A Beginners Guide To Transactional Analysis

hi guys miss Donna from Tocqueville change calm and today I'm going to be speaking about theoretical structure called transactional analysis or ta for

short and it's a way of understanding how we relate to other people and how we communicate with them and I'm hoping that by understanding this you will be

able to gain insight into how you communicate and relate to to everyone in your life from your best friend to your family or colleagues at work and your

romantic partners and hopefully this will help you to improve on those ways that you relate and help you to lead a happier life I use TA quite a lot when I'm working with my

clients in therapy sessions and I also use it quite a bit in my own life and I found it really helpful so I hope that you'll also gain some insight from this

ok so have you ever noticed that being around certain people automatically brings out different aspects of yourself

some aspects you might really like and others you might not like very much but being around those people seems to always bring that out you may find that

being around a certain person you kind of just lose all your confidence pretty much every time you're around them and you're not even sure why or if you're

around someone and you just lose your ability to set boundaries which you might be a lot better at with other people and you find yourself constantly agreeing to things that you actually

don't really want to be doing or you are constantly apologizing to someone for things that actually aren't even really your faults if you've ever experienced

something like this then TA might help you to change some of those dynamics okay so TA is a theoretical structure by

Eric Berne and based on the understanding that our actions are not so much based on another person's behavior but it's more based on our own

state of mind in transactional analysis we analyze our transactions and our transactions our interactions with other

people so we analyze how we interact or transact with other people and this is based on the understanding that we have

three main ego States our 3 ego States our parent adults and child and basically we are constantly throughout

our lives shifting between all three of these ego states and I'm going to explain each different ego States and then I will illustrate this with some

examples so just bear with me the first ego state that I'm going to speak about is the parent ego states and when we are in this ego state we think

and feel and act in a way that was influenced by how our parents or our main caregiver and was when we were when

we were in our childhood so it's a sort of taught behavior okay so the parent ego state can be subdivided into two

very broad types of parents and the first one is the critical or the controlling parent who would sort of try

to control others and get them to behave in a way that they think others should behave and then we also have the nurturing parent ego state which is when

we feel very loving and protective and really wanting to help others maybe to a point of not really seeing others as as

super competent but really wanting to to nurture and take care of others okay so that was the parent ego state the second ego state is the child the child ego state is also

divided and on one side we have the adaptive and cooperative child who pretty much obeys authority figures and

might be a bit more shy and is quite obedient in general and then on the other side we have the spontaneous and the free child who is a lot less

reserved and we'll sort of do and say more what they want and how they feel and might also be a bit more reckless okay and then thirdly we have the adult

states now the state is quite different from the other two because it's not subdivided and it's also not pre-programmed based on authority figures during our childhood when we're

in the adult state we look at each situation in the here and now it's each situation as it happens and we respond

to each situation with maturity and respect and compromise okay so briefly that those are the three different ego states and it's really important that

you understand that none of these ego States is necessarily better than any other one so for example while the adaptive child might be really good with

something like self discipline the creative child really helps us with things like creativity and spontaneity so none of them are necessarily have any intrinsic value that is better than any

of the others that being said transactional analysis does encourage us to use our adult state and rely on our adult States more in our lives

and you'll start to understand why once I start showing you through some examples if you're identified with any of the situations that I spoke about at the beginning like struggling to say no

to someone or constantly apologizing to them it's very possible that in those situations you weren't actually in your adult state okay so let me clarify by

using some examples and relating them to these different eco states so let's look at the example of Luke and Max Luke says I've got a work function tomorrow night

and I can't go by myself I just get so intimidated by some of my colleagues I need you there with me well I have a full day tomorrow and I'll probably be

really tired but yeah sure I'll go with you thanks max come over to my place person I just know I'll feel so much better if we arrive together okay I'll come around 6:00 okay so in this

situation we can see that Luke was coming from a child state he was quite needy and quite helpless and while Max may have initially been in an adult state hearing Luke and the child state

may have caused him to respond from a nurturing parent state max probably reacts more from a nurturing parent ego

state than a controlling one because his primary caregiver was probably more nurturing than critical during his childhood like I said before none of

these ego states are necessarily good or bad in and of themselves if we look at the situation in isolation it is totally fine to go out of your way for a friend who feels that they need you but we

often set up certain patterns with people in our lives where we sort of lock ourselves into to that pattern where one person may often act as the nurturing parent and had the other

person act as a child in that relationship and when these patents become very fixed and they often play out with the same people

it could have a negative impact so for example if Luke is always feeling like the the child and Max is always feeling like more of a parent this might have a

negative impact on their friendship because max might want to stop seeing Luke because he always has to go out of his way for Luke and be there for Luke and it's not necessarily reciprocated

okay let's look at the errors between Max and Luke we can see that they are aligned and when errors are aligned like this they are called complementary

transactions now most of the transactions in our lives are actually complementary transaction because if someone's going to approach you from the child state you're probably going to

respond from the parent state and vice-versa but taa encourages us to respond from an adult state so let's see what could have happened with Max and

Luke if Max had actually responded from the adult state I've got a work function tomorrow night and I can't go by myself I just get so intimidated by some of my colleagues I need you to go there with

me I know work functions can be daunting but I have a full day tomorrow and I'm afraid I just can't make it I really can't go alone though you have to come

with me I'm sorry Luke I want to be a good friend but I've got a lot on my plate at the moment and I know you will be okay by yourself you go to work with them every day how about you give me a

call on your way to the function and I'll give you a little pep talk yeah that would be okay thanks mate did you see what happened to the hours in that example they stopped being in line

they stopped being complimentary and they cost and so in that case at that point it's called a crust interaction because we have so many complimentary

transactions happening with people all the time we actually end up expecting them to carry out because complementary transactions are very stable and they

often play out again and again and again and again in relationships so for example it would be very reasonable for Luke to expect max to help him because in their friendship in their

relationship Luke probably is often in the child state and he is often requiring Max to go out of his way to help him and Max is

probably often in the parent state and is going out of his way to help Luke so it's quite reasonable for him to expect that to continue happening but as we can

see a cross transaction is very different so a cross transaction is like a sudden turning point where someone shifts their ego states and it might not

be what the other person was expecting so yeah Luke was expecting max to respond on the parents date and instead he responded from the adult states and

this caused the cross transaction usually a cross transaction will lead to a shift in the other person's ego states so that they can continue forming a new

complementary transaction so let's look at another example yeah we have Ruth and Dylan Ruth says that report ready no get

off my case look you can't just make up your own deadlines around here I wanted on my desk by 3:00 p.m. okay in this case Ruth may have approached Dylan from

the adult state and she just asked him if the report was ready Dylan responded from the child state and so that caused a crust transaction

and like we just discussed often across transaction will lead to a shift in the other person's state ego state so that they form a new complementary

transaction and that's exactly what happened here Ruth then moved from the adults to the parent ego state forming this new complementary transaction and as we also

discussed a lot of the complementary transactions between people are quite stable and they will play out again and again and having an adult child

transaction in like a workplace wouldn't be very helpful for people like Ruth and Dylan so we can see how bringing in more of the adult state would be very helpful

for both of them okay so for instance Dylan could have replied from the adult state saying look Ruth I hoped it would be ready and I've been working on a tirelessly and I wanted to be good

quality so would it be at all possible for me to give it to you by the end of the day it's much easier for Ruth to continue responding in the adult state

if he says something like that from the adult state because it's so much more mature and reasonable we can also look at this example in another way

even if Dylan had responded from the child position Ruth could have refused to play into this and refuse to form

that complementary transaction and she could have not responded as a parent but responded as an adults saying look Dylan I know it's a lot of work maybe even

more than you made it but in the future if you need more time please just let me know in advance and then I can adjust my work accordingly and of course Dylan could

respond to that in a in the child position but it's harder for him to do so when Ruth is being so reasonable so respecting so respectful and she's

treating him like an adult's okay so that is a brief outline of transactional analysis and while my examples were a bit simplified I really hope that it

helped you to really understand the the different ego states and how they work and I hope that you can use this framework in your own life and help you

to notice when you're relating to someone maybe as a child or when they're relating to you as a critical parent and I hope that you can use that in your own life and bring in more of an adult response and improve some of the

relations in your life and if you're interested in analyzing a more complicated conversation in a bit more detail check out my next vlog where I explain how I would use transactional

analysis in a couples therapy session okay just for now