to this. And you're absolutely right. As soon as we start blaming other people, we gift our autonomy away. We gift our power away to others. And I think that's the thing about what some people would say is when you're blaming, that is probably a sign that you are still in script. You are still operating out of your script rather than being conscious of your script and using it where it is still helpful to you. And where it's not helpful, do you think,

52:51well, right, that's a bit of, I need to rewrite. Yeah. I find in therapy sometimes that people have a, I don't know what you'd call it, but a sort of an auto directive, which is I must not criticize my parents. Yeah. And therefore you can't, it's difficult to get to what they really think because they, there's this whole layer of what they think they think or what they've been told to think or what's socially acceptable or what remains loyal to their parents by having these

53:22thoughts. And it, sometimes it takes a little while to get beyond that and find out what do they really feel about their parents and their relationship with their parents. And the fear of the consequences of if they are critical, because you remember some of these injunctions are developed somatically. So they develop pre-verbal when our parents, or the grownups who are around us are incredibly powerful people to us. You know, they are the difference between us living and dying when we're very small, when we're babies, you know, we can't feed ourselves, you know, we can't change ourselves. They have huge power. So sometimes I think

53:55people can be quite surprised as you start to understand the script about when you say to me, you know, what's the, what is it that you fear? If you, if you are critical of your parents in the here and now, when you're in a, say a coaching room with me, nobody else can listen. I'm not going to tell them what's the fear. And often it is that the fear of rejection, the fear of they won't want me in the family anymore. And they will often say, it just sounds ludicrous as I'm saying it. And it's what I feel, you know, because it's these deeply somatically held beliefs that feel like

54:29they come with very heavy consequences. You know, our parents can be powerful people. It reminds me of a story that Byrne tells in one of his books about, I don't know if both of these brothers were a client or one was, but they had a mother who some of the verbal messaging they got from her was you're going to end up in a mental hospital to the boys. And it proved true for both of them, but in slightly different ways. One of them eventually did end up getting admitted as an inpatient to a mental facility. The other one became a psychiatrist in a mental facility. They both ended up in a mental

55:01hospital by a very different means, but it, you know, but that, but her messaging came true. And, you know, the, the elder brother, I don't know if he was older, but the brother who ends up as a psychiatrist might have been, might've been a bit of anti-script of going, well, I'm, I'm, I'm not going to go mad, you know, which is sort of the underlying message. If somebody's saying to you, you're going to end up in a mental hospital, the underlying message is you're crazy. But in, in one sense, trying to do the opposite of that, in one sense, he still ended up meeting the script that, you know, had been gifted him

55:31because he ended up working in a mental institution rather than being a patient in a mental institution. Yeah. Wow. That's, I mean, it's, I really liked that image of the, the drawing man, because it does show you how, I mean, I guess people with especially lack of awareness of the scripts, people just assume I'm just the way I am and there's nothing I can do, but nothing I can change. Yes. But yet it's, because I think there is a real comfort in not challenging our scripts because they're what we're used to, right? They feel comfortable because it feels this is right. This is because you're on a certain path. And I think it's almost like that, that

56:03image of the drowning man is that you're being pushed and pulled, but you're, you are, you may be drowning at some stages, you might be kind of being lifted out of the water at some stages, but it is quite comfortable. You're, you're, you can probably exist in that level, but it's that realizing it's the awareness. It's like that you realizing that you're actually in danger either way. And the real joy isn't being able to swim is being able to be free of these and just be able to float. Absolutely. And all you are doing in that scenario is surviving. You're not thriving. Yes. Yeah. Because you're trying to cope with other people's view of you and what's been expected of you,

56:35but it's not actually enabling you to be autonomous. It's not enabling you to be you. And that's where a lot of the, when we can understand our script and, and I think for people who are not one to frequent to, I don't think therapists have couches anymore. I think maybe they have sofas and, uh, or whatever, but, or, or to work with a coach that I do think theater and film and movies are ways in which for some people, that's how they maybe not fully consciously, but one of the ways to

57:05maybe get a sense of what your script might be is to think back to what were your favorite stories as children, particularly as young children, what were the books that you used to really love to read and wanted to read again and again, or the TV programs that you really loved. And what does that tell you about actually what was important to you as a kid, perhaps who it was that you felt you needed to be? One of the ones for me, I've always loved the Robin Hood stories. And I had a particular passion for the, um, when I was growing up, I was probably about five or six and I've watched some of it recently and I can't quite believe my parents let me watch it because

57:38some of it's quite dark, but there was the, um, version of the TV program with, oh God, his name's gone out of my head. Uh, Sean Connery son, Jason Connery was the second Robin Hood in that series. I cannot, Michael Prade, I think was the Robin Hood in the first series, but Maid Marian in that she could shoot arrows as well as the boys. And I loved that about it. She wasn't the Maid Marian who's stuck in a tower waiting for Robin to rescue her. It was like she had chutzpah and she

58:08could give as good as she got with the guys around her. And I think, you know, there's something of that, that I, I really loved her spirit, which is probably also why I spent quite a bit of my life single because I was trying to prove I was better than the boys than being prepared to get into relationship with one of them. So I didn't quite follow all of the examples of the Robin Hood made Marian relationship, but there is something interesting for me and reflecting on why was it that character that, and not just the Maid Marian character, but the version of Maid Marian in that story that's really, that really impacted me. It's not just generic stories, but there's something about

58:43the way that particular version of a tale was told that really speaks to something that felt important to us at that age. So that can be one way to start to explore what was some of the early things that were going on for me in that early version of my script that that character I really responded to. Yeah, that's fascinating. I have a homework where I get the actors to, well, we look at what are the characters ego ideals? In other words, what are the reference points of who do they aspire to be? And to find a really good ego ideal for the character. But in order to get good at doing

59:18that, and of course, in order for them to understand themselves better, I set them a homework, which is to do a history of your own ego ideals. And what were the dynamics there? Like one of my first ego ideals was the Lone Ranger. And, you know, he comes in and saves the day and, you know, has a trusted companion and comes in and saves the day and has a connection with nature and has all those things. And I think that, you know, I look back and I think that shaped my psychology.

59:53And of course, the little red riding hood complex. Byrne talks about that, doesn't he? In the what you say after you say hello, the wolf is like that. Actually, the wolf, the experience with the wolf is the most exciting thing. And that was the problem. Yes. And he noted that very often women with this complex would often turn up to the session and that they would be in possession of a red coat. Yeah, absolutely. It's individual for everyone. But I think it's so often we

1:00:26underestimate the potency of the imagination of the child, you know, the literal child and how much capacity they have for understanding. Even if what they believe to be true ends up being slightly wrong, they're still working hard to figure everything out and to make sense of it. You know, we are meaning makers as human beings that what we strive to do all the time is make sense of what's going on around us. And kids, you often have to say, you know, a child is too young to remember something difficult that's happened to them, whether that's, you know, the breakup of

1:00:57their parents or if there was a tragic accident. They may not remember literally what happened, but somatically they'll remember a lot. And there's never the room or the space for them to acknowledge that. It will play out in their behavior as grownups. They just might not be conscious that it's going back to that, you know, event when they were very young, particularly if everybody's around them saying to them, well, it didn't affect you. And they think, oh, well, it mustn't have done. I must just be mad that sometimes I behave in this ways, which are to my detriment. It's powerful. If you really harness it, there's so much wonderful about the

1:01:32imagination of children. But I think we have to be mindful about sometimes about what we're putting in there to encourage healthy play rather than gameplay, which is what we were talking about in a previous episode. Yeah, it seems just so much as that that developmental mind, it's just trying to orientate itself. It seems that that's what's at the core, isn't it? It's just like developing a sense of self. I went to see the film Inside Out 2. There is this wonderful thing that at the end of

1:02:03the day, all the new thoughts that one of the characters, Joy, who seemed to be running things in the mind at that time, this is prepubescent, she takes these balls and she floats them in this kind of magical lake. And when she floats them, the important ones, so some of them are just chucked to the subconscious. And some of the important ones are put there, floated on this lake. And like a string, a stream comes from them and goes up towards the ceiling in this great cavern

1:02:34space. And each of one of these strings is a belief. And when they pluck the belief, when they pluck the string, it says the belief, you know, I'm not good enough or whatever the idea is. But what I found really good about the model is that all these strings all come together. And they in the sort of central control area of the mind, you know, it's like the Starship Enterprise, where they're there controls. Yeah, at the back of there, there's what's known as the the core of all of it, which is

1:03:10the sense of self. So all the beliefs together accumulate this sense of self, which, you know, as we've heard can be not okay, okay, different sense of self. And we call that within the spiritual psychology of acting, that's we call that the linchpin of the mind is the self image. And it's the primary relationship, it's who I think I am, or it's who the character thinks they are. So the self image is who I think I am. I mean, the clues in the word, it's self image. It's an

1:03:48imagining of the self. It's a mental construct, even though it's very important. It's the, you know, it's the central point of reference of the whole mind, you know, it's whose mind is it anyway, it's this is that it's the sort of core idea. However, the interesting thing is, is that it's an observable, nameable, nameable, idea, it doesn't really, do you see what I mean, is that you can name it and it has a sound and a sound vibration within the words, but it can be observed, which proves that

1:04:20it is not your final real self. You're not who you think you are. In fact, if you want to know who you are, find out who you think you are, and let go of that, if you see what I mean, because it's, it's, it's what arrives, it's what remains when you let go of what you're not, is that's who you really are. And what is that, really, if you if you go back, back, back, back, back, if you bring everything, it's this just witnessing consciousness. It's just awareness that is observing the mind and

1:04:52observing the whole show. And that witnessing consciousness, that self with a capital S, which is universal, not just individual, but it's, it's the essence of all of us. In the Himalayan tradition, in the sort of whole Hindu tradition, they in the Sanskrit language, they say the nature of that self is sat, which is truth, chit, which is consciousness, and ananda, which is bliss. Hmm. And this is going beyond saying, you know, I'm okay, you're okay, you know, okay,

1:05:28is sort of a bit like the English, when you ask them, how are you, they say, not too bad.

1:05:33Is that, you know, I'm okay, I'm just okay. Yeah. But it's more than just I'm okay. It's actually that you are consciousness itself. You are the, you know, creative, universal intelligence itself, right? And you can't get better than that. There's no, there's no better than that. But, you know, there's no point feeling superior about it, because so, so is everybody else.

1:05:59Yeah, exactly. So, and what is it? How is it experienced? It's experienced as just the feeling of being, that underlying all the thoughts, all the change, all the changing emotions, time, etc, is just an unchanging feeling, which, you know, feeling doesn't even do it justice. It's kind of feelingless feeling. It's the canvas onto which everything else is painted, as it were. And it's his existence itself, it is being itself. And so what I encourage the actors do to increase

1:06:34this sense of being, because this is what gives them their sense of gravity, because they're grounded in the ground of being itself as an act, never mind what the character is doing, the character could be a hero or a villain. I'm talking about the actual substance of the actor themselves. But I get them to practice coming back to just this simple feeling of being of I amness. And it kind of overrides all that other sort of, you know, all the sort of neurotic ideas of who I am, and the

1:07:07complication of the contradiction of identity, to just bring people to give them rest and come back to that self, I've, I've observed naturally, brings a lot of those, you know, neurotic patterns of thinking, it just sort of naturally settles them. But it also gives them a real sense of steadiness awareness and confidence in in who they really are. And so I suppose my question is, is that obviously, you know, Eric Byrne is a psychologist, and he deals with the mind, you know, psychology

1:07:41is the science of the mind and behavior. But what did Eric Byrne have anything to say about the essential witness of the mind, which we could with this is where psych, you know, the psychology of acting becomes the spiritual psychology of acting. Yes, yes, absolutely. And I mean, I suppose Byrne was not working in the realm of the spirit, however you interpret that that word. I think what comes to mind for me, and what I was thinking about as you were telling that story, I mean, the story of

1:08:11the film, and also further explanations on from that, is there is a notion in transactional analysis of physis, P-H-Y-S-I-S, your innate energy, it's like your innate capacity to be you, and it is seen as emanating from the child ego state. So as a sort of driving force that comes up through the child ego state, and drives its way through, if you like, both the adult and the parents, so that it's infusing

1:08:42the way that you are in the world. And that a lot of what transactional analysis is about enable people to, I mean, to build on your language, to let go of some of those instructions and messages about what they should be doing, and how they should behaving, to connect with what you describe as it's, I mean, it might not be exactly the same analogy, but I would say to connect with their essential self, which sometimes talk about in the child ego state, as the natural child, in its purest form, that child ego state is unencumbered by parental messages from other

1:09:19people. And I think if a child grows up with a lot of affirmation, it's got much more chance of being able to get a sense of, I mean, I would say your true self is who you want to be, not who you think you need to be in response to everybody else, but actually, who am I at my most natural? What are my inclination? What are my wants? How do I want to exist in this world? And so I think there's something about when we're able to be, to use Byrne's ultimate aim for TA, when we're able to be autonomous, when we're able to understand ourselves fully, where we're able to see the

1:09:53script that we've written is not the truth of who we are, that we can change that script. What that allows is that physis to flow freely. And when that physis is flowing freely, we can let go of the weights of the injunction, we can let go of the balloons of the drivers, because we don't need them to hold us up. We can swim fluently through the ocean of our life, if I can extend the metaphor. Yeah. And that's, that's grace. Yes. That's great. Being in touch that, that physis, I've understood

1:10:25physis to be the energy that wishes to evolve. And what is it that you know, why have we gone from certain simple life forms into more complex life forms? It isn't just natural selection chance of genetics, that there is, there's an engine behind this, which is the physis, which is what makes us want to be better, makes us want to evolve within our own lifetime, makes the human race want to

1:10:56evolve into something else. And if you imagine it like a stream, yes, that going back to the drowning man, who's there, that they're in the sea, if he lets go, and lets flow and lets the stream take him, the stream is like the physis. And it will take you, it's a bit like really that I use an analogy, if you if you plant a sunflower seed, and you put it in a tank, and you put earth and you see the seed

1:11:26start to sprout, and then you dig it out and you turn it upside down, what will happen? It will loop round and it will grow. Why? Because it's heliotropic, it wishes to grow towards the light. Yeah. But then I say, well, what if you then got a piece of metal cut, and some bathroom sealant, and you put it over the top of the thing. So there was no, you know, no light whatsoever, what would happen? Well, the process of growing would cease then. Yeah. And in a way, finishing off our thinking, which is what we

1:11:58call sort of dealing with our baggage, is rather like, removing the obstacles, removing the obstacles, which are inner instructions, which are ideas, which, you know, I'm not good enough, etc. And I can't achieve this, and whatever the ideas are. But once we remove the stones, if it were from the soil, and we naturally, there's, there's the sunlight there, which is a sense of our own sort of potential

1:12:31drawing us towards that, then the process of growth and development happens quite naturally. In the same way, the energy of physis turns a sunflower seed into a sunflower. So too, that if you remove the obstacles, there's a natural development or an evolution to a finer level of consciousness that comes through removing the impediments. So it's more than just you're okay, it's your,

1:13:01you see where you have this enormous potentiality, which the way that we've been brought up and the education systems and the society itself kind of makes us collectively forget that potentiality, and indeed, the political systems, they make us forget that. Yeah, yes. And it's a question of helping people remember that, remember who they really are. Yes, absolutely. And I think that the potent use for me of script theory is about being able to begin to understand where your script is not

1:13:33helpful to you so that you can rewrite it. And I think most impactful dramas that we see on television on stage are about watching people wrestle with their script. And the ones that leave you feeling, you know, full of the joys are the ones where you've watched somebody rewrite it and realise about something and choose to do something differently. And probably the more dramatic ones are where you've watched somebody give into the script rather than, or give into the battle to try and rewrite it. They've just gone along with it and it's played itself out. So it's, you know, it's a very potent

1:14:06theory. And that I think that that idea of physis is about, you know, there's something about self determination about being able to decide who it is that I want to be rather than being, I mean, I can hear in some of your story about, you know, the oppression of the, the political, the educational, and sometimes the social spheres as well. It's about liberation. That's not about I'm okay, you're not, but is about I'm, you know, me being able to take my place in life and a place of my choosing so that I can, you know, fulfill my potential and offer who I am to the rest of the

1:14:42world. I think in what do you say after you say hello, he talks about not just I'm okay, you're okay. He talks about I'm okay, you're okay, they're okay. And I think that's a much more sort of community led look. I think in an earlier episode, I talked about not just autonomy, but also homonymy, but you know, being able to take your place in the world. And it's not about me improving my script so that I'm all right, but everybody else can go to hell in a handcart. It's about actually achieving autonomy so that I can be with my brothers and sisters on this land and make my contribution.

1:15:17And, and by that sense, you know, self actualize and also help hopefully the world to actualize in a more healthy and functional fashion. Well, yes, well, because there must be as well as an individual script as a script of a group and a script of a nation. Yeah. And I wonder that in the collective psyche of the human race, what is the collective script? But because no one seems to be writing it consciously. And well, those who are writing it consciously, I'm very dubious of, that want to shape the world politically and

1:15:54want to, you know, what are doing of that. But it seems to be led by people who haven't finished off their thinking, essentially. Well, yeah, I think Oppenheimer, the ending of the film of Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan film is so horrifying because he all of a sudden has this huge awareness of what he's done and where this is going to lead, like eventually, like it's kind of, it's almost like he's realised the weight of his decision to do this is going to now cause this potential future for the human race. It's like,

1:16:26it's that bigger picture, I guess, isn't it? I think we've all got lost in kind of, in some aspect in our lives, gone away from this kind of natural free child. And it does seem to be like the whole kind of transactional analysis world is almost like a roadmap to help us get to where we need to be again. But it does also require that leap of faith, doesn't it? Once we've become aware of it all, it's that let go, let flow, isn't it? It's the realising this is now what I need to do. It's going to be scary, but eventually it can lead to self-actualisation. It can lead to happiness. Yeah. And it can be scary because if you change who you are and you've been in relationship with

1:17:02people who have served the previous version of your script, it can disrupt the relationships around you. I've come across a number of people who, through their studies of TA, have made different decisions to the one they'd made previously about who they wanted to be in relationship with. So it can lead to big changes. And by so doing, actually, I think people learn an awful lot about themselves and who they really are and perhaps understand why they've maybe ended up in relationship with people that might have served a purpose in furthering the script, but weren't actually serving their soul and weren't actually enabling them to be who they truly are. Yeah,

1:17:35there's huge potential, I think, or potency. Maybe that's the word I'm looking for in terms of the life script to help people to understand. I think the thing that's, for me, it's hopeful. Sometimes it can think, oh my God, am I really making these decisions because of things I decided to be true when I was two and a half. You kind of think that just sounds bonkers. And, you know, it might sound bonkers, but the work I've done with it has continued to convince me that there's worth and value in it. And also there's huge hope in the fact, as I said earlier, if you wrote it, you can

1:18:05rewrite it if it's not working for you. And I think that's the interesting thing. You know, plays I've been to see where they play out different outcomes each night. You know, there's a lot, there's various different versions of the final scene and there's a lottery as to, you know, which version of the play are you going to see on the final night, depending on what the final scene is. And I think that's so, you know, it's the sliding doors moment, which is sort of so interesting to reflect on. Yeah, it seems awareness is the key, isn't it? It's awareness. It's being able to watch all

1:18:36of this without being involved, having some means of being able to step back and sort of fearlessly ask yourself questions and just to have a look what's there without judgment or criticism. Absolutely. I think it's, it's being careful. It's about realizing, you know, these repeated situations, said this to myself so many times, I have to admit the common denominator in them is me. And therefore there must be something I am doing to contribute to these situations. And as you say, with love and kindness and appreciation for the fact that you were doing the best that you could with

1:19:08the awareness that you had at the time. But if I'm going to look at this from a slightly different perspective, what's going on, what might be feeding into this? And essentially, I would say, you know, from my experience some time ago now with acting, that that's so much of what you're reflecting on in the rehearsal room is what's going on, what's driving this, what's driving this behaviour. And I go out to drivers in the moment to try and understand the performance that you are giving out, but the same sort of mechanisms could be useful to you in understanding yourself. What is driving

1:19:39my behaviour in this moment? Oh, this is it. Absolutely. I mean, within the course, we say, you know, the most important element of great acting is awareness, the ability to observe your own thoughts. And in fact, it's not just the ability, it's because it turns out that you are awareness. The self is pure awareness. It's the, it's the watcher of the thoughts. But if the actor develops awareness, well, I say, you know, you're a walking laboratory of what it is to be a human character. So they become aware of their own character, and how these principles have shaped

1:20:10their own life, as their main sort of template of what a human character is, they understand their own how their life situations in childhood, created certain ideas, they imprinted certain ideas, and how these ideas have created certain desires, and how these desires have created certain courses of action in their life in certain behaviours. And what that does is, first of all, it helps them to really understand what a character really is, you know, rather than just, let's, you know, learn the

1:20:43lines and make sure we don't bump into the furniture, allows the actor to see when their own drives, you know, their own need to be perfect, their own need to prove their, their existence, to justify their existence, or to prove to their parents that they should have been an actor and not a lawyer, or whatever those drives are, to be able to see those and put them aside. So they can, and this is what it's all about, they can just think the character's thoughts. Yeah, they don't have to take

1:21:18their own baggage on stage with them, they can leave that behind, because they know none of it's real, they've done the work on themselves, and they can just do what good actors do, and that's absorb themselves in the character's psyche. Yeah. And, and that reminds me of the contemporaries who did a lot of work with Byrne in the early stages, Bob and Mary Goulding, they were part of the group that helped Byrne really to develop and refine his theories. They were the leaders of what is known in the transactional analysis world as the redecision school. And they wrote a book about

1:21:49changing lives to redecision. It's about re-deciding, where you've understood that you are making decisions that's script bound in a way that's not helpful for you, being able to re-decide about what you were going to do moving forward. And what was quite different about their therapy is that rather than it being long and involved sessions, that actually they would work with, I mean, maybe over a period of time, but they would perhaps work with somebody in a group, they'd work with one individual, maybe just for 15 minutes. And in 15 minutes, somebody had been

1:22:21able to go, Oh, yes, actually, that's, that is, that is my dad's voice in that moment that makes the decision. And, you know, and is that true? No, it's not true. So, you know, what are you going to do differently? I think that's the thing that was connecting with me is that awareness gives you choice. And I think so often when we talk about things that we find difficult, we say, Oh, they make me feel like this, or they make me do that. And when you realize nobody makes you do anything, sometimes we behave so quickly in reaction, it can feel like somebody else has made

1:22:55us do something. But behavior is always a choice, even if it happens in a nanosecond. And I think once you become aware of your behaviors and aware of sometimes how you can react in a situation and take your own stuff onto stage with you rather than just the character's baggage, once you become aware of that, it opens up your choices about, okay, I've understood that I do that. I understand why I do it. Now, knowing that, what am I going to choose to do differently moving forward?

1:23:22Yeah, exactly. That's why our course that I present, it is much about helping the actor to become free. And in the process, they're learning how the mind really works and how to evolve and build a character properly. What it really is, is that it's the spiritual psychology of human life for actors. It really applies in anything, because it's only in acting where we have to actually create, as Stanislavski put it, the life of a human spirit. You know, that's our job to create it.

1:23:54We've got to go beyond just analyzing it and actually embody it and learn how to change our physiology by changing our psychology. Yes. Yes. Wonderful.

1:24:07Well, this has been absolutely brilliant, Sarah. This has been, I feel like I've learned so much. I've taken so many notes. I forget we're doing a podcast. I think I'm in a really interesting class. It's like, hold on, that's a really interesting term. I need to explore that further. And I think it's really rich for actors, the study of transaction analysis. It certainly served me in my understanding, as well, you, Jordan, hasn't it, in your understanding? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I found it so, yeah, so, so interesting. It's like that, you're saying

1:24:42it's the perfect mix of finding out how human beings operate, then play them convincingly on stage or screen, but then the byproduct of that is you get to, you know, see all your own stuff that's lurking and sort your own shit out. Yeah. So it's, yeah, this has been great. Thanks so much, Sarah, for all your time, for a great knowledge that we've poached. Well, absolutely. And I think most of it's been accurate. So that's been good. But no, I've really loved playing around with transaction analysis with you guys. It's felt full of child energy

1:25:15in the conversations we've had, which I think is what has made them so enjoyable. So thank you. As my mum would always want me to say to be polite girl, thank you for having me.

1:25:27I would say thank you for being had, but that doesn't sound quite right.

1:25:36But sincerely, though, thank you so much. And I really hope that the listeners get as much from hearing this is certainly I know that myself and Jordan have from hosting them with you. Yeah, well, no, it's been a real joy. I'm always happy to talk about TA and it's been a delight to bring two of my passions and my loves together in performance and transactional analysis. So, yeah, it's been lovely. And, you know, a further series, you want me to do any sort of, you know, Sarah Strikes Back episodes. Return of the Sarah. Yeah.

1:26:12I was just thinking that there's so much more to be explored here. So maybe we could take another specific area of TA and and have a look at that as well. Well, you know where I am, gents.

1:26:32You've been listening to the Spiritual Psychology of Acting podcast.

1:26:41And thank you again to Sarah Lowe's for all of her invaluable input into this mini series. We're off for the next few weeks, but we'll be back soon with our final episode of the current season. Until then, have a brilliant week and be excellent to each other.

1:27:02We'll be back soon. We'll be back soon with our final episode.