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Transactional Analysis – Passivity

07/08/2011 By Ian Tomlinson

passivityWhat is passivity?

Passivity is when we put something off or don’t do it at all. It is an interesting and important subject when we are attempting to work out what makes humans tick.

I deal with clients displaying passive behavior pretty much every session I deliver therapy. Sometimes this may be a minor part of the problem, other times it can be the root of the issue. Passivity stops us growing, realizing our potential, confronting our fears and doing what we really want to do.

In this blog post I want to take passivity apart. I want to give you the theory (mostly taken from Aarron and Jacqui Schiffs paper “Passivity”, Jan 1971) and see how we can translate this to practical, doable steps for action. I want to do this because I am convinced that if we can confront and overcome our passive behavior then we can move towards happier, less frustrated, more fulfilled lives.

Understanding where passivity comes from.

The first stage of passivity is to understand symbiosis and in order to understand symbiosis you have to understand the ego state model that we use in transactional analysis. Fortunately I have already written a post on egostates that you can read here so check that out before reading further if you are not up on your “Parent, Adult and Childs”.

In symbiosis, the two people involved behave as if they are only one person from an egostate perspective. One individual will have an active Parent and Adult and the other will have an active Child. We diagram it like this;

symbiosis diagram - transactional analysis passivity

Symbiosis is normal between mother and infant, and is important. The mother needs to be aware of the child’s needs and the child needs to know that the mother is there and will be cared for as he is completely dependent on the mother.

This way of relating is less effective when it is between you and your partner, or you and your boss once you are a fully functioning adult though yet it is surprisingly common and familiar to us all. A great example of it is those couples we all know who finish each other’s sentences or who carry out very clear roles within the relationship.

A useful example

Let me introduce you to Gladys and Jim. Gladys and Jim are a (fictious) married couple who have been together for years and slip into symbiosis at a drop of a hat.

Gladys carries out the practical duties to keep the house running, like cooking and cleaning and buying the groceries and Jim does almost nothing. Both Gladys and Jim enter into this arrangement comfortably and when it is questioned give “good reasons” for why their relationship is run like this.
Gladys would say “he’s useless, if I asked him to cook he would burn the kitchen down” and Jim would say “when I do get the shopping I buy the wrong thing so it’s best to let Gladys get on with it”.

Gladys and Jim also illustrate another two things that are needed in order to allow passivity; discounting and grandiosity.

Discounting

The Schiffs (1971) defined discounting as:

“the person who discounts believes, or acts as though he believes, that his feelings about what someone else has said, done or felt are more significant that what that person actually said, did or felt. He does not use information relevant to the situation.”

Let’s use our couple mentioned above to explain this in simple terms.

Gladys discounts Jim’s ability to cook even though when Gladys goes to look after her elderly mother for a week, Jim is perfectly able to prepare himself decent meals without causing house fires.

Jim discounts his ability to walk around the supermarket and read a simple list to ensure he does not buy the wrong thing. His belief that he cannot do this is bigger than the here and now reality that he is perfectly capable.

There are four ways in which we can discount:

  1. Discount the problem – I find a rash on my arm, and ignore it.
  2. Discount the significance of the problem – I find a rash on my arm, take a look and think “it’s nothing, it will go soon”.
  3. Discount the solvability of the problem – I find a rash on my arm and feel concerned but do nothing as “there is no medicine that will cure that”.
  4. Discount the person – I find a rash on my arm and feel concerned but do nothing because “no one will take any notice even if I did go to the doctors, there’s nothing I can do.”

Grandiosity

Grandiosity is the act of purposefully exaggerating about self or others or the environment in order to maintain the passivity. When we use grandiosity we take no responsibility for the decisions involved in a situation and we make the situation responsible for the behavior.

Grandiose language is easy to spot. Words like “always” and “never” can be heard and phrases like “I can’t stand it” “I was scared to death” or “I hit him because I was so furious”.

Jim may avoid going to the supermarket because “it is miles away” and Gladys may cook every night because if she doesn’t Jim will “starve to death”.

Why do we behave in this manner?

So why do we use discounting and grandiosity? The Schiffs say that we use discounting and grandiosity to remain in the passive symbiotic relationship with the other and not threaten the dependency contract. Jim and Gladys both have clear roles and know what they are supposed to do and where they stand. If Jim suddenly took over the cooking then this would threaten the Adult and Child ego states of Gladys and she would become agitated and uncomfortable. Equally, if Gladys expected Jim to go to the supermarket and buy the correct items this may cause him agitation or even anger as his dormant Adult and Parent ego states would be called into action.

Why is symbiosis bad?

The simple answer is that it is not always bad and can be an effective way for two people to function at times. The danger lies when we begin to discount our ability to change things that we don’t like and that are holding us back. It is this side of passivity that I see in my work with clients.

I see clients discount their ability to change their lives on a number of fronts. They discount the ability to change themselves, change their situation or can be grandiose about the response they will get if they change the situation.

5 suggestions for reducing your passivity

  • Notice what’s going on – your clues are discounting and grandiosity. Are you using words like “always”, “never” “I/you can’t bear it” “I can’t cope”.
  • Put things in perspective – you may feel nervous about doing things differently but what is really the worst that could happen? Are you being grandiose about the consequences of change?
  • Look at your history – Are you used to thinking that you can’t do things or can’t change? You may have learnt this as a child and are carrying it into your adulthood. As a child it is tricky to change things because you do not have much power. The power lies with your parents. As an adult you have power. You can change your life and you are not reliant on anyone else to stay alive.
  • Appreciate other adults will be OK – The adults in your life are just that, adults. Sometimes we have to make decisions that impact on others and that they won’t like but this choice is available to all adults and adults are self sufficient and can look after themselves.
  • Work with a therapist – Therapists, (especially Transactional Analysists) are trained to spot discounting and grandiosity and will see symbiotic relationships you have formed with others. When this information is brought into your awareness you can choose what to do with it.

Tell me about your experiences with passivity

We all have passivity in our lives, it’s the amount and severity of the passivity we experience that can make a difference to how happy we are and how autonomous we feel.  Please comment on the post below, how does passivity affect you in your life?  Have you any good suggestions to help others with their passivity?

 

Filed Under: Transactional Analysis Tagged With: ego state, eric berne, transactional analysis

Why Do You Do The Things You Do?

09/07/2011 By Ian Tomlinson

Why do we do the things we do?I’m sat here typing this at six o’clock in the morning in my pants. This may seem odd to many people but it makes perfect sense to me. This blog post will attempt to explain why I do (some of ) the things I do, and why knowing why I do the things I do helps me. I’m hoping that for you, once you start understanding why it’s good to work with someone who knows why you do the things YOU do (or at least is able to have an educated guess), you will see the benefit of working with a therapist.

Back to my pants. Us humans are complex. Very complex. Relatively speaking, we know very little about how the human brain works and the complexities of the human psyche are astounding. What if we could have a good guess about some of the things that are going on by observation though? Just observing me sitting here in my pants might tell you a lot about the sort of person I am (sorry to keep bringing my pants up – I’m sure you have a Homer Simpson Y front type image and I’m sad to say it’s not too far from the truth these days). You could probably make a fair few educated guesses about my background, my interests, my aims in life, my energy levels and enthusiasm. By reading my work you would be able to tell things about my educational background, how and whether I like to connect to other people and whether I have a sense of humour. All this from observing me typing on my PC.

Transactional Analysis

Enter Transactional Analysis (TA). TA is one way of attempting to understand why we do the things we do. Its core parts join together to form a rough picture of who we are, where we came from and why we do the things we do. Let’s have a go at applying TA theory to me siting here typing now.

  • I seem to be able to communicate effectively and have a purpose to what I’m doing so you may argue that I am in my Adult ego state (i.e behaving in an adult way) and I have some energy in my Child ego state (that child part of me that is making silly comments about pants – there – did it again).
  • I work by providing therapy to individuals and couples. This tells you that I like to help people and make a pretty good guess (correctly) that I have spent much of my life doing this. I was probably taught it was good to help others by my parents as a child. In TA terms you might say that I have a script belief that helping others keeps me safe and gets me attention (known as strokes in TA language).
  • I am choosing to pass my time by carrying out an activity. Once more this may be a way of me getting strokes from those around me. (yep- that’s true too and why all bloggers love the readers to comment on their posts – so please comment below!)
  • Whilst you are reading this post you will start to have feelings about me. You may have decided I’m a decent chap with an odd sense of humour or even that I am a rather annoying individual who talks rubbish. Either way the feelings you have about me tell you something about how others may experience me.

Now you are starting to build up a profile of who I am, how I relate to the world, how others relate to me and why I may choose to get up at 6am and start writing about TA. You are nowhere near understanding the complexities of my psyche – but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Why is it useful for you to find these things out about yourself?

This is where we go back to a fundamental principle of TA. We made these decisions about how we run our lives. Some of these decisions were made out of our awareness – they met our needs at the time and kept us safe when we were kids. If we made the decision then we can change the decision. Here’s an example of that. The second bullet point above points out that one of the reasons I am a therapist is that I like to help people. I didn’t just spontaneously develop that like, it’s something I learnt to do as a kid. When I helped my parents I got lots of attention. Helping = attention = confirming that I exist.

Helping others is a great thing to do but it isn’t appropriate all the time. By working with a therapist who has spotted my need to “please others” I can work out when helping is useful to me and to those I am helping and when it is not. Sometimes it may be more appropriate for me to please myself and recharge my batteries, or let others look after me for a bit. It’s important for me to get the balance right. There will also be times where it would be more appropriate for me to back off and let others look after themselves. Both adults and children need this to allow them to develop feelings of autonomy. For example, if I always did my daughters homework for her then she could interpret this “help” as a message that she is incapable of doing things for herself and her self-esteem could suffer as a result.

What I hope I have done in this post is get across the message that we do things for a reason. There are very few random acts for humans. We make mistakes, mess up and get ourselves into difficult situations because we learnt to think, feel and behave in certain ways as we grew up. A therapist’s job is to work with you to help you identify which thoughts, feelings and behaviours are still useful to you as an adult and change the things that no longer serve you. TA is one tool they can use to help this process.

want to know more about Transactional Analysis?  Download my FREE guide (RRP – £9.99) by clicking here.

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Filed Under: Transactional Analysis Tagged With: clinical psychology, ego state, life changes, transactional analysis

Ego states, urges and me – part 2

03/07/2011 By Ian Tomlinson

ego states and transactional analysis weight lossPart one of this post introduced the idea of ego states.  I’m going to look at my super strong desire for iPhone 4s and iPads from an ego state perspective.

My Free Child ego state really wants to buy buy buy!  My Controlling Parent is saying in no uncertain terms that I am not allowed to splash the cash down the local Apple store because I can’t afford it.  My Adapted Child follows the instructions of the Controlling Parent and a conflict is set up.  This is a similar thing to what happens when we go on diets.  Carole Rayburn wrote an article in the TAJ explaining the whole sequence – I’m going to paraphrase below:

Our Controlling Parent tells us that we are too fat and we need to cut down on the cakes, sweets, chocolate and other foods that we love to eat and are bad for us.  Our Adapted Child complies but is not very happy about it.  We put up with this for a certain amount of time or until we reach a target weight.  Once we get there things shift.  Often the Rebellious Child clicks in and we go back to our pies, chocolate or crisps.  Before we know it we are back to our original weight and feel sad that we have failed, yet again to “Control” ourselves.

Carole suggests that the answer is to stop being so hard on ourselves and nurture instead.  Our Nurturing Parent needs to team up with our Child and give permission for the Adult – the sensible part of ourselves, to regulate our weight.  Our Child needs to be soothed by our Nurturing Parent and believe that they are not going to be deprived and that there is enough food to go round.  Then slowly that need to shovel food into our faces as if it’s the last ever time we will be able to have them will subside.  I’m not pretending that this is easy to do.  Research by Lister, Rosen and Wright (1985) examining a group of women using this method to lose weight showed that in the initial stages most put weight on.  It takes time for that Child part of ourselves to feel safe enough to take this new approach. This is one possible approach I would take when providing therapy to a client with these sort of issues.

In part 3 of this post, I look at an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy method for managing our urges, called Urge surfing.

Read part one of this blog post here.

References:

Lister, M. Rosen, K. and Wright,  A. (1985) ‘An Anti-diet Approach to Weight Loss in a Group Setting’. Transactional Analysis Journal 15, 69-72.

Rayburn, C.A. (1978) ‘On the Importance of Self Stroking in Weight Control’. Transactional Analysis Journal 8, No 3 227-228.

Buy the Book: Transactional Analysis: 100 Key Points and Techniques

Filed Under: Transactional Analysis Tagged With: control parent, ego state, iphone, psychotherapy, transactional analysis, urge

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