Parent Ego State

Adrienne Lee

Transcript

www.onlinevents.co.uk

Transcript

www.onlinevents.co.uk

Conferences • Interviews • Training

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website: onlinevents.co.uk

First published 2014

Copyright © John Wilson 2014

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Adrienne will discuss and explore parent ego state theory and introduce her new

ideas about the different roles or parts of parent that are expressed externally as well

as experienced internally.

She invites the audience to join the theoretical discussion and apply it to their own

practice with clients and to their own parenting experience.

Adrienne Lee is very generously offering a 10% discount on her upcoming Parenting

Workshop to onlinevents viewers.

Click here for more details.

About Adrienne Lee BA MPracNLP TSTA(P)

Adrienne is a Teaching and Supervising Transactional

Analyst, a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist, and a

Master Practitioner in NLP.

She has been practising as a psychotherapist for over 30

years, and has been centrally involved in the

development of TA in Britain from its earliest beginnings.

Originally trained by the late Professor John Allaway,

Adrienne is a founder member and past Chair of the UK’s

Institute of Transactional Analysis (ITA). She has served

in many committee posts in the ITA and the European

Association for Psychotherapy (EAP), and is a past

President of the European Association of TA (EATA).

In 2010, Adrienne was awarded the EATA Gold Medal, given for “outstanding

services to TA in Europe”.

About #TATuesdays

UKATA Logo#TATuesdays are a series of events organised

in collaboration with the UKATA, we are looking forward to

working with a number of practitioners from the field of

Transactional Analysis as a way of getting to know more

about TA theory and getting the chance to meet other

practitioners in the chat room.

Click here to learn more about the UKATA.

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Parent Ego State

Adrienne Lee

John: Hello, everyone. Welcome to our event today. It’s a TA Tuesdays event, “The

Parent Ego State,” with Adrienne Lee. Adrienne, a very warm welcome to

Online Events.

Adrienne: Thank you.

John: It’s great to have you here with us tonight, especially on conference week.

Thank you for taking time out of conference preparation.

Adrienne: Indeed. I hadn’t realised it was in the same week. Here we go.

John: Yes. I just managed to sneak that into your diary, didn’t I? Here you are on a

Tuesday night.

Adrienne: It’s a delight to be here. Hello, everybody. It’s great to know that there are

people out there. “Hi, Adrienne,” somebody’s saying. My goodness, you

really are real out there. That’s wonderful. I feel as if I’m talking to just my

computer, so it’s nice to know that there are real people out there too.

John: A very warm welcome to everyone who’s with us on the website. You can

see the chat room, Adrienne. You’re looking forward to taking some

comments and questions. We can all be in the chat together.

Adrienne: You can remind me because I can’t look at you all at once. It’s too exciting.

John: There’s too much going on here, isn’t there? We’ve got Saz in the chat room,

too. Hi, Saz. Saz is there to give everyone a hand with their technology.

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Then we’ve got a little blue button on the website just down to the bottom

right-hand corner that says “Chat with Online Events.” If you click on that

button, you’ll get straight through to Saz. She can give you a hand to get in

the chat room. Saz is waving in the chat room. Fantastic. We’ll wave back.

To get started, Adrienne, could I ask you to give us a sense of where you’re

located geographically? Whereabouts in the world are you?

Adrienne: I didn’t realise that there would be people from all over the world who are

looking at this, or certainly all over the country anyway. I live in Nottingham,

which is in the middle of England, the UK. I live in the very centre of

Nottingham just by Nottingham Castle. I’m sitting in my office which is in the

centre of the house. We’re very central here.

John: Yes, in the middle of the country and the city. Thank you for having us in

your home office. That feels like a real privilege.

Adrienne: You’re welcome.

John: We usually ask people to say little bit about their journey and what’s

brought them to the work that they’re excited about. We could spend days I

guess talking about all the different, exciting experiences that you’ve had.

Adrienne: I’ve been around in TA since about 1972. I think that was the first TA group I

went to in adult education. I was working at the university while doing

research at the time. I gave up my research to learn more about TA and

carried on working at the university, but TA became my first love.

I set up therapy groups and training groups long before there was ever an

official training in England. I was excited about this very new theory that

made absolute sense out of the most complex of experiences. That’s how I

began a long time ago. I’ve been around when lots of different movements

have gone on in TA. I’ve seen transactional analysis changing. It’s very

interesting because I’ve chosen to talk about the parent ego state tonight. I

feel like one of the parents in TA now.

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I never used to. I used to feel like one of the children. Then I suddenly

realised there’s a critical time when you become almost in the parent, or

even grandparent or great-grandparent role.

That is a very interesting dynamic in your professional journey, as well as in

your personal journey.

John: It’s really lovely to have you here in that place of being a parent, or maybe

even a grandparent, in the approach with lots of experience.

“What course will we train on?” That’s often the big question as people

come into the field of counselling and psychotherapy, but it wasn’t like that

for you.

Adrienne: I was teaching literature and creative arts initially. Remember, these were

early days. These were the ‘60s and ‘70s. I was a child of the ‘60s, the human

potential movement and all of that. I was running a weird group called

Interplay, which was a drama group, express yourself, set up strange

experiments with people and see what happens.

John: Wow!

Adrienne: It was very exciting. We used to do this every Wednesday afternoon in the

college I was teaching in, but people came from outside the college. We had

student, staff, and people from the local community. They came on the

Wednesday afternoon for this experimental Interplay group. People were

doing weird things, as people do.

I thought, “What is going on here? I don’t know what’s going on here. I don’t

understand what’s going on. How do I work with what’s going on if I don’t

understand?” That’s when I thought, “What’s this group dynamics or

transaction analysis? I’ll go and find out.”

That’s what took me to this adult education class run by a beautiful, lovely

old man led called John Alloway who was reading Eric Berne’s books and

teaching his theory. I just happened to find him. As soon as I came across

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this TA, I thought, “Wow! That’s the best thing since sliced bread. That’s

what I’m going to do.” That’s what I’ve done.

I carried on as a university teacher for nearly 30 years, but I introduced TA

into the curriculum. I was still teaching drama, literature and critical theory,

but I would get invited into many different other disciplines like education,

communications or psychology to actually teach some TA units, which I did.

The university accepted my work in TA, which was brilliant, but even while

teaching at the university, I was still seeing clients. I was working at a

psychiatric hospital. I was doing training in TA. I was still directing plays and

raising children. You can do it all.

John: Wow! You’ve had a very busy life. As you talk about it, it sounds like you’ve

loved every minute of it.

Adrienne: I have. It’s been absolutely fabulous.

One of the things I didn’t realise when I really got excited about

transactional analysis theory was that it wasn’t just the theory that was

simple to understand and was very profound and has continued to delight

me for nearly 40 years.

It’s also the TA community. Having the British Association for Transactional

Analysis, the European Association, and the International Association means

that there are transactional analysis professionals all over the world.

Everywhere I go, I can go to people and be part of that community and

speak the same language. It’s the most brilliant value added you could ever

imagine.

John: That sounds fantastic to be able travel the world and know that there are

like-minded professionals like this. That’s fantastic. You’re still very much at

the centre of all this. You’re training and running the Berne Institute there in

Nottingham.

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Adrienne: Yes. I’ve been training in TA since 1975, but in 1984 I started training with

Ian Stewart and we began The Berne Institute. It had a different name when

we first started, but then we called it The Berne Institute.

We’ve been working together for more than 30 years and running master’s

degrees in TA, as well as the official international qualifications and the

United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy accredited registration

requirements.

I’ve been lucky to be part of the community that really values TA and sees it

as having a professional currency that is viable and has worth.

John: That’s been a really special and important experience over the years. You’ve

arrived at this point in the profession. Here we are talking about the parent

ego state tonight. You feel that parental role and approach in the field as

well.

Adrienne: I don’t want to get too much into that bit about my own feeling a parent in

the community bit because that comes with awesome responsibilities. I’m

not sure I want all of those, but I’ve always had an interest in parent ego

state. To be absolutely honest, I think it was one of the first bits of TA theory

that really excited me.

It’s become more of an interest to me now as an actual grandmother and to

see my own children parenting their children. I watch in a way that I didn’t

watch myself parenting. I’m thinking about what they’re doing and seeing

the effect it’s having on my grandsons.

That has fascinated me. It’s made me think a lot more about the parent ego

state both structurally and functionally and that part of us that we call the

parent.

John: You’re seeing those experiences in your own family and having a little bit of

distance from the parenting experience and thinking about the theory and

how to understand these experiences. It’s hard not to notice what’s on the

flipcharts. They’re very powerful.

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Adrienne: I wasn’t going to get to that until later.

John: I’m sorry, Adrienne.

Adrienne: I will talk about them. A lot of people are not necessarily familiar with the

three circles. I was told that some people may not even be versed in

transactional analysis. I thought I’d start a bit more at the beginning and

then show the bit that I’m adding on to it.

John: That would be great. I’m not that familiar with the TA theories. It’s great to

get some context. Thank you.

Adrienne: Most people are familiar with our three circles, the parent, the adult and the

child. These are phenomenological realities. We can observe and see them.

I’m very interested in the adult, which is our very here and now and being

present in the here and now.

Even as I’m talking now, knowing that there are a lot of other people

listening and tuning in, there’s a bit of me that’s not thinking about what I’m

saying and that is not actually, fully an adult ego state because there’s a bit

of me that’s a bit scared and frightened, almost like a young child who’s

standing out in front of the class, but maybe with my back to the class so

that I can’t see them.

They might be laughing at me or thinking I look silly. Maybe there’s

something on my face that I don’t know about. There’s a part of me that

goes out with my here-and-now, adult ego state into what might be some

old, archaic experience from childhood.

That might take over. It’s not at the moment, but it might intrude and get in

the way of my being fully present in the here and now, talking to you about

TA. Then we have this magical parent ego state. I say magical because it’s

truly phenomenal.

I think it was Eric Berne who first really talked about this. I’m sure of his

innovation. This is a part of the personality that we can observe in

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behaviours, thinking and feeling that is not ours. It’s not my present or part

of my past, archaic experience.

It’s something that I’ve borrowed and introjected or taken in from other

significant people or caregivers in my family usually. They could be my

father or mother, grandparents, older siblings or teachers.

Particularly while I’m young, in order not to be abandoned and left on my

own, I will take in these significant people into my own ego. It will be one of

my parts of my ego. That means that I will now have behaviours, thoughts

and feelings that are not mine. What does that mean? That is bizarre.

It’s like this evening, for example. I went to my refrigerator. It has been

Easter weekend, so I’ve had a lot of family over and made a lot of wonderful

food for them. I filled up the refrigerator and cooked a lot of marvellous

things. Now it’s all gone. The weekend is over, and I have this stuff there

that’s now going off. Can I throw it away?

My adult would say, “Of course. You have plenty. It’s now not fresh or

edible. Throw it away,” but there’s a part of me that says, “No, you mustn’t

waste it. You might not be able to get more.”

What am I talking about? This isn’t waste. It might even do me harm

because it’s going off. How come I won’t? It’s like I think, “Save it. You might

need it and be hungry tomorrow. There’s a big chunk of quiche left. Can I

throw that away or do I keep it? Maybe I should stock up on some more

things.”

I know this is my mother’s and father’s voices. It may even be further back in

other generations where, if food was scarce and not available, you didn’t

just chuck it out because you could get more.

I have to deal with that part of me that is my parent ego state of my mother,

father or whatever that isn’t to do with current reality, and I have to

somehow come to terms with that part of me.

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John: That’s a beautiful description of the parent-adult-child in the moment of

what you’re experiencing today. Thank you.

Adrienne: I could rabbit on about it for ages. One of the most important things is to be

able to identify what the content of our parent ego state is and to know that

we’ve not just got our own mother or father up here.

John: Could you say what you’ve written there as well?

Adrienne: I’m circling there with other parent and adult-child circles. That might be my

mother, and that might be my father. This might be my teacher. There may

be a lot of different people whose thinking, feeling and behaviour I am also

experiencing and expressing. My whole culture will be here.

I also know because of my own experience growing up and how significant

teachers were for me that there will be teachers up there for me whose

thinking, feeling and behaviour have been incorporated for me.

John: It’s including their child as well. That’s really fascinating. That’s something

that I hadn’t considered in that piece of theory.

Adrienne: Yes, indeed. I could go into a lot more detail about that. I don’t know how

our timing is going.

John: We only have about 35 minutes left. It feels like we should be here all day.

We do have a question from the chat room.

Adrienne: The point I want to make is that not only do I have my mother and father up

here, but you also have all of the people that they’ve introjected. I have

them up here.

I can also draw more levels. We have second, third and fourth order ego

states here. This is where we have a real sense of our cultural identity, and

maybe even the collective unconscious is there.

John: Leilani is repeating a question from earlier wondering if Adrienne will go

deeper into the ego states relating to parents, such as conscious and

unconscious. Is that where you’re thinking about going in your theory?

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Adrienne: I’m going to talk more about some of the conscious sides of it. In terms of

unconscious processes, some of these are so out of our awareness that

we’re not so aware of it.

The food example that I gave before is one that’s very available to my

awareness and easy for me to access. It’s not in my deep, unconscious

process.

There are some things that I know I have worked on in my own life that I

have found as deep problems for myself that I need to work with, and they

haven’t actually been my problems or issues.

They have been the issues of my father and mother. I’ve had to do therapy

on some of the unresolved, unintegrated issues that they have experienced.

I’ve had to pay my therapist to deal with it for them.

I haven’t really emerged that. It has come out of what seemed like an

unconscious process for me. I don’t know if you want me to give more

examples.

John: That makes so much sense. It has not come out of your experience. It has

come out of what has been passed to you. I am mindful that we keep

enough time for the next bit of theory that comes. What do you think?

Adrienne: Somebody has mentioned something about family constellation work, which

also interests me. By the way, there’s a fabulous article written by Enid

Welford and Jane McQuillin in the last TAJ on group work on family

constellation work and TA.

They’re looking at the parent ego state and how sometimes impasses in the

parent ego state come out and can be resolved in family constellation work,

which is another way in which some of the unconscious processes in the

parent can be dealt with therapeutically. It’s a marvellous way of working

with the parent ego state.

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In TA, we can do a lot of other things like parent interviews. We can put a

mother or grandmother in the chair, and the client sits in that chair and

speaks as mother and grandmother. We explore their story.

I’m loath to give examples from my clients. I’ll give you one of my own. I had

a deep sense of needing to be ready to go and leave at any moment, as

though I had to get away. It was very important for me to know that I could

get away.

There was no experience in the present or my childhood where I had to get

away from something. There’s nothing in my past, but that became such an

urgent survival issue for me.

It was only when I started doing the therapy that I realised that it wasn’t

actually me and that this was particularly about my father, but maybe even

generations before with my grandfather and great grandparents.

My father was a holocaust survivor, and he actually did escape from Vienna.

His survival urge was that he did have to be prepared to get away.

That urge is still around for me. It didn’t serve my marriage very well when I

was constantly looking for how I could get away, so this was something that

I needed to resolve in the therapeutic process. It was an unconscious

process, but a process that I could bring to consciousness through exploring

it in therapy.

John: That’s a very generous way to help us understand these concepts in your

own experience and the power of your own father needing to get out. You

didn’t have that experience, but it lives on in you.

Adrienne: Once that feeling and thought is understood, it can be integrated. Once I

knew the content of my parent ego state, I could do what I could do

internally to integrate that material instead of it being something that

remained fixated and a problem.

Now that I’ve integrated it, I don’t feel that anymore. Hopefully that may

have done some healing backward through the generations, as well as

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hopefully forward. I think our job as psychotherapists is to integrate. Are

there any other questions coming up there?

John: There is some real appreciation for sharing your own story, Adrienne. Thank

you so much.

Adrienne: I like to bring it alive because it’s sometimes very difficult to understand the

nature of the parent. I’ve been looking recently at ways of teaching good

parenting.

For me it’s not just about healing some of the problems in the parent ego

state, but also enabling people to be good parents themselves and to have a

way to think about what may have been positive and resourceful in the

parent but what may also have been missing.

I started to develop some material on what I call parenting processes, which

really looks at some of the more functional aspects of the parent. I believe it

has a big implication for what kind of internal ordering we have to do in

terms of self-regulation. I’m happy to talk about that. There are some things

coming up that we need to look at.

John: There are a couple of things that we could come back to, but I think that

would be really helpful to hear about where your thinking has taken your

own parenting.

Adrienne: That’s fine, but please do ask your questions, folks. I’m happy to answer

them because I could spend several days talking about this with you.

That’s the parent. These are the adaptations of Berne’s diagrams on the

parents. These are structural diagrams of the parent ego state, which is

what I’m interested in.

I also got interested in the parent processes. I’m still developing this

material. In fact, at 6:30 p.m. I was still thinking about it, drawing out these

little stickers and thinking, “No, it shouldn’t be that. It should be this.”

Folks, this is really live theory. This is me trying to find a way to talk about

parenting to my children and to decode some of the very complex ways are

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of being a parent so that we can learn them, be aware of them, and

hopefully have introjects that are healthy and nourishing for us.

As you can see, this spells out spacer. That’s what I was doing at 6:00 p.m.

today, just finding the pneumonic that would make it work. It’s spacer.

Spacer is important because if you’re a parent and you’re going to have

children or you have children, then you have to make space in your life. You

can’t expect them to fit into your existing life. Spacer seems to me like a

good pneumonic here.

What I’ve done is to look at the different parenting roles or processes. I’d

like to talk about those. Hang on. There’s a question from Leilani saying,

“Please, would you ask Adrienne something?” What does she want?

John: She wants to ask you about P1. Does that make sense to you?

Adrienne: Yes, it does, but I don’t want to talk about that yet. I’ll come back to that

later.

John: Let’s stay with spacer for now.

Adrienne: P1 is in the child ego state. That would take us into a different discussion at

the moment. I’m sorry, Leilani. I’m not going to P1 today, or maybe I will a

bit later.

There are different parent processes. The parent can be a soother. The

whole process of soothing means that the parent will be empathic. This is

about the parenting role as soother to actually learn and be empathic with

the child.

The parent who is not a soother escalates or smothers the child. We have a

way of looking at that on the continuum. The second one is to see the

parent as a protector. We look at how the parent as protector is alert and

attentive to what might be dangerous.

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For example, I see my daughter and my son’s partner watching the children

play. They’re alert to the fact that they might fall or bump into something

that is dangerous.

I notice when I’m talking to them and having a wonderful conversation with

my daughter that she’s not looking at me all the time. She’s got that special

eye that the parent has when they are protecting their child and looking out

for them.

They’re alert, resourceful, and putting resources in to keep the child safe.

The child learns that.I think the parent also needs to be an advocate for the

child. This is very clear.

My grandsons are only just mastering language. Even when a child has

language, the parent needs to speak for them and give them words.

If they having a particular experience, the parent needs to say, “That is

because you’re angry. You’re angry because he’s taken your toy. He’s

broken the end off a bit. You are very angry about that. What we need to do

is to say to him, ‘Don’t do that anymore.’” There’s a way in which the

advocate is giving language and values.

“This is what matters,” whether it’s your feelings or whatever and the way

things are languaged. I’m very interested in different cultures about the

words that are introduced to children. I’m very interested in watching my

own grandchildren and the words that they are picking up and learning.

For example, Max, who is now just nearly 2 years old, has been learning

about feelings. He goes like this and says “afraid” because this is what he’s

learned from the book. What we need to do is to make sure that we don’t

respond to the word inappropriately

We need to know that he uses it when he really is afraid rather than when

he’s angry so that we are giving him a language that is going to truly express

what he is feeling. The parent is saying, “If you are afraid, what are you

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frightened might happen? What’s dangerous for you?” It’s to explore that

with the child and say, “This is what matters and what doesn’t.”

With the parent who doesn’t do that and who’s sometimes a blamer or

indifferent to the child, instead of giving the child a language, they say,

“Don’t do that. It’s your fault,” or whatever. Another job of the parent is

to actually celebrate the child and by a means by which they can learn

delight in their life, their energy and themselves.

I work with people a lot of the time who have not been delighted in and

have not been celebrated. The point I’m making about this is that if they

don’t receive this kind of parenting, they can’t do it internally to themselves.

They don’t have that ability to do that themselves.

Instead of being celebrated, many children have been shamed. When they

come saying, “Look at me. Mommy, look at my lovely dress. Look how nice it

is,” or, “Mommy, look at my willy. Look at how my lovely willy is,” instead of

saying, “Yes, it’s lovely, darling, but put it away,” or whatever, the parent

shames the child instead of allowing them to celebrate and delight. This has

happened to so many of us.

Then we have the role of the parent as educator. This is so important.

There’s a way in which I suppose all parents do teach their children

something, but I certainly felt when I was growing up that my parents didn’t

provide me with enough learning experiences.

I grew up with benign neglect. I had to find those myself, which is why I

idolised my teachers. They did it for me. Fortunately, I didn’t have the

negative parts to that. I didn’t get dictated to or repressed. What I did have

was an opportunity for my own curiosity to grow.

Then, of course, there’s the parent as regulator, the part of the parent that

sets boundaries and keeps us attached in a way that is healthy, consistent

and okay. The negative aspects of that are inconsistency and abandonment.

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I’m really excited about seeing these in different behavioural ways and how

this might be a way of teaching parents but also of how to fill the gap if in

our parenting state we don’t have a part of us that’s enough of a regulator,

celebrator or advocate for ourselves, that we can find somebody to interject

or who will do that on behalf. I think that’s when people find TA therapists

and learning therapists.

I’m going to pause for a minute and see what’s coming up with that.

John: Adrienne, that was fab and so powerful that we do need someone else to

help us with these things. We really notice that when you talk about it,

whether we’re adult or children, we need that in relationship. We can’t do it

just on our own.

Adrienne: We need that not just as children. I think this informs me as a TA trainer and

as a therapist when I think to myself, “This person has not been celebrated,”

or “This person has not had an advocate. They have not had the ability to

language this.”

Sometimes what the client gets from me is the languaging or the facilitation

in languaging something that has been incoherent and has not been

articulated enough. That helps to address what might have been a deficit in

their parent ego state.

John: It’s a very profound concept for therapy. Thank you, Adrienne. There are lots

going on in the chat room. There’s a request to photograph your flipchart

and distribute the photograph. That might be something to think about. I

think everybody really wants to get their eyes on that flipchart. You could

maybe have a think about that.

Adrienne: I don’t know how to do that. I might publish it.

John: There was another request for you to write it up.

There’s a suggestion to take a picture with your phone. Perhaps that might

be a way to do that.

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Adrienne: I’m not going to do that now.

John: Yes. We could think about that later, or maybe we’ll keep it for the article.

Adrienne: Yes. I will write it up soon.

John: There’s so much going on in the chat room. There was a comment just about

the relationship between parent and judgment. I don’t think I caught it all.

Whoever that was, if they want to pop that back in the chat room and give it

to us again.

Adrienne: I think sometimes the parent is experienced intra-psychically, internally, as a

judge and as somebody who is constantly judging.

That would have been once an interpersonal relationship with a parent

figure, maybe a father or teacher who was very judgmental and who in

some ways may have made the child feel that they were not worthy or not

worthy enough. That will be experienced in the child as a kind of

worthlessness or a sense of badness.

Then it’s like that is perpetuated by internal dialogues where maybe a

judgmental parent in an internal dialogue is still being heard intra-

psychically. The child ego state is still hearing the voice of the judge or the

blamer in the parent and still believes, therefore, that they are worthless.

I think it’s very important. This is why we’re looking at the roles of the

parent or the processes of the parent, but we think about the parent as

somebody who advocates for the child but who also provides learning

experiences, delights in the child and values the child in developmentally

appropriate ways.

John: Thank you for that explanation. That is lovely. I’m noticing another question.

Is it all right for me to read that out to you?

Adrienne: Yes. I can’t read them. I’ve only got half a screen. I can see half of the line

but not the whole bit.

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John: There’s a request to ask you about how being a parent and grandparent has

affected your views of right and wrong and your own judgements or your

own sense of what you judge to be right or wrong.

Adrienne: That’s a hard question. To be honest with you, the older I get, the less sure I

am about what’s right or wrong. The younger I was, I was more convinced

about what was right and what was wrong

I think I’ve become a lot more curious about what is going on for people

when they say that, when they think that, or when they have that opinion.

What is it that they are protecting in themselves or in society? What is it

that they are investing in when they have that particular value or make that

particular judgment?

I’ve become a lot more curious about that rather than to say, “This is right.

This is wrong.” I made a mistake with my own children. I was telling them

too much what was right and what was wrong. Now they tell me. They say,

“You were out of order, Mother, telling me that. That is quite wrong.” I’m

saying, “What?”

I think to myself that I’m getting back what I gave them. Now I need to

reconsider. Now what I want to do is to get them to tell me how come they

have that experience, belief and thought. How come it’s so important to

them, whatever it is that they are judging?

As I’m getting older, it’s hard for me to judge. It was much easier particularly

when I was a teenager. I could judge very well.

John: That was a personal question and a really open response. Thank you,

Adrienne.

There’s another question I want to pass to you from the chat room. I think

I’m carrying catching a question right here. Do you see a similarity between

offering therapy to children and the parenting model that you’re thinking

about? Is it kind of a crossover do you think?

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You’re showing us here a model to parent. Does it kind of reflect ideas about

how to therapise, for want of a better word, young children?

Adrienne: I think it does. I think it can be used in that way because it enables us to see

what the child needs in each of these and what the child will develop in each

of those. If the therapist provides this for the child, one of these processes

or all of them indeed, then the child will grow with it.

It’s a pity it’s on a wheel really rather than on a line grid because I think it’s

all about a process that’s linked and may indeed go from one to the other

across this circle.

I think what the child gets from that are various resources. If they have

somebody who is an educator, and maybe that child never had an educator

in their parent and the therapist teaches them, then the child learns to have

curiosity.

If the parent has assumed that and if the therapist can provide some

soothing for a child maybe who didn’t experience sufficient soothing, the

child can experience some calm and understand what it’s like.

I’ve seen my grandchildren who have been agitated or upset by something.

Maybe they hurt themselves or whatever. I’ve seen the very instinctive way

in which their mother soothes them and how soon the child with the

soothing can find that calm again.

The point I was making earlier is that once the child has received this

through a parent or indeed through a therapist, they can then begin to self-

soothe. They can then stimulate their own curiosity. If they have had enough

protection and regulation, they can experience their own groundedness.

If they had an advocate, they can find their voice instead of being silenced.

They can have a sense of their own worth if somebody speaks for them. If

they are celebrated, a child learns to pleasure and to have pleasure in what

they’re doing. If they have enough protection, the child learns how to be

safe.

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I think that all of these are ways in which the child might experience therapy

or new parenting. If they didn’t get it from their actual parents, it’s never

too late. You can find somebody else who will fulfil that. I did.

John: That’s just such a hopeful thought.

Adrienne: One of the things I know is I got a lot from my parents, but they were

hardworking, poor parents. I grew up with benign neglect, and they were

uneducated. I wanted and needed to learn. I needed and was hungry for

teachers.

I had to find them. From junior school right up to university, I was hungry to

my teachers. I had to get as many teachers as I could. I married my teacher.

You have to be very proactive to get what you missed out on.

John: Absolutely. We really look for that in our lives. Someone is making the

comment in the chat room that it’s never too late to have a happy

childhood.

Adrienne: It’s never too late to change and make up some of the missing bits.

Sometimes there is a lot of toxicity in people’s parents and a lot of negative

blaming, shaming, inconsistency, silencing or whatever of the child.

Sometimes there’s a lot of repair that’s needed to actually build up enough

trust and be open again to the possibility that other people can be your

mentors and be introjected temporarily until we can do it for ourselves.

I’m a bit loath to say this on the screen, but I will say it anyway. I’m a TA

trainer, and I listen to my trainees who play tapes of their work. For a long

time, particularly with trainees who I used to work very closely with, when

they were playing their work with their clients, I could hear my voice. It’s like

it was my voice speaking.

There was a certain point when it wasn’t my voice I could hear on their

tapes anymore but their own voice. There’s a way in which you could see

that as a very distinct, developmental change in the trainees when they find

their own voice as a therapist.

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There’s a time when temporarily you borrow the voice. I think that can be

true about aspects of parenting. If we can do it with somebody else, then we

can do it for ourselves.

John: Absolutely. We can also do it, but we have to do it with someone else and

borrow that first. There’s another question. There’s just so much here to

think about.

Leilani has a question from someone else saying, “It seems to me that there

can also be a danger in overcooking all of these aspects in that original

parent-child relationship.” Does that question make sense to you?

Leilani: Yes, I think so. You can become too conscious of a good parent. Is that what

you mean, Leilani? I’m not sure.

John: Maybe we could get some feedback. What do you mean by overcooking?

Someone said, “I’m still telling the story about putting the towels on the

towel rail.” Does that make sense to you, Adrienne? It’s overcooking in the

sense of over-regulating and overprotecting.

Adrienne: I can tell what that towel-rail bit is about. This is about regulating

adolescents. There are certain developmental stages. Kids will push you for

certain kinds of parenting.

Adolescents are going to push you for that last bit of regulation before they

depart. They’re not looking for soothing or education even. They’re just

looking for that final bit of regulation. Kids will often do the opposite of

what the values and standards are in the household.

I can remember that my kids always used to have a bath. After the bath,

they used to drop their towel on the floor, leave it there, and then next time

take a clean towel and drop it on the floor.

I used to be furious and angry with them about bath towels. I’d say, “Pick up

the bath towels. Don’t even leave bath towels on the floor!” They would

have my regulating voice all about bath towels.

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The secret was I didn’t care about bath towels. It didn’t matter to me about

bath towels. In the scale of things, bath towels don’t matter, do they? I

didn’t have to do it about drugs or dangerous things.

If I could be the kind of regulator who put in limits about something, they

could still see that there were standards. It’s very interesting. I don’t think it

necessarily works with the bath towels, but they do develop regulation.

John: What a great story. Then your children walk away with your voice

supporting them and their ability to regulate themselves.

Adrienne: It’s to have a place to fight, push and find out where the edges are.

John: That was a great story. I’m glad that you remembered that.

Adrienne: There’s an anecdote about the research that was done on the playground. If

there is a fence around the playground, children will play right up to the very

edge of the fence. That’s true about regulation.

If there is no fence or regulation, they huddle around in the middle of the

playground and don’t use all of the space. Remember, what we need are

spaces and a soothing, protecting advocate, celebrator, educator and

regulator in those spaces.

John: That’s lovely. We have time to squeeze in one more question. It’s the one

about over-cooking. It’s overprotection, over-celebrating and over-

advocating.

Adrienne: All of these can be overdone. At that point, they take away from the child.

The people who are asking those kinds of questions are on the ball.

Sometimes we can be too good of a parent and do too much of all of these.

There need to be gaps so that the child will generate that for themselves.

There’s no point in me providing all of the learning experiences for my child.

They have to find some of them themselves. If I show them everything in

every book, they’ll never know how to find a book themselves. The same is

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true of all of these. I can over-speak for my child or over-protect or over-

soothe. I’m really glad that people have raised that question. It’s very true.

Ultimately, we learn autonomy when we have enough of those. It’s

remembering that they become an internal resource for our own internal

resourcefulness and regulation.

John: It’s a really important question to catch, so thank you.

Adrienne: Someone said there is a balance to be achieved.

John: I want to make sure that we don’t forget to mention your workshop. You’ve

come along and given us your time tonight not with the expectation that

people are going to come to your workshop. There’s just so much in here.

We’re scratching the surface in an hour. You’re going to spend more time

with these concepts in the workshop.

Adrienne: I’m going to do a workshop in November on parenting. It’s open to

everybody. I’m going to be discussing more of this. I don’t think there is

enough opportunity for parents to learn how to be parents, talk about being

parents, and apply our wonderful TA theory to the task of parenting. Let’s

face it. It is one of the most important jobs in the world, and I believe the

most important.

John: It’s not just TA psychotherapists that you’re inviting here.

Adrienne: It’s anybody who is a parent, wants to be a parent or has been a child.

John: That’s quite a wide audience. You very generously offered a 10% discount to

Online Events viewers, which is fab. Below the video window, there’s a little

banner. People can click on that and can get a little bit off. We’ll have this in

the library too. Thank you. That’s a very generous offer.

Thank you for coming along tonight. You spent a lot of time preparing to

come tonight as well. Thank you for that too. We really appreciate it.

Adrienne: Before I go, I just want to value the work of Jean Illsley Clarke in parenting.

She has been a great inspiration to me and so many others, not just in

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transactional analysis. Her work on parenting, particularly her parent

highway, is a lovely resource. I do recommend that people go to Jean Illsley

Clarke’s books too.

John: That’s a very lovely reference. Thank you for the extra time tonight. You’ve

given us another 10 minutes.

Adrienne: I wish I could go on for another two hours.

John: Me too. It feels really hard to end. I can feel that sense in the chat room too.

I’d like to say thank you to everyone who has been joining us from all over

the world. We’ve had people on from the US and Northern Europe. That’s

fantastic. Thank you for joining us.

We are also going to be online live from the TA conference if people want to

get a bit more time with us. Adrienne, I hope you’ll come back and do some

more with us.

Adrienne: I’d love to. Try to stop me.

John: That would be fantastic.

Adrienne: Thank you. Goodbye, everybody. Thank you for being here and letting me

talk to you. I’m going to talk to my computer more often and hope

somebody is listening.

John: Thank you to everyone who has been with us, and thank you very much to

you, Adrienne.