Why TA in My Life
My personal growth and development can be divided into the periods before TA, during TA, and after TA. Some serious life crises and my desire for change have prompted me to seek to understand my life situation and myself in such a process since my adolescence. I see myself as a person eager to discover the aspects of my soul, who goes above and beyond the starting positions in order to achieve the necessary changes, which I accept as an important part of life now and here. I had a strong urge to get out of the intense personal crises I used to face as a child, and even later. By strengthening myself and overcoming tough life situations over time, a need has arisen to take care of others and be an assistant or a guide to others on their way out of life crises.
The desire for new knowledge has encouraged me to constantly improve and advance my career, to be open to new ideas and learn on my way, feeling free to create my own style of work interwoven with the integration of everything I built into myself and my professional identity.
In the beginning, I did a little research looking for the right field to start my training and development. I got attracted by TA and its philosophy, so I have decided to learn and grow exactly through TA striving for personal and professional progress. I was fascinated most by the clarity of the concepts, and the possibility to acquire and draw them easily, then by the process of contracting and negotiating, establishing contacts, and applying various therapeutic tools “by asking questions, providing information, instructions, or demonstrations” (Kupfer & Haimowitz, 1971). By learning and discovering TA, I could complete and round up my personal internal processes that I had not seen and understood in such a way until then.
TA training and personal therapy provided me with the opportunity to test the TA concepts by analyzing and getting to know myself in a different way, but also with a tool to improve my skills in working with clients. Although I felt anxious at times, due to a discrepancy between the TA theoretical concepts and its philosophy and their inconsistent implementation in practice by educators and supervisors, the TA experience gave me a broader picture of what I am like as a person, I observed the fields in which I made progress and found out what I don't want to be like both in life and in my work with clients. Of course, I am still discovering topics that open up space for further progress. I believe learning is a life constant that enriches a person's life course.
In addition to the need for professional development and various triggers in the direction of change, my daughter's birth was a powerful incentive for me to change even more. The role of a mother is one of the most important in my life, thus my little inspiration and the baby I brought home became my great inspiration. My adjustments to this role and to the new quality of life enabled me at the same time to create fantastic starting positions for my daughter and a new missing experience for my inner Child. Thanks to TA, I was able to modify my parenting style and attitude towards my daughter by incorporating various knowledge of which I single out the following: Steiner's creative formulations of Warm Fuzzies and Cold Pricklies (Steiner, 1970) and Stroke Economy (Steiner, 1974), a functional model of ego states (Berne, 1972) and the cycle and stages of development by Pamela Levin (Levin, 1974), whereby I could contribute to our relationship being more spontaneous and full of understanding, which resulted in deepening our intimacy.
Having discovered that I can apply the TA knowledge and its concepts to my relationship with my daughter easily and in a way that she can also understand me, I was inspired to start applying them first to the work with "my" other children, and then with my adult clients, thus improving the effect of understanding and progress.
