The Impact of TA on My Personal Growth and Development
Observing all the three aspects of change (thinking – feeling – behaving) I can see the integration of these three processes through the changes I have made in my life. In my private life as well as in the professional field, I have made a breakthrough in making important life decisions freely without questioning. I have developed the ability and skill to express my feelings and be spontaneous, which ensured exceptional qualities in my attitudes toward myself, my daughter, and my husband, but also toward other people. I am especially satisfied with the fact that I feel good about it, as well as about my increased ability to be intimate in relationships. I believe that without insights no actions can take place, which causes no change in behavior. I have learned how I can protect myself and my time by setting internal and external boundaries.
I realized how much quality has been brought into my life by open communication, especially by changing internal messages consciously, so that I was able to replace the powerful negative criticizing introjected voices of parental figures/authorities with the positive ego states that ensure stability, security and tenderness both inside me and in relation to others.
The discovery that “scripts are strongly influenced by culture and that cultural influences are relevant not only in the script formation but also as the fundamental aspects in a therapeutic process” (Mazzetti, 2010), has contributed to my detection of the negative Criticizing Parent (-CP) as dominant in our culture, including my primary family. I was faced with the clear idea that this pattern was a consequence of a strict and authoritarian parenting style full of conditioning and prohibitions by which I was affected, however, this knowledge has inspired me and encouraged me to raise awareness and open up space for new challenges since I can choose myself and change anything I do not want to be a part of my identity. I have learned how to transform negative ego states into positive ones in the process of communication. I can find a strong effect in reducing the use of the negative Nurturing Parent (-NP), which makes me really happy when it comes to my relationship with my daughter. I suddenly felt the strength, power, readiness, and skill not to repeat the model I have learned from my mother, thus allowing my daughter to develop her autonomy and different types of abilities. The TA concept of the script process and the identified Almost Type 2 model (Berne, 1970; Kahler, 1978) brought me relief, which made it easier to reach a new decision not to give up on my desires and goals but to learn that it is important to give myself time to rest, enjoy, know and understand myself and celebrate after the achieved results – not only to rush from one success to another.
The parts about Loraine/Alice from the book by Erskine et al. (Erskine, Moursund & Trautmann, 1999) taught me a lot about the process of forgiving myself and my past aspects, my parents, which has helped me to reflect empathy and understanding towards myself and my parents, thus significantly improving our relationships. I feel it is important that I could test TA on myself first – this experience provided me with authenticity in acting in front of my clients, in transferring knowledge, but also in the freedom to choose the TA concepts and techniques that I like to use in my work most.
As life is a path that includes the challenges of continuous self-development and self-improvement, I remain open to exploring new topics and spaces for further progress.
