My training and thinking
My training is in Transactional Analysis and Relationship Counselling through Relate.
Recently I have been working in the NHS providing short (6 sessions) counselling for patients who are anxious or depressed. I’m now keen to be able to work with you for longer than this. The NHS provides focussed treatment for depression (called interpersonal psychotherapy IPT) and anxiety (CBT is recommended). I am trained in IPT and know of CBT but you are not an illness. My TA and relationships background means that I can do both things – work with you as a whole person but also take advantage of the research that has gone into what works for depression and anxiety.
Here’s some ideas taken from Transactional Analysis
This is a theory of personality and a systematic psychotherapy for personal growth and personal change
People often have things happen (to them) over and over again. This may be to do with repetitive thinking and patterns of behaviour – often out of awareness.
These patterns, the result of early childhood decisions – which in TA are referred to as ‘script’. The script limits an individual’s potential. TA focuses on how script manifests itself in day-to-day life and how we can move beyond it to improve the quality of our lives. Being aware of this pattern is the first step towards change.
When working with you, I’m interested in your family tree and your early relationships to find out if some of your thinking started when you were young.
In Relationship Counselling, I’m interested in how our scripts fit together – like a jigsaw puzzle – but then reinforcing unhelpful patterns and sometimes pressing each other’s “buttons”. I find theories of couple fit and attachment patterns useful. We learn how to be in relationship and carry with us people from our past. We can mistake our partner/friend/boss for someone else (we might not have liked) and talk to them as if they are someone else. In relationship, we can sometimes unknowingly erode each other’s self-esteem and create that downward spiral which then seems out of control. All of these themes can be explored in counselling – understanding and changing thinking, feelings and behaviour.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF TA
- People are OK.
- Everyone has the capacity to think.
- People decide their own destiny and these decisions can be changed.
- It is a contractual method. Therapeutic contract.
- It involves open communication
People are OK. (I’m OK and you are OK – I+ U+)
The most fundamental assumption of TA is that people are OK. This means: you and I both have worth, value and dignity as people. I accept myself as me and I accept you as you. This is a statement of essence rather than behaviour.
At times, I may not like nor accept what you do. But always, I accept who you are. Your essence as a human being is OK with me, even though your behaviour may not be. I am not one-up to you, and you are not one-up to me. We are on the same level as people. This is true even though our accomplishments may differ. It is true even though we may be of different race, age or religion.
Everyone has the capacity to think
Everyone except the severely brain-damaged has the capacity to think. Therefore it is the responsibility of each of us to decide what he or she wants from life. Each individual will ultimately live with the consequences of what he or she decides
People decide their own destiny and these decisions can be changed.
You and I are both OK. We may sometimes engage in not-OK behaviour. When we do, we are following strategies we decided upon as young children. These strategies were the best ways we could work out as infants to survive and get what we wanted from a world that may have seemed hostile. As grown-ups, we still pursue these same patterns at times. We may do this even though the results are unproductive or even painful for us.
Even when we were young children, our parents could not make us develop in one particular way rather than another. They could certainly exert strong pressures on us. But we made our own decisions whether to comply with these pressures, to rebel against them or to ignore them.
For us as grown-ups, the same is true. We cannot be made to feel or behave in particular ways by others, or by ‘the environment’. Other people, or our life circumstances, may exert strong pressures on us. But it is always our own decision whether to conform to these pressures. We are responsible for our own feelings and behaviour.
Any time we make a decision, we can change that decision later. This is true of the early decisions we made about ourselves and the world. If some of these infant decisions are producing uncomfortable results for us as grown-ups, we can trace the decisions and change them for new and more appropriate decisions now.
Thus, people can change. We achieve change not merely by insight into our old patterns of behaviour but by actively deciding to change those patterns. The changes we make can be real and lasting.
Therapeutic contract
We take joint responsibility for achieving whatever change(s) you want to make. This follows from the assumption that you and I relate on equal terms. It is not up to me to do things to you. Nor do you come to me expecting that I will do everything for you. Since we both take part in the process of change, it is important that we both know clearly how the task will be shared. Therefore we enter into a contract. A contract is a statement of the responsibility of each party. As the client, you say what you want to change and what you are willing to do in order to bring about that change. I, as practitioner, confirm that I am willing to work with you in this task. I undertake to use the best of my professional skills in doing so, and say what recompense I want from you in return for your work
Open communication
Eric Berne insisted that the client, as well as the practitioner, should have full information about what is going on in their work together. This follows from the basic assumptions that people are OK and that everyone can think.
To help in communication, the ideas of TA are expressed in simple language. Instead of the long Latin- or Greek-derived words customary in some other branches of psychology, TA speaks in familiar words: Parent, Adult, Child, game, script, stroke.
Some people have assumed that this straightforward language must reflect superficial thinking. Their view is mistaken. Though TA’s language is simple, its theory is profound and closely reasoned.