The Psychological Games People Play

0:00watch out for this stuff because it is the stuff of life it's the stuff of humanity but i guess the awareness of the game is part of the route out of it and i think the key to identifying the games that you play is just keeping an eye out for what are the patterns that repeat in your life are there certain situations like you never get the job you never get the boy or the girl or you

0:31know just certain things we think it always ends like that well you might find yourself thinking from the victim position why does this always happen to me that's the point we think yeah there's a there's something going on here that it then can be really useful to sort of reflect on hello how are you welcome back to the spiritual psychology of acting podcast have you ever found yourself in a conversation that feels strangely familiar like you're following a script you've

1:05played out a hundred times before do you ever wonder why certain interactions with others leave you feeling frustrated confused or even infuriated what if i told you that these patterns are part of a hidden game one you might not even realize you're playing in part three of our mini series on transactional analysis we're exploring a fascinating and vital part of the ta world the games people play as outlined in eric burns groundbreaking book of the same name in this episode we're joined

1:40again by our resident expert sarah lowes to help take us through some of the most interesting and often played games from burns book along the way we'll discover how these games can dictate our relationships influence our emotions and even determine our life choices but what exactly are these games why do we play them and most importantly how can we break free from them let's jump into it

2:10so this is our third part of our mini series on transactional analysis and uh thankfully joining john and i again we've got sarah lowes to help guide us through how you doing today sarah i'm doing very well it's a pleasure to be back can't keep from transacting with you guys exactly just can't get enough and how are you john yeah all this transacting is very good for us so i'm really enjoying this

2:44so this this episode is going to be really good yes down to the nitty-gritty we're gonna have a bit of fun as well with some scenes in a little bit but um going back to what we talked about last episode with games we um we'll give a few examples of some of the more common games that people play but um it might be good just get a quick refresher on exactly what games are if you could uh give a quick recap yeah sure of course so um a game is a series of transactions we call them ulterior

3:16transactions we spoke about transactions in the last episode and an ulterior transaction is where whenever we communicate there's a social level message and a psychological level message so the social level message in our transaction when we're offering a stimulus to start a transaction the social level message is the literal meaning of the words that we're using and the psychological level message is what we really mean and when the literal meaning and what we really mean are the same thing that's when our communication really lands beautifully but where what we really mean is

3:51something slightly different to the social meaning of the words you know we know there's a double meaning going on here our behavioral response to that offer of a stimulus to that transaction that's being sent to us is always to that ulterior transaction to that psychological level message so we may not know quite what's going on but we know that there's something going on underneath the surface and so a sort of hidden message if you like and we react to that hidden message and it's these hidden messages that drive a game so a game is a series of these ulterior transactions that lead ultimately to usually some form of breakdown

4:29in communication that there's some sort of confusion and everybody leaves the game feeling both either dissatisfied or justified in terms of the things that they believe to be true about themselves or others have been affirmed or reconfirmed and we'll come back to where maybe some of those beliefs come from when we talk about script later on um but yeah so so a game is a repeated pattern of transacting with someone when there is something that is not being said there's an ulterior motive to the conversation

5:03a game is then a covert operation it's an undercover operation yeah it's it's a way of um you know we all have wants and needs and we want them to be met and again i might have said this last time if if we're going to get those met in an authentic way it often requires us to be vulnerable it requires us to say i don't know the answer to that question or i could do with some help with this or i'm feeling uncertain about something and often um we find ourselves in situations where i don't quite feel safe enough to be that vulnerable to admit maybe that i'm i'm lacking in confidence or as i say to admit that i don't know

5:38something but we still want to get our needs met so we try to still get our needs met but without voicing that vulnerability so so that's what it makes it feel like there's a covert operation i am trying to achieve something without being entirely honest about what it is i'm trying to achieve and why probably and so that lack of security is basically triggers your parent and child ego states doesn't it otherwise it would be adult to adult and it'd be precisely so yeah so linking it back to the first episode that we did when we were talking about ego states a game happens outside of

6:11conscious awareness so by its very nature you are not rooted in the here and now and therefore you are not operating out of the adult ego states you will tend to be operating out of a parent or child ego state and i think we mentioned last time what one of the ways that you can analyze um the sort of roles that we might play in the game is looking at another ta theory called the drama triangle which identifies three roles that we often step into two of which can be linked to the parent ego state so remember when we talked about the parent ego state there's the controlling side of the parent ego

6:46state which is about appropriate boundaries and rules and structure and then you've got the nurturing side of the parent ego state which is about providing appropriate care when we are accessing those behaviors because we're you know we're grounded in our adult and we can see that's what's necessary when we get unhooked from the adult ego state we're more likely to slip into the negatives of those two behaviors which is where the controlling parent becomes about being more dominating which on the drama triangle is the role of the persecutor the attitude of being a persecutor that we can take up

7:16in terms of the nurturing parent when we become unhooked from the adult ego state we can slip into more smothering ways of behaving where we do too much for people we sort of are over indulgent in the way that we support people which can lead to the rescuing us stepping into the role of rescuer on the drama triangle you know we take over the situation and provide help whether or not anybody's actually asked for it and then um in terms of the child ego states when we slip into the less resourceful ways of behaving from the child ego state the the sort of negatives of the child ego state

7:50i've got the free child rather than being free we end up behaving in ways that are immature and probably quite selfish and egocentric or we might um from the adapted child slip into being either compliant or resistant rather than you know listening and making connection in relationships we just either submit and do what anybody wants to keep the relationship in a good place so we become very compliant or we might become quite rebellious i think i mentioned the fact some people talk about the rc the rebellious child where you get a lot of rc behavior um and both of those would get

8:23connected on the drama triangle with the victim position like these things there are unfair things being done to me and and i'm helpless and i can't do anything about it or you know i don't want to do anything about it so so it's not my job i'm not going to be able to do it so you can use the drama triangle just to get a sense of who's playing what role when we're in a game and and therefore what might some of the ulterior motives be right we use within the spiritual psychology of acting a system of purposes and actions yes so purposes you know the the impression of happiness what do i want

8:57and the action is that what do i do to achieve it but we also have with that what are known as pseudo purposes and that's what i want others to think i want yeah and we could also say we have pseudo actions which we call devices and the device is what i show i do so you might for example have a pseudo purpose to help people but a real but the real purpose is to feel important yeah um or you might

9:29show that you ask for help when really you're demanding obedience yeah and that's that you know the difference between those is the psychological level of the transaction that would you know what i really want that um i think you said the pseudo action that's what i'm really trying to get but i'm trying to do that in ways that are not honest i'm not being overt about what i'm trying to do i'm trying to dress my behavior up so it looks like something else right and and then so sincerity would be a lack of pseudo purposes and devices you said that's just authentic

10:03communication you say what you mean and you mean what you bloody well say precisely well and indeed and again i think we mentioned briefly that there's a positive version of the drama triangle called the winner's triangle which is then rather than stepping into the role of persecutor in a game we step into being potent in terms of saying what we want to happen this is how i see the situation not demanding that it does but just saying look this is how i'm reading what's going on rather than rescuing stepping into that role of the rescuer we are responsive to people we say look

10:34we can see there's a need here what do you want this is what i need in order to get my needs met and what support do you need from me as well and rather than stepping into the role of the victim we step into a role of volunteering our vulnerability and being able to say i don't know i lack confidence in this rather than trying to pretend like i think i'm god's gift to this particular role or function can actually say do you know what i'm a bit unsure of what i'm doing here so it leads to authenticity rather than as we we've said that sense that there's something not being said when a game's being

11:09played and it drives people to distraction we know we know there's something going on underneath the surface even at a subconscious level you know you've got a sense that there's something not quite right in this situation even if you can't quite put your finger on it but it that's what keeps the game going in one sense because we're constantly trying to get to the bottom of it but if people aren't being honest if people aren't prepared to step off the drama triangle onto the winner's triangle and relate authentically you just end up keeping going around the merry-go-round of the game and what if you've been cast into a game by somebody else yeah and you're aware of what's going on and

11:45you don't want to play but i often advise people to name the game that if you name the game if you say that this is what's going on the game can no longer be played because it's no longer a covert operation yes but it can be quite risky because you you you name the game and then the person might jump straight away and start a new game and you've misunderstood me or something yes so i suppose there's a number of options what they might do but i mean i was i would say that in one sense

12:16stepping onto the winner's triangle is doing exactly that it's naming the game it's saying look i'm aware we get into this pattern of relating and i don't feel it's healthy and therefore i want us to relate like this and either i would say the other person may initially up the ante with the original game because essentially if you do that we talked about cross transactions last time if you step off the drama triangle to the winner's triangle you're crossing their transaction you're going no no come on let's let's let's relate from adult let's not relate from parent or child here often what happens

12:48initially is the other person will go no no no no no that's not how this works i behave like this you behave like that we all know how this works everybody's happy i mean they might not be actually happy but we're comfortable with this way of relating whereas if you suddenly change the rules i don't know what my lines are anymore i don't know how to relate to you so they might up the ante and that is really an invitation to you just to get off the winner's triangle and get back onto the drama triangle if you manage to stay on the winner's triangle either what will happen is yes they might shift

13:21positions on the drama triangle to see if they can lure you back in from somewhere else or ideally what you want is that they might join you they might think okay fair enough i'm going to join them on the winner's triangle and see if we can make this work differently or they might stop playing the game with you and go off and find somebody else who will play that game with them so you might lose the relationship because like well if you're not playing i'm not playing with you i'm going to go and play with somebody else so you know those are the i mean you know they're all sort of stereotypical but those are

13:54the sorts of things that tend to happen either they'll keep playing the same game harder they'll maybe change role in the games to see if they can hook you back in or they will either ignore you and go and play with somebody else or they'll come and join you on the winner's triangle hopefully the last one hopefully that's the i'm okay you're okay bit that's what we're aiming for that if you really invite that genuinely that i'm okay you're okay mentality that in itself is quite attractive but it can be a very disorientating way of working to people who have been so used to communicating in

14:28an environment where somebody is not okay in a game somebody is always not okay in the way that we're relating to each other you know it might be that we're both i'm not okay and you're not okay either in terms of those the life positions then you've got the i'm not okay but you are or the i'm okay but you're not so it's from those three positions that the games are played so relating in a way where we believe that everybody's all right can feel like i have no idea what the script is here i have no idea how this works i'm so used to either being better than everyone or worse than

15:01everyone i don't how to relate to somebody saying to me you're fine as you are and so am i so you know it can it can take a while for people to find their feet um in that sort of way of relating but yeah but it can snap people out of it if someone relates to you from the i'm not okay position you're okay yes and you see that and so you relate back to them with the i'm okay you're okay position often that can help them and remind them that they are okay yeah i find that people often tend to behave how you treat them so if you treat if you treat someone like an idiot they'll act like

15:35an idiot if you treat someone like they're not trustworthy they won't be trustworthy but if you treat people with with love and uh respect then then you get the best self out of them absolutely well we talk a lot in transaction analysis about invitation you know how we behave how we transact invites a reaction in the other person so you're absolutely right if we if we only ever operate out of the parent ego state we are only ever inviting people around us to operate out of their child ego state and perhaps we'll come back to this later when we talk about scripts but one of the

16:09element that can develop in a script is called attributions and these are the things that we are told about ourselves by others that we come to believe are true so you might say oh god you're so clumsy so clumsy always dropping stuff which probably means that when you're with people who believe that about you yes you probably are likely to drop stuff more often but it may not necessarily be because you are actually any more clumsy than the average person in the population but that's such a present thing in your mind it's something you've been told so often about yourself that you do then

16:42find yourself being more clumsy so it can those sorts of things can really have an impact on the way that we behave you see that in sports with the mentality doesn't it mentality can obviously just sudden someone can go to pot completely because they let the thoughts win of what the other opponents thinking or what the fans are thinking you know it's anything like that can all of a sudden change someone's behavior drastically their ability absolutely and it's why in you know in the last 20 years or so there has been such a huge growth in sports psychology you know in sport people having psychologists

17:14who work with them is it steve peters who wrote the book called the chimp paradox which is an you know another interesting way of looking at how we behave and why we sometimes do things that you know we don't quite understand what we're doing he's done he did a lot of work with some of the i think the british i think he worked with victoria pendleton with you know within the british cycling team about helping them to in one sense keep their inner chimp in check so that it didn't actually get in the way of them being able to achieve what they needed to achieve i guess the trouble is as well isn't it that people love drama so no matter how hard you might

17:45try not to play a game it's very easy to get sucked into uh into other people's games yeah well it comes back to again what we said in the last episode about strokes we are desperate as we you know we're social animals as human beings we need to be in relationship with each other it's a it's a fundamental need of ours to have our very existence recognized so that's why sometimes we we don't want to risk not playing the game because it's better to play a game that's unhealthy but still be in relationship with one another than to stop playing the game and risk people not

18:17relating to us anymore you know that's the the sort of very sort of fundamental fear of that sort of isolation isolation from others it's yes the the need to play the game it comes from that sense of wanting to belong i guess isn't it that yeah it's it's quite risky but also it takes courage to not play the game to to go against the grain i think it's also it's probably it's easy in in theory to to say you're not going to play a game but when it actually comes down to it and you try and offer the the alternative and that gets rejected then yes then what do you do it's like it's got to be a constant

18:49a constant process of bringing in that adult data isn't it of constantly being trying to be present with that person that situation yeah and get sucked in yeah you have to be prepared to allow there to be a gap maybe for a while where there used to be that relationship with that person you know whether it's work or friend or partner to allow there to be a gap there for a while whilst you think well how do i want to fill it who am i going to play some healthy games with you know who i'm going to relate to from the drama triangle and allow that space and i think you know you often

19:20often see it in dramas you know where people end up repeatedly going out with the wrong sort of person because they might have clocked that i don't want to be with this person but the fear of being on their own is so horrendous that they just end up charging into the next relationship repeating the same pattern from the previous one and they haven't really with that adult awareness thought about i've identified i don't want that but maybe i need a bit of time with me to figure out actually what is it that i do want instead and and actually look for that rather than just sort of knee-jerk reacting

19:54back into familiar but means i end up repeating the old patterns yeah so when a woman might say you know you hear a woman say oh you know i've got a taste for bad boys yes i i like that feeling prophecy for you yeah isn't it there to do with their not okayness though why they've got the taste for the bad boys or they want to rescue a bad boy yes i mean i think you know we as human beings are just such a wonderful we're a million shades of gray you know in terms of what might lead to somebody having liking to play a particular game but yes it could be those are two options either

20:28i'm i end up in relations with people who repeatedly reaffirm for me this deeply held belief that i'm not good enough so they treat me terribly or it might be i've got this bit of a god complex and think i am the person who's going to be able to change this individual which even that would probably reveal some underlying sort of insecurity because they go off to save these people and then that saving gets rejected because it's not what the individual wants and they end up alone again so it you know there's as many possible explanations for why somebody might play a game as there are human

21:03beings on the planet but you can as with all dramas see some consistent themes burn said in terms of theater scripts like life scripts you know once you're into the first act of the play and you begin to get a sense of the characters everybody in that theater can begin to predict what's actually going to happen in this play they might not always be proven to be right some of the best plays are when the playwright completely subverts your expectation but we all have a sense of

21:33with this sorts of characters these are the sorts of things that are probably going to play out in the rest of the production and there's a sometimes perverse pleasure in the predictability of it in fact actually i was reading something the other day about brain development about you know our brains there's so much information that we have to process day in day out that the brain naturally looks for patterns so that it can shortcut interpretation it can shortcut what's going to happen because we

22:04know how that works if the brain didn't do that we'd spend the whole day figuring out oh god how do i get out of this thing i find myself lying in and you know what's this cup or this glass how do i use that who am i how do i work and so the brain sort of short circuit stuff and i think script does something similar we make these early decisions about who we are and how life works so we don't need to keep figuring that out we can just get on with the business of living and being relation to one another so these the you know they serve a purpose for us these sort of shortcuts and this

22:35understanding that if you're that sort of person that means that you're likely to behave like that it means i don't need to spend a lot of time figuring out how i need to relate to you think all right yeah i've got you sussed you're that sort of person either i do or i don't want to be in relation with you yeah right and it's the fact i guess that games are so unaware that people don't often know they're playing them i get and i think probably a lot of people think well i don't play games in my life but chances are if you're a human being you probably will be playing games probably on a daily basis if you're not careful yeah absolutely i mean you can get hooked into a game in a nanosecond with the waiter who's serving you at your table or with somebody who's serving you

23:10in a coffee shop or when you're buying a ticket from a ticket inspector you know that suddenly it doesn't have to be people that you know really really well that you get into a game with there's just these little exchanges if they say something that irritates you and you think don't you talk to me like that or gosh you're such a job's worth there's this sort of internal invite that's being offered from them to you or from you to them and you can find yourself it's suddenly in a game without realizing 99 of the time this is happening outside of conscious

23:41awareness and so yes we will all do it but we're not conscious of it unless you've just listened to a series of podcasts saying you know watch out for this stuff because it is the stuff of life it is you know we all do it even you know people who've been studying transactional analysis for donkey's years eric burn played games you know the founding father it's the stuff of humanity but i guess to come back to something we were saying at the end of the last episode the awareness of the game is part of the route out of it once you start to begin to think oh yeah no i do do that don't i

24:15you know and i think the key to identifying the games that you play is just keeping an eye out for what are the patterns that repeat in your life are there certain situations where you just find yourself repeatedly like you never get the job or you you never get the boy or the girl or you know just certain things we think it always ends like that well you might find yourself thinking from the victim position why does this always happen to me you know that's the point we think yeah there's a

24:45there's something going on here that it then can be really useful to sort of reflect on great so should we get into some of the games then so we play some games yes let's from a nice outside point of view so get ourselves stuck in consciously play so we're going to look at five common games which i'm sure everyone will have played at some point or um will have been dragged into at some point in their life um so the first one we'll start with is the first one that bern really discovered and will kind of set in in chain this whole idea of games yes did and he and he

25:19also he gave them quite helpfully eye-catching names didn't he which maybe was it the 60s 50s 60s that he so the games people the book games people play which is the the book that really made him famous beyond psycho therapy worlds was called the games people play and that was published in 1964 right and that's the one that's got the games and the titles listed out so yes he may have done some other publications before that but yeah so he's developing this in the late 50s early 60s right so yeah the language is somewhat archaic but uh they're also still quite helpful i think so yeah the

25:54first game is called why don't you yes but and that is when it's a two-player game is that right i mean it could probably be played by more but usually person a presents a problem that they have uh person b would offer solutions in which case person a would just shoot down the solutions with yes but is that is that right yeah yes absolutely yeah i mean this is may well be the origin of the infamous uh acting game but do you yes but or do you yes and yes and yeah like an improv yeah yeah it's kind of the antithesis of that isn't it yeah yeah absolutely yes it's a demonstration of

26:29why yes and is so powerful by looking at what happens if you just yes but everything right yeah perfect okay so for this example john and i will be two blokes in a bar chatting over a drink oh i've been feeling so overwhelmed at work lately i don't know how much more i can take of this why don't you talk to your boss about reducing your workload maybe they can help you out yeah but my boss is so unsympathetic he never listens to anyone's complaints

27:02hmm okay why don't you start looking for a new job there's always opportunities if you look hard enough yeah but the job market is really terrible right now i'd probably just end up on another dead end position well why don't you take some time off you know a holiday might just help you clear your head i can't afford to take some time off i'm already behind on so many projects well why don't you try to delegate some of your tasks to your colleagues i'm sure they'd be able to help lighten the load yeah but everyone else is just as swamped as i am i don't want to burden

27:37them even more yeah well why don't you hire a personal assistant or get some kind of help yeah but that costs money i don't have plus it's hard to trust someone new with important tasks why don't you join a support group or you talk to a therapist sometimes talking it over can make a huge difference oh yeah but those things take so much time to set up and i barely have any free time as it is yeah well why don't you at least start with some small changes like organizing your schedule better yeah but i've tried that before it never really sticks and things just get chaotic

28:12again you know you know what john i'm trying to help you here but it just seems like you've got an excuse for everything maybe you just need to figure this out on your own game payoff great so what is going on there really yeah yeah what was the payoff there at the end well what's it what i mean having played it what's your felt experience of what that is like at the end of that session for both of the characters you were leaning into

28:44well it's uh you know for the character i was reading he he really he doesn't he doesn't want to solve the problem he wants the strokes and the care yeah of uh the player b yeah and isn't that the point that really the alternative really i want to be cared for and i'm coming from uh a position that life is hopeless and i can't solve my own problems and my problems are unsolvable but i get the payoff from that that i get to get jordan's attention but also i wonder if i get a payoff from

29:21being able to frustrate him yes yes because i know that he wants to help so i'm so i can i can i can piss on his parade yes i think there's there's often an element or potentially there's an element in this of you've got somebody who's going oh you know this i can't do this this is everything's terrible everything's terrible and they are offering the invite so they're absolutely in stepping into that role of victim that everything is terrible which is offering a very strong invite

29:53which in the first part of this jordan is accepting to rescue somebody come in and sort this out but the payoff for me at the end almost is for the character you were playing john is that proof nobody can actually help me see i told you no it's it's all dreadful and there's nothing you can do to help me try as you might which actually means that you having started as playing that role of the inadequate person actually end it by making jordan potentially his character i mean i should let you speak for your own character jordan but you know jordan's character end up feeling inadequate because

30:26they've been made to feel like actually there's nothing they can do to help and and one of the other games we're going to look at is i was only trying to help and potentially you get people playing two games at the same time but where the two games feed each other they allow each character to get their own payoff by you know for this guy it's about the you know the justification that nobody can help me and i'm just gonna prove myself right there's nobody who can resolve my situation but you've been left in a situation or jordan's character has been left in a situation where they feel like well

30:59no matter what i do no nobody will allow me to support or to help them you know i was only trying and that almost that self-righteousness that you can walk away with well i tried and it's on them you know yeah it's again it's both players trying to to win then i guess and feel good by the end of it but both probably feel bad yeah yes but both probably get their payoff so in one sense both win their own game it's just they're playing two different games at the same time that allow each of them to get

31:30their own payoff yeah and i think the interesting switch in this is you've got a very clear victim rescuer transactions going on until that last line of yours jordan where suddenly there's some persecutor comes in there's that switch that breaks the communication that we've talked about you switch in the game think right i'm not playing it's the straw that breaks the camel's back isn't it yeah yeah absolutely but but it's that switch that gives everybody their own payoff yeah if you see what i mean yeah yeah totally it's the kind of game you see a lot i think you know this happens a lot

32:01for most people as well yeah it's a very much a sort of social interaction game and you know i know i've played it myself with my family if i've been struggling with something and i mean actually i can remember when i was you know um attempting to be a jobbing actor that and i wasn't getting auditions and i wasn't getting parts and people will say to me have you tried this like yes but it never works and yes but it never works and so i'd started the game feeling a victim and hopeless and i would end the game feeling yes i have proved that actually it's it's not possible to do something and therefore it's not me it's other

32:37people rather than me thinking actually what is it that i need to do if i want this acting career to work that i'm not doing you know it allows you to push responsibility off onto other people rather than authentically volunteering your own vulnerability and thinking i am the common denominator in this situation therefore i must be contributing to it in some way so there is that sense as well then of not just putting responsibility onto other people but not taking responsibility for your own situation because there is possibly plenty of things you could do but you're choosing not to

33:07do you're choosing to be inactive when there's plenty of things you could do to actively change your situation absolutely we talk a lot in transaction analysis about discounting and in this scenario what's being discounted is john's character's role in the problem there's always some reason why it's not worked or he's offering some excuse why he can't do it and it discounts his own agency actually that there might be things that would work out so in a in a game somebody is always being discounted the victim discounts themselves they persecute and the rescuer discount the capability of the other

33:41person and their competency to actually be able to figure this thing out for themselves or to take action as necessary yeah now if we were going to act this right this is the script when we're going to act it the character of john he has a visible purpose to be rescued and cared for but he also has what we would what we call a shadow purpose and the shadow purpose in this instance would be i want to be

34:13helpless yeah which is it is do you see what i mean i want to be helpless but also that payoff of being helpless is being cared for because i have to be helpless for other people to care for me and also that other the other payoff is i want to be special to myself which is indulge my own feeling that my problems can't be solved that i'm special in some way because i've got problems that other people can't solve yes and also you don't want them to

34:48be solved otherwise then you won't need somebody to care for you you know right exactly and there there is a purpose i want to despair which one of the shadow purposes i want to despair which is i want to think that i can't solve my problems which is an interesting mechanism i want to think i want to have the thought i can't solve my problems i'm attached to the idea i can't solve my problems and therefore there's no way i'm going to try and find a solution to those problems yes because essentially

35:19i mean i was just looking you look at the language in in the script i think one of the hardest things for the character of john in this to probably cope with is the fact that the character of jordan is constantly saying why don't you why don't you why don't you so that indicating that there is something you could do about it but if you could do things about it that totally throws your you know what you believe to be true out of the script literally and metaphorically so and in one sense what they're inviting is john's character is saying no i want you to do it i want somebody else to rescue me from this situation and that you know that's the rub in this that they want somebody

35:54else to sort it out but if people just keep offering them suggestions for things to do themselves they're like i don't want to play this game anymore it's not that i actually want to be rescued it's more that i want him to fail in attempting to rescue me yes i want to be unrescuable yeah yeah absolutely but i think there's also i mean an element of some sometimes with the way these games can play around the individual who's stepping into the victim role actually doesn't want to be told what

36:25they might do they want somebody else to solve the problem so i don't actually have to do it if i if i believe myself to be you know hopeless and helpless what i'd really like is for somebody else to sort the problem out for me yeah and this is another purpose yeah it's it's i want to have no responsibilities yeah so i want to be helpless to have no responsibilities to be cared for yes somebody else to do it for me yeah yeah that's another variation on the same thing and the device is i ask

36:56for help so what i'm showing i'm doing is asking for help but what i'm really doing is seeking care that do you see what i mean what i'm what i'm attempting to do here sarah is translate this into actable into your system yeah what would this mean in my choices of purposes and actions as an actor what what does it really mean yeah yeah and that's why it's so fascinating i guess isn't that you can find out how to actively put it into the characters you play because it's true to life

37:27as well it's another that's another reason why it's important to not only be aware of it in your own life but how to how to actually act it in scenes when it's maybe the subtext is a bit more hidden yeah yeah there's that song isn't there there's a hole in my bucket and that's really so why don't you fix it and he says well i can't and everything is really just that the song is why don't you yes but it's a musical version yeah yeah a more fun version not quite catchy enough title yeah yeah so the uh the second game we're going to look at

38:05is uh nicely titled now i've got you you son of a bitch and it's it's where one person sets another up to make a mistake and then uses that as an opportunity to either attack them or criticize them would that be right absolutely yeah i think you know the one of the examples that comes to mind for me definitely is in whiplash the film that uh jk simmons won the oscar for he played a really terrifying music teacher and there's a specific scene but halfway through the film where he as the

38:35music teacher of this big jazz band gets the kind of new prodigy to uh it basically sets up a near impossible tempo to keep and then keeps getting him to do it over and over again until it's perfect keeps setting him up for that failure when he doesn't do it then verbally attacks and humiliates him in front of the whole class it's it's quite a horrible scene really because it gets so but you can see how it plays out as well it's just they both easily fall into those roles and play that game so horrifically beautifully i guess yeah i mean that's a classic in one sense example of a game

39:11which is about somebody who whose life position is i'm okay you're not and who is really playing games that just really reinforce that other people are not as good as as they are and this is often referred to as a sort of poker game it's about who's got the upper hand and about maintaining that upper hand on other people and it's often used as a way of people being able to vent their pent-up furies so if there's some sort of injustice that you know they've experienced i'm you know i'd love to know

39:45the backstory of that of the character that he plays you know and where this has come from this need to be able to not just get one up on someone but it's almost like he's going to nail this kid's feet to the floor and just make it absolute it's not just going to make a point that he's not as good a drummer as you might like to think he is he's going to ritually humiliate him in front of everyone and i have to say i mean i'm not a drummer i've done a little bit of drumming in my time but i there's very quickly in that i can't hear the difference in the tempos he's trying to get him to

40:16play so it's so it's just like how how are you meant to determine you know what's good and what's not good and again people who are professional drummers might be able to hear that but it's the the aim of that game is to justify that you know the agent so he's the one who starts this game and who's initially playing it which which burn often refers to as the agent in the game and his agent he steps into that persecutor role and it's about justify the aim of the game is to justify that position

40:46that he's taken up and to prove just relentlessly over and over again that he's okay and and that other person is just not just not okay but sort of i mean worthless really by the end of it yeah he wants to be superior yeah and therefore he wants the student to fail yes absolutely yeah because he wants to be superior but then you know talking about the backstory if you're acting that we have to truthfully why why does he have you know behind his desire to superiority is an inferiority complex

41:19so probably if we were to act if i was directing this i'd go well where did how did you where did you learn this game and it's probably a game father played with him possibly yeah actually you learn that dynamic i was um watching uh i've been watching the current series of the responder the uh cop oh yeah with martin freeman thank you his name just blown out of my head yes absolutely and there was a scene i was watching in an episode um recently i don't know if his father appeared as a character

41:51in the first series i don't remember but but the the martin freeman plays this officer chris and his father does appear in this second series who he has a very poor relationship with he doesn't see him very often and although his father is sort of an old man in a chair who's got carers coming in to look after him there's clearly quite a historically unhealthy relationship between them and in the first or second episode martin freeman's character chris is in need of money so he pinches money from a

42:23pot in his father's kitchen and you can almost see that that sense of it's almost you know i deserve this because he's been such a lousy dad but then there's this really i found really uncomfortable scene you could see it coming in the next episode where he actually goes around to put the money back and his dad seemingly sort of in quite a meek and mild sort of place when he arrives and he's just sat in his chair and he beckons him to come closer and closer and then once martin freeman's ear is right by his mouth he's like i know what you fucking did you thief and and i just thought oh my god that's now

42:57i've got you son of a bitch he's played this sort of i'm pathetic so it's it's in one sense it's coming from a slightly different spin on the what you see in in the in the film you were talking about but it's still that same thing i've got you and i know that i'm better than you are whatever you're trying to say whatever you want to try and make out i did previously i i'm justifying the way i am because you're a dirty rotten thief and it gives you that similar feeling thing oh god this is so uncomfortable to watch but also you can't not watch it at the same time yeah and that would give the martin freeman character the thought that that i can't win and

43:35life isn't fair absolutely which it which is if you've watched that series is just the repeated it's like every time he does something you think why are we doing this we we know this is not going to work out but yeah he just keeps doing things that put him in these absolutely awful positions he's as a good man who ends up in just a catalogue of terrible situations he won't make the choice to be a police officer if life isn't fair and you know and people are out yeah yeah yeah better job to put people in their place yeah you get the status of a uniform yeah

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45:19so we kind of we hinted at this uh other game when we talked about the first game uh so i'm only trying to help you what what is the uh the premise of that game well i mean in one sense yeah this is the one that can be played very nicely with the yes but game that we were looking at before but when burn originally wrote about this one he said that this game is sort of as he

45:52described it tenaciously played in therapeutic settings that you know sometimes people turn up for therapy whether it's it is actually psychotherapy or counseling or it might be coaching and they as per the first game we were looking at are making out that they want help but actually they don't want to get better they just want to keep playing this game so they're looking probably subconsciously for a therapist who's happy to play i'm only trying to help you which means that even if my help gets rejected i can still feel this sort of sense of self-justification but the payoff with

46:24this one is almost more around bewilderment it's like you know i've just been trying to do this lovely thing for someone and they've just sort of completely rejected what i was doing very genuinely and and in one sense what they're doing is they are they're masking their their own motives that actually you weren't doing it genuinely you were doing it because it helps you rather than actually thinking what does this person need and giving them what they want yeah so as an example i'm going to clearly scheme with you sarah and uh in this scenario you are in your flat working on a flat

47:00pack piece of furniture yes it has been known and uh i'm your slightly nosy neighbor coming to a help slash not help sarah why don't you let me handle that i've put together loads of these things in the past no thanks jordan i've got it you know you should really use an electric drill instead of that manual screwdriver it'll be much faster i don't have an electric drill it's fine i'm making

47:30do with what i have i've got an electric drill at home i'll just run back and get it no honestly it's all right look why don't you just let me do it for you like trust me it will save you a lot of hassle jordan i appreciate the offer but i want to do this myself you don't need to be so stubborn just take a break and let me show you how it's done you're just making it hard on yourself jordan i said no you're not helping you're just making me more stressed whoa all right jesus calm

48:04down there's no need to get so upset you're not listening to me i don't need your help just leave me alone wow okay i was only trying to help you famous last words famous last words yes absolutely there's a double meaning in that and i must i must say sarah very well read you get the part you've made my year i think i can hear that that you you were you were once a fellow thespian

48:35well i think i think yes i was once a fellow thespian but also i've i've played this particular game countless times so i find it very easy to step into this role i've often i think i might have mentioned to you guys the other day that i've often had a bugbear of feeling like uh you know certain men who've got certain notions of of what chivalric good men do offering to help me you know carry my bags because i'm a woman and all it makes me want to do is beat them around the head with my bags which you know i like to think usually i'm very kind warm encouraging person

49:10but you know that could get me into persecutor very quickly which is where my character in this role ends up stepping right into that persecutor role so that the person who's trying to rescue ends it feeling like a victim i was only trying to help yeah i think that the important thing about this one as well is that it's very clear that your character sarah isn't giving into that yes but kind of way of looking at it it's not like here's a problem it's that there is no problem just you just need to leave me alone yeah i don't need i don't need the help yeah and i think there's an interesting

49:41moment in certainly in the script that we've got here that the line where i had the stage direction trying to stay calm i appreciate the offer but i want to do this myself that's a moment of maybe you know my character trying to stay in the adult ego state i'm going to acknowledge that they are trying to help me but i'm going to try and reinforce the fact that i would like to do this myself so there's an attempt to maybe try and get off the drama triangle onto the winner's triangle but the next offer where to be told don't be so stubborn just it's too strong an invite to not

50:14accept to pocket rocket back onto the drama triangle and just let rip from the persecutor point of view yeah it's getting sucked back into the game like we said yeah no matter how hard you can try if they don't accept the rules yeah yeah and it causes a breakdown in communication yeah sorry john so the adult place there is really the adult and that's what it sounded like there for that line was that the adult is setting a healthy boundary yeah of saying very clearly i don't need your help just you know leave it yes so you've got that first but i appreciate the offer if we look at it from the

50:48winner's triangle point of view that's me being responsive saying look i am acknowledging that you're trying to help me and then with the next part but i want to do this myself there's an element of being potent i want to do this i you know i don't need any further help i'd like you to leave me alone but but that's just the other person's like no no that's not the game i want to play in one sense jordan's character is leading this game he's the one who's only trying to help so he absolutely doesn't want to accept that adult offer from the winner's triangle because otherwise he doesn't get the payoff of that sort of justification of feeling well you know aren't

51:22people ungrateful and how bewildering is it that people don't accept my seemingly reasonable offer of help but actually there is something that that is serving in his script you know to get that rejection at the end of it and to be left feeling like oh you know but again he's not reflecting on his behavior and how he invited that situation he's sitting there thinking oh god isn't that sarah a bitch you know isn't she stubborn and ungrateful well that's it isn't it his belief must be that people are stubborn and unreasonable yeah and therefore i'm flexible and reasonable you're

52:00saying that in the game he his agenda is he wants the proof yes that other people are stubborn and unreasonable and that's why he pushes it and in an unreasonable way yes it's so he'll get that so that she'll snap and then he can justify his position yeah he gets the power that people are stubborn and unreasonable therefore i'm flexible and reasonable there's probably a bit of casual misogyny from my character as well in the sense of this woman doesn't know what she's doing i do it could be a bit of a melting pot of a lots of uh different life positions and views on life yeah

52:34or kind of coming to the fore and absolutely initiating the game yeah yeah with the whole concept of um rescuing we have in our in our within our list of purposes the purpose i want to be rescued and i want to rescue people and what we've found in the psychology of people who want to rescue people is generally they want to be rescued yes it's really that they it's there they're really they're projecting their damaged self onto the other person and they want to rescue that what do you think about

53:10that do you think i think that's i think that's absolutely true and often the case there's a quote somewhere that i can't quite um bring to mind it's not particularly ta quotes but often what we do professionally is what we ourselves most need so if we become a a teacher or something like that that's probably because there's still things that that we want to learn or if we become a therapist it's probably because there's a whole load of therapy that we still need or you know if we work primarily with children that actually there's something some nurture that we've missed out on that we still need ourselves so we you know we provide the care and support that we most need

53:41ourselves and you know if we are aware people in touch with our autonomous self we can do that and still be of use to others but you're absolutely right that where that's happening unconsciously and this is why you know some coaches some some therapists will not provide effective care that actually leads to people becoming autonomous because actually they need the individual to stay dependent on them so that we can keep playing this game between ourselves you know we don't we don't want to get better i need them to stay sick in one sense you know we call that the purpose i want to be

54:16needed is i want others to be dependent upon me um and therefore if you want to be needed you want people to fail yes does that make sense you don't want them to solve their problem so that is a really dangerous situation and you have a therapist who wants to be needed and wants their clients to fail yes but it's you know when i first started teaching in new york um they would come up to me and say you know i've finished off more thinking i've learned more about myself this weekend than i have in the last 10 years of therapy yes no hold on a minute you've been going to therapy for the last 10 years what do you do

54:53in therapy then deconstructing it it was very often it's the the game is is that you know tell me about your mother yeah but you know tell me about your father uh would you like a hanky a lot of nodding and then um oh there's your 50 minutes same time next week 100 quid please yeah well i mean i'm personally of the opinion that actually we should all go to a therapist as regularly as we go to the

55:23doctor that actually we should go for a check-in in terms of you know how am i feeling about something i'm aware there's this pattern that i have maybe i should go to somebody and talk it through i think where it becomes dangerous is if we just stay with the same therapist that i've had quite you know a number of sessions of counseling and therapy through my life but with different people at different times because there was a different thing going on for me that i wanted to explore um it's where the relationship becomes dependent on on one another rather than you know i

55:55always say as a coach i'm working to make myself redundant with this individual that we've done the work that we need to do and they've got as much out of me as they're likely to get certainly at this point in time and i say that's safe in the knowledge that there's likely to be other people coming along down the road further you know who might need some work with me once i've finished working with this individual but you know it's about me providing the support i can provide to this person at this point in time rather than just trying to hold on to them so i've got the security of knowing i've got this person who's still working with me because then that becomes about my need

56:29my need to be in employment rather than actually this person's need to figure something out and get better at doing something yeah well that's that's the biggest um as an acting teacher the biggest insult is someone who always wants to remain a student yes yeah absolutely because then you haven't done your job if they're dependent on the class on the teaching the whole point of the course is to turn them into autonomous actors that know how to do their job properly yes yeah yeah excellent so the next game we're going to look at is a game called see what you made me do

57:04that's where one person blames another for their own mistakes or their bad behavior as far as aware i think a great example of this is in the film silver linings playbook the robert de niro character is this um quite repressed father who is struggling to have a relationship with his son played by bradley cooper and there's a whole kind of dynamic through this film that he he's uses his son as superstition for his uh american football team doing well and when he fails to be there as kind of some kind of

57:34superstition and the team loses he completely turns into almost like a child it's that kind of like goes into complete meltdown there's a scene where he's he is literally kind of saying see you know look what you did look what you did is blaming somebody else for an american football team losing when it's yeah and it sounds ludicrous but that is how far it can go i guess sometimes isn't it people go deep into that kind of uh that kind of thinking well i think what what you see in this and i think you certainly say in in that the scene that you're talking about in that in that movie

58:05is is regression to childlike behavior you know you you get a real sense of how this guy probably threw a temper tantrum when he was two or three years old it you know it there's just it's you know the world has fallen apart because this has happened and when we are two or three years old and something doesn't go our way it does feel like the world's fallen apart that's very genuine often at that age it's why two-year-olds do that but when you see it in a man who's what in his 60s or 70s or

58:35something in that film it just looks insane but you can also see that how how deep rooted it is for him like there it's like you can see the blinkers on his eyes and the the aim of the game of this particular game is about vindication about you know this terrible situation these terrible feelings i'm feeling it's not my fault it's your fault see what you made me do but again it's discounting his own part in the situation he finds himself in and making it somebody else's fault and therefore

59:10justifying his own behavior his own bad behavior by layering it inappropriately onto somebody else yeah there's a there's a wonderful moment in that scene as well when the uh the jennifer lawrence character comes in and uh she's just she's giving him this loads of like adult data of all these times that his team did lose or when and it wasn't to do with anything that deniro's son was doing and it's like there's there's an overwhelming sense of adult data coming at him to the point where he kind of just goes that's you know that's a good point i quite like you like it's just like

59:42it gets it bypasses that whole see what you made me do it completely obliterates the game and he kind of goes yeah that's yeah you're right yes it's beautiful yeah it's hilarious definitely goes out his sails doesn't it exactly and i guess it's nice that later on in that film you do have that moment where he does share uh the scene with bradley cooper where he is taking responsibility and saying maybe i didn't do this as a father you know and he kind of he really opens up it's a really beautiful scene that you come to terms with like it is his fault somewhat and he maybe had a huge part to play in the lack of relationship they had it's uh i guess it's probably why the film did so well

1:00:14the oscars because it has that real redemption art you see somebody go through that yeah and it's that's the it's the beauty of of authenticity and the beauty of when people you know volunteer their vulnerability which is what that's that scene is really about there was um during lockdown i was isolating by myself and you know i've lived most of my adult life by myself so in one sense that was nothing new but it suddenly made me realize how much i value interaction with other people because part of the reason i enjoyed living on my own was because i had plenty of interaction with other

1:00:46people sort of outside in my daily life you know working as a trainer and all that kind of stuff and i don't think i necessarily struggled with it any more than anybody else but it was a difficult period and it was a challenge to my script because i'm used to you know what i'm at risk of most is being a rescuer you know i work as a coach you support people to figure things out for themselves in my friendship groups i'm used to being the person who people come to for advice and guidance suddenly i was needing to ask for help for myself and that felt really uncomfortable but there was a

1:01:18quote i heard on a podcast that i listened to from an american poetess called adrian rich and the quote is there must be those with whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors and so there must be those with whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors and i think in moments like that what you describe in that later scene you've got someone who has prided himself almost on that sort of alpha male aggressive type of you know being successful and dominating others

1:01:49and blaming everybody else suddenly enables his vulnerability to be shown and actually it's a there's a strength in that and there's an invitation into a way of relating which is just so much healthier because it's about connecting through vulnerability rather than trying to keep everybody else through their place through sort of aggressive strength yeah yeah yeah nice so the the last game we're going to cover i mean there's there's plenty of these games and we encourage people to read games

1:02:23people play it's a fascinating book um but the the last game we're going to look at is a game called ain't it awful and i mean it's basically when people gather together to complain about how terrible things are this is really a parent-to-parent transaction is it complementary transactions it's parent-to-parent transactions is this is the stuff of social interactions you know all of the time where and and there is so much of this game going on at the moment because we're recording this at the time of a general election in the uk you know there's so much of this going on in the commentary about

1:02:58the election either about people who don't like certain political parties talking about other political parties or in terms of you know what people want to see the political parties doing that yeah there's lots of this going on at the moment i mean there's probably a lot of all the games going on i guess isn't there like yeah there's quite a few is an arena for games isn't that's a stadium okay for games yes yes absolutely so this is going to be a scene for all three of us and it's three friends chatting in a cafe i guess is this the way to set this up

1:03:29i swear this place is getting worse by the day the coffee tastes like dishwater and the service is so slow yeah you can say that again i waited 15 minutes for a simple black coffee it's really not rocket science yeah and don't get me started on the wi-fi it's down half the time i can't get any work done here exactly and the noise level it's like they let anyone in here i can barely hear myself think oh and the seating always uncomfortable these chairs must be designed to make you leave as soon

1:04:02as possible yeah yeah that's probably their strategy make it so unbearable you don't stick around and the food it's overpriced and tastes like cardboard i miss the days when you could get a decent meal without breaking the bank oh tell me about it last week i paid 10 quid for a salad that was mostly lettuce what a rip off it's like they don't care about quality anymore just churn out whatever and charge an absolute fortune and have you noticed how the staff treats you they act like

1:04:33they're doing you a favor just by taking your order yeah customer service is the lost art these days no one cares about doing a good job anymore uh everywhere you go it's it's the same story mediocrity is the new standard and then they wonder why business is slow maybe if they actually put some effort in people would come back it's not just here though it's everywhere standards have just plummeted across the board yeah yeah it's like no one has any pride in their work anymore they're just going through the motions i miss the days when things were simpler and people actually cared about what they did oh good

1:05:08luck finding that anywhere now it's all about cutting corners and maximizing profits yeah and and we're the ones who suffer for it nothing ever changes and it's only getting worse sometimes i wonder if it's even worth complaining nothing ever seems to get better yeah probably not but what else can we do it's the way of the world uh yep same shit different day what a lovely pity party i was gonna say happy little number isn't it i am there's a i think a phrase

1:05:42in games people play that i like about this one is that it's ringing satisfaction from misfortune yeah that's a great you know there's there's comfort in being really miserable about this and it's a you know it's parent to parent in terms of life positions it's i'm not okay you're not okay it's like every everything's going to hell in a handcart so why do we even bother and let's just revel in our misery about that quite frankly yeah yeah there's another saying isn't there misery loves company yeah yeah absolutely that's very much the i'm not okay and neither are you position you know

1:06:16yeah that game wouldn't work with one person would it no although i would say scent points in the pandemic isolating by myself i probably was doing that quite happily with myself particularly when my you know work disappeared overnight but yeah it's one of those as well like this that scene kind of comes to a bit of an end but it's one that could probably go on forever and ever it isn't i guess because it's complimentary like we said before like complimentary transactions they could go on and on and this it seems like there was no end there's always something to complain about in this cafe yeah absolutely and there's an interesting in terms of the roles being played i mean i think most

1:06:50of the time those three characters are all sort of operating from the persecutor position because everything's awful but there are moments where they flip to victim oh you know there's no point in even trying i wonder why i bother sometimes you know you can hear the flip from the parent to the child ego states but but it's done mutually the transactions are never crossed in one sense they stay in that sort of complementary pattern of transacting which you know keeps the game turning yeah it's really when i really enjoy when when people try and initiate this game and then you you don't

1:07:25play it and you say something positive and just how disorientated people look when you're like you're not you know i remember this at the school gates when you're waiting for kids it's literally parents you know in the parental ego state waiting for their kids to come out of school and how do we pass the time and have a good old round of the game of ain't it awful yeah i mean this is gossip mongering isn't it you know about you know god did you hear what happened about such and such isn't it awful you know it's keeping in relationship but we're all right jack in one sense or you can play it from the as

1:07:56i said the i'm not okay you're not okay but you can also play it from a sort of you know if you've got people everybody thinks we're okay i'm okay you're okay it's that lot over there who are not okay let's all gang up on them you know of course you get another you get another power play that way or everybody else is literally everybody else is i'm okay and everybody well we're okay if we're in this group but everybody else is not okay yes there's so there's an extension to the life positions which um certainly bern wrote about in his last book what do you say after you say hello where it's

1:08:28i'm okay you're okay they're okay but you can also have i'm okay you're okay but they're not okay so it's it's sort of like in our gangs fine but it's that gang over there that are that are not okay and again you get that a lot in elections you know where things become tribal so you know we in this party are all fine it's that lot over there that you've got to watch out for and there's a game as well isn't there called we we know all the answers yes i think so yes we know

1:08:58all the answers and that isn't that generally like basically a group of people with an inferiority complex or getting together and and being superior together yes i will admit it's not one of the games i know quite so well but that was that makes perfect logical sense john absolutely great so really so really the only way to to stop these games is to bring in the adult right it's bringing the data it's to it's to bring in your awareness of what's going on and what's actually happening around you there's a thing called the game plan which a transactional analyst looked at

1:09:32which are questions to ask yourself when you think you might be have clocked that maybe there's a game going on or you realize that there is a pattern but you haven't yet really analyzed for yourself what is going on to really bring it into adult awareness so i can share with you the questions yeah that'd be great that would be hugely helpful yeah that'd be great so there are i think technically nine questions two of them are referred to as mystery questions which although they're

1:10:02questions four and six get asked at the end when we've asked all of the other questions so the first thing you need to do is to notice that something keeps happening to you and so the first question is simply what keeps happening to you over and over again so it's asking you to identify with this person or in that situation this keeps happening to me the next question to ask is how does it start so it's exploring what sort of is kicking off the interaction we often say with a game it usually

1:10:35gets kicked off by either somebody stepping into the persecutor role or somebody stepping into the victim role rescuers usually responding to other people's behaviors rather than kicking it off but not always the case so there are things to reflect on not just how does it start but who starts the game you know actually is this something that i kick off because i step into the persecutor role or i step into the victim role or am i maybe responding as a rescuer to somebody else moving into one of those two positions question three is what happens next question four i will come back to because that's

1:11:10one of the mystery questions question five is and then so question three and question five are just getting you to explore actually what are the maneuvers in the game how does it tend to play out you've got the who starts it then what happens and then what happens question six is the other mystery question so i'm going to come back to that one question seven is how does it end so what happens at the end of the game you know who who storms off what happens that breaks down the communication so the game comes

1:11:40to the end and then got question aa and question 8b question 8a is how do you feel at the end of the game so what's the emotion that you're left with is it the bewilderment or the vindication or the you know justification and question 8b is how do you think the other person feels so what emotional state do you think they're left with at the end of the game and then the two mystery questions are and what these are getting at are the ulterior transaction so remember ulterior transaction is there's something

1:12:14different going on between the social level message the literal meaning of the words and the psychological level message so what we really mean and these questions are trying to get into what's the psychological level message so question four is what is my secret message to the other person and then question six is what is the other person's secret message to me and i think there's a lot with what you were talking about your sort of um purposes and the

1:12:45frame of reference you've already got john i think there's a lot of that that you would be able to feed into into that sort of questioning process yeah think about what is it that's actually going on here and in my work as a coach if i'm using that with people i'm coaching and we're exploring a relationship that's breakdown for me to begin to move it into a positive direction is thinking if you're operating from your adult ego state next time you play the game or you get an invitation into the game what's the secret message you actually want to send them or what's the secret message you want to make

1:13:17overt that rather than it being secret how do you actually want this to play out and then what so you've analyzed the game you've analyzed this and you've understood it is it that really that um we have a principle that basically seeing is letting go as soon as you've observed pattern of thinking when you've brought it from invisible thinking you know subconscious into the conscious mind and you can see what it is naturally loses its power is that if you found that to be true in

1:13:50your work as well very much so very much so i think what i would additionally do it a bit like i was chatting about just then with clients is to think about next time you get offered the invite or next time you're in a situation where you feel like you want to step onto the drama triangle let's think about what are the things that you could do differently instead from an adult place responding from the winner's triangle rather than reacting from the drama triangle what does that difference look like so that people are beginning to build that muscle that gets them onto the winner's triangle rather than just reacting to the familiar pattern of behavior that

1:14:23pocket rockets them onto the drama triangle you've been listening to the spiritual psychology of acting podcast thank you so much again to sarah lowes for giving us our time and for you the listener for staying all the way to the very end if you'd like to help support this podcast please consider becoming a paid member over on patreon a few quid a month goes a long way to keeping this podcast going the link to our page

1:14:57is in the description of this episode but if you can't afford that there are other ways to support us by leaving a five star review subscribing spreading the word all of it is hugely appreciated join us again next week for our final part of our transactional analysis mini-series all about life scripts until then be excellent to each other and have a great week

1:15:44thank you