A Path With Heart

With a New Year approaching many people turn to considering goals and aspirations, e.g. to go to the gym twice a week - only for these to fall at the first hurdle. Perhaps one reason for not completing our best intentions is because they are not fundamental choices i.e. they do not address our passions, how we want to be in life, and how we want, and need, to make connection. This connection, or lack of it, is often at the heart of difficulties. Many of us have lost connection with a sense of ourselves, with others, with nature and with life itself.

At our Organisational Transactional Analysis training workshop last weekend the group raised the issue of the place of spirituality in TA and a short discussion was held about this. In the TA world two of the people who write extensively about this are Muriel James and her son, John James. In their book a Passion for Life they discuss the human need for a spiritual self and the need to connect and go beyond ourselves.

At a time when the world seems in turmoil it is even more important for us to connect and feel that sense of connection. Human beings have the power to intervene in life. We need to ensure that these interventions are life enhancing. When we lose connection we tend to lose empathy for others, for nature and for life itself, and, when this happens, we lose touch with a deeper sense of connection, and thus our spirituality. To connect is to experience ourselves and others and to really encounter life and live with a passion which reflects a quote I saw the other day: Live your life every day.

So, my hope for us all and for the world is that we make real connection with ourselves, with others and with nature in 2009. This is true intimacy and is life enhancing. This fundamental decision to connect starts with our “self” and is not just for life but is about life and is not just for Christmas.

Enjoy the festive season and laugh and love with a passion that is connecting.


We are interested in your comments on these blogs. Go to the link at the bottom of this blog and keep in touch. See you in 2009.

Who Shall I Rescue Today?

How often have you gone to help someone and ended up feeling persecuted by them? If this has happened to you it may be that you did not ask the other person if they needed your assistance before assuming what they needed.

Karpman (1968) devised a simple diagram for analysing the “games” that people get into with each other. (In Transactional Analysis a game is a familiar pattern of behaviour with a predictable outcome). Karpman uses three roles as in a play or drama, namely Persecutor, Rescuer and Victim.

Are you one of life’s Rescuers? You think that someone else really needs your assistance and help them without checking whether this is appropriate. Alternatively they may need your help but not as much as you give. The position of Rescuer always discounts someone else’s ability to problem solve. It may be that you seem to be the one who does a lot of the organising on your team’s behalf, when in fact it would be more appropriate to spread this around between everyone.

Perhaps when you did organise an event or task you may not have got the outcome that others wanted and they have a go at you for this. If this happens you may feel bad and move down into the Victim position, which is in fact where you had put your colleagues or staff by thinking that you have to do everything. Your colleagues then move up into the Persecutor position. This feels a far more powerful place than being in Victim which is why people will make that switch.

So by getting involved on the Drama Triangle you can think that you are incapable, think others are incapable or hold others responsible for not looking after you “properly”. Once in any of the three positions - Persecutor, Rescuer or Victim - we can keep going round the Triangle indefinitely.

Often there is one position which we take up more than any of the others. Sometimes we don’t switch round. For example a partnership where one person always decides what is going to happen and when. In these instances there is usually an unspoken agreement that the one partner will look after the other. This “agreement” means that one person takes on the Compliant mode within the relationship whilst the other takes on the Critical or Over-Indulgent mode, thus creating a dependency. When one person tires of this then the roles on the Drama Triangle can start to show. Until this point there may be an unspoken agreement to use just two of the roles, for example, those of Rescuer and Victim, and only later does one of the players switch to Persecutor.

The way to avoid being on the Drama Triangle is to become aware when you and/or others may be discounting self, others or the reality of the situation. For more about this see the Transactional Analysis pages on our web site: www.mountain-associates.co.uk or take a look at some of the excellent books on TA that are around at the moment.

You may be interested to know that our own book on Organizational TA will be published in 2009. Keep an eye on our web site for more details.



Reference:

Stephen Karpman, (1968), “Fairy tales and script drama analysis”. TAB, 7,26, 1968, 39-43