What Should Be My Next Step?

Learning the art of responding better

Every situation or experience is a stimulus that derives a response out of us in terms of how to deal with it. In this article, we will try to learn about how our mind works when it comes to responding to different stimuli and how we can get better at responding.

This article is an attempt to address the concern in light of the sheer brilliance of Thomas A. Harris, M.D., in his book I’m Okay, You’re Okay. For understanding these concepts in detail, you shall have to refer to the book itself, but for the sake of this article, the hope is to keep it as brief as possible, but still adequate to address our topic.

P-A-C Model

Eric Berne, M.D., who developed the theory of Transactional Analysis back in the 1950s, suggested the coexistence of 3 distinct states in every individual, which are in fact sets of recordings that play in response to different stimuli that we come across during our lives in the form of situations, experiences, etc.

Fig 1 — P-A-C Model

• Parent — Everything the child saw their parents (or parent substitutes) do and everything it heard them say. From the age of 0 to 5, the data recorded here is undisputable. It is a “taught concept” of life.
• Child — Everything the child feels or understands to what it saw or heard when little, and how it responded to the stimulus with those feelings. It is a “felt concept” of life.
• Adult — Everything that accumulates as a result of the child finding out for himself to be different about life from the “taught concept” of life in its Parent state and the “felt concept” of life in its Child state. It is a “thought concept” of life.

The Adult state consists of a computer, in addition to the databank like the Parent and Child states, which is responsible for functions like decision making and probability estimation.

Fig 2 —(a) Response to a Stimulus — (b) Reality Testing

The ongoing work of the Adult state can be seen above as the testing of the old data with reality. If the computer in the Adult state faces conflict in testing the old data with reality, it tends to take longer in order to resolve the conflict. The longer it takes, the lesser time it has at hand to spend on activities that involve creativity and innovation. It is easier for people to be more creative if the archaic data that they have in their Parent and Child states is close to reality.

Life Positions

Harris claims that there are only 4 possible life positions, out of which we can exist in any one at a time:

1. I’m NOT OK — You’re OK
2. I’m NOT OK — You’re NOT OK
3. I’m OK — You’re NOT OK
4. I’m OK — You’re OK

The first position is the universal position of early childhood — that is what we are born with. That is because we realize that another person takes care of our needs and helps us survive. So there is an automated response to this stimulus, the will to gain the strokes or approval of this other person who is OK, so that this person can make you feel OK.

With the impact of the experience that a child has during the first two years of its life, the Adult state of the child chooses either to stay in the first position, or move to the second or third position. The second (depressing and self destructive) and third (criminal) positions are dangerous as well.

I’m OK — You’re OK, the fourth position, is the only conscious position, as it is not taken unconsciously — one has to make the conscious choice to take this position and strive to make that happen. The first three positions are based on feelings (“why?”), but the fourth one is based on thought, faith and the wager of action (“why not?”). It is in this position, that we are able to acknowledge the importance of ourselves and the rest of the world simultaneously, and can have interactions, or transactions, with other people as equals, with mutual respect.

These life positions are not something that we can keep switching. All we can really do is switch to the fourth position from whatever position we currently have and stay there, or else we shall continue to stay in the position that we are currently in.

But why should we try to take this position at all?

Why Change?

One task that we all have to come across in life every now and then is making decisions. There are two distinct problems that we can be facing with decision making:

1. Making wrong decisions — the consequences of decisions that we make are usually bad.
2. Being unable to make decisions — our cluttered computer does not let us make decisions.

With Fig 2 (a) in mind, we can divide the response to a stimulus into 3 steps:

1. Adult state’s analysis of Parent state’s archaic data
2. Adult state’s analysis of Child state’s archaic data
3. Adult state’s analysis of Adult state’s recent data — the data which contains facts and the result of the reality testing of the Parent an Child states’ archaic data in the past.

Data from the Parent state demands conformity from the Adult state and thus tries to reproduce fear. Data from the Child state wants the Adult to be at peach and therefore demands certainty.

Without a functioning Adult state, the outcome will inevitably be a in the form of a game between the Parent and Child states, and anyone of them may dominate. This game, though painful, is something that a person can get used to. Participation of a functioning Adult state complicates the conflict, as it tries to prevent the possibility of a game.

The restoration of the freedom to change is the goal — it is either the pain of having to play the games repeatedly over a long period of time, the type of despair called ennui — or boredom, or a sudden discovery of the fact that we can change.

Harris further states that it is the Adult state where “action is, hope resides, and change is possible”. So we have got to learn to stay in the Adult.

How to Stay in Adult?

Harris has listed these 6 steps to build a strong Adult state that a person can stay in.

1. Learn to recognize your Child, its vulnerabilities, fears, and principal methods of expressing these feelings.
2. Learn to recognize your Parent, its admonitions, injunctions, fixed positions, and principal ways of expressing them.
3. Be sensitive to the Child in others, talk to it, stroke it, protect it and appreciate its need for creative expression as well as the NOT OK burden it carries about.
4. Count to ten, if necessary, in order to give the Adult time to process the data coming into the computer to sort out Parent and Child from reality.
5. When in doubt, leave it out. You can’t be attacked for what you didn’t say.
6. Work out a system of values. You can’t make decisions without an ethical framework. Learn about morality, here.

Functional Difficulties

A few functional difficulties can keep us from staying in the Adult state for long.

The Adult state can get contaminated by the data in the other two states. The Adult state contaminated by the data of the Parent state is prejudiced — it is hypercritical and judgmental (“I know the best”). The Adult state contaminated by the data of the Child state is deluded — it has distorted perceptions of reality, which can be manifested in extreme cases by delusions of grandeur (“I am the savior”) or persecution (“Everyone is plotting against me”).

The Adult state may not be able to access the data of any of the other two states. When the Child state has been excluded, the person cannot have fun. When the Parent state has been excluded, the person does not have a conscience — the sense of right and wrong. And when it is the Adult state that has been blocked out, the person is out of touch with the reality and is psychotic.

Apart from the above, a person may be manic-depressive, where the states keep getting blocked out periodically. Or a person can be a constant bore, where although the Adult state correctly perceives the reality, the reality itself is dull and bore.

Harris has also discussed the ways to treat persons with these difficulties, but that is out of scope of this article, as our focus was to understand the process of though behind the responses that we have to situations so that we can be aware, and have a better control over ourselves in future. I am hoping this helped!

To summarize:

1. We can respond to the situations best if we are in the I’m OKAY — You’re OKAY position.
2. In order to be in the I’m OKAY — You’re OKAY position, we will have to make a conscious effort, as the life positions that we take at the age of 2 unconsciously stay that way otherwise.
3. In order to make that change, we need to have a strong Adult state, in which we have to stay, as this is the only way to restore the freedom to change.