2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Have you ever wondered how often we play psychological games? And why are we doing this?
Psychological games happen automatically, they allow us to avoid the difficulties we face in building true intimate relationships. On the one hand, they make life easier for us, and we act "automatically", and on the other hand, they are a substitute for real life, real feelings and real closeness.
Why do we need psychological games? A person, according to the theory of transactional analysis, experiences several types of hunger. Psychological games help us to satisfy our structural hunger, that is, to occupy our life so that it is not excruciatingly boring. Psychological play is playing the child's strategies that are no longer relevant in adult life. They act as a substitute for intimacy - a relationship where everyone takes responsibility for openly expressing their true feelings and desires, without exploiting a partner.
It is characteristic of psychological games that they tend to repeat themselves. The players and circumstances of the games change, but the basic meaning of the game remains the same. As a rule, we do not realize that we are playing a psychological game, but after its completion, having received retribution in the form of unpleasant feelings or negative consequences, we understand that something similar has already happened to us.
Games take place on a psychological level when participants exchange hidden transactions. At the same time, at the social level, something ordinary happens that does not arouse suspicion.
So how do you know if you are playing psychological games or not? Participation in a psychological game is determined by the following markers:
- after communicating with someone, you experience a distinct unpleasant feeling - these are racketeering feelings;
- often ask the questions “Why do such situations constantly repeat with me?”, “I don’t understand how it happened to me”, “I had a completely different opinion about this person, but it turned out …”;
- after the negative consequences of communicating with someone, you feel that this has already happened to you before and you are surprised or embarrassed.
Psychological games have their own structure, E. Bern called it the formula:
Hook + Bite… = Reaction → Switching → Confusion → Reckoning.
The hook is most often transmitted non-verbally, the second player responds to the hook, joining the game - this is a bite that indicates a weak point (pain point) of a person's script. These can be certain parenting messages or early childhood decisions.
The reaction stage occurs as a series of transactions and can last from 1-2 seconds to several days or years.
Switching is characterized by a reaction of surprise or embarrassment, followed by retribution in the form of racketeering feelings, unpleasant sensations, or even disastrous consequences.
Psychological games are divided into degrees according to their intensity and the type of reckoning that players receive:
I degree - such games are most common, the result is that at the end of the game the player wants to share his impressions and unpleasant feelings with others.
II degree - suggest more serious consequences, which the player no longer wants to tell others.
III degree - such games, according to Berne, "are played constantly and end on the operating table, in the court or in the morgue."
So, would you like to learn how to track your participation in psychological games? To be able to recognize them at the very beginning on the "Hook"? Leave them without reckoning?
I will talk about this in the next article.
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