WHAT?? An unconscious life-plan?
Did you know that most of your (re)actions and your beliefs about the world and people in it are based on what you experienced before the age to 3?
An unconscious life-plan
Wow, yes... You decided on what you thought of yourself and the world (your immediate surroundings as well as the bigger picture) during a time in your life that you now cannot consciously remember. How you live your life is partly based on your experiences with the important adults after birth, so these are probably parents, but could also be other important family members or teachers.
The conclusions you came to before you even had the use of language are based on primal fear and a need for survival. And these decisions that you based your life-plan on as an baby and infant now influence your adult life: the way you hear things, the way you respond in conversations, even the small and big decisions you make for your future.
Transactions
In the 1950’ and 60’, there was a psychotherapist called Eric Berne. He developed Transactional Analysis, which provided great tools to help understand how people communicate and behave with each other.
The ITAA’s definition of Transactional Analysis is:
‘A theory of personality and a systematic psychotherapy for personal growth and personal change’, and a ‘transaction’ can be defined as: ‘A transactional stimulus plus a transactional response’ (Ian Stewart and Vann Jones, TA Today, 1987, p.307)
So a transaction is what happens between people, in their communication. And, going back to the life-plan that I mentioned earlier, a lot of our transactions are defined by what we experienced before the age of 3, and most of this life-plan (or Script, as Berne called it) we don’t remember.
A child’s need for survival
As grown-ups we cling to these infant choices, and we hold these beliefs in our Child ego state (the part of us that responds based on our feelings and experiences at a very early age).
We respond to the here and now reality as if we are still in the same world we were in when we created our life-plan, strengthened it with evidence we find throughout our life to ensure that our beliefs are justified.
In other words, a script is a pre-conscious life plan which is used to structure longer periods of time during a lifetime: months, years or an entire life. These periods are filled with ritual activities, pastimes and games that keep to the script and give immediate satisfaction.
During our lives we reinforce our early childhood decisions – which are based on our need for survival – by the messages we receive in a verbal and non-verbal way. We also use the relationships we have with other people to reinforce our life-plan, as well as our interpretation of events and situations we experience.
Family history
Script is a choice – but not a conscious choice.
Berne thought of scripts as a life-plan MADE in childhood – this implies that the child DECIDES what the script is going to be. This can be illustrated by the example of two siblings growing up with the same parental message ‘You’ll end up in an asylum’, and one of the children having mental health issues throughout life, and the sibling becoming a psychiatrist. You can often see that different members of a family develop different scripts, based on the same family history.
Unless a person spends time exploring possible scripty behaviour in their own life, this script is likely to continue to influence future decisions. However, as life-plans are considered to be chosen and created, there is also the possibility to decide to change decisions that were made in the first few years of our life.
Script vs. Autonomy
The aim would be to identify and change unhealthy aspects of the life-plan and the script behaviour that is attached. The way to stop functioning on this script ‘auto-pilot’ is by analysing our own behaviour. To be autonomous – the opposite of playing out script behaviour – your behaviour needs to be:
- reversible
- without a particular time schedule
- developed later in life
- not under parental influence
Of course there could be many script-y things you do, but one thing to look out for is repetitive behaviour: is there something you do (whether you like it or not) that you seem to do over and over again over the years? That might be some sort of script behaviour.
Once you bring something like that in your awareness, then you create an opportunity for change and you can ask yourself whether you are happy with this auto-pilot behaviour, or whether you would like to make a different choice of response or behaviour.
Have you got any questions or light bulb moments? Get in touch!
I’d be very happy to have a chat with you if this has raised any questions or light bulb moments for you, so feel free to book a free 30 minute call with me: https://calendly.com/rennyslade/30-minute-connection-call
Have a great week!
Renny