Let us try to get to grips with the question of what it means to BE HEALTHY. What state and what worldview is it worth striving for (for your own sake, for your inner mental health, for a long life and for physical health)? What sets a normal person apart from a nutter? When is it time to end therapy? When has the client been “cured”?
This list came about in the wake of Eric Berne and of Emotional-Image Therapy. It may well be neither exact nor complete. And at the same time it is simple, short and easy to grasp. In short, a “magic pill”, or a simplified picture of the world, a kind of landmark you can aim at. So, the properties of a healthy personality:
- I can GIVE others and RECEIVE from others signs of attention, or something PLEASANT.
- I see BOTH MYSELF and OTHERS in a positive light. We are GOOD people
- I can see any situation WITHOUT DISTORTION. YES, THAT IS HOW IT WAS.
- The Author position. Whatever the question, I START BY examining MYSELF, not other people
- A long CONVERSATION with each other FEELS GOOD both to me and to the other person
- I PRAISE myself and think about WHAT TO DO; I neither condemn nor excuse myself
Now all the signs in detail.
Giving and receiving what is pleasant
In the clever language of Transactional Analysis this is called the ability to exchange strokes, to accept them and to give them. In life these can be words, something as simple as “I love you” or “I like you”. They can be non-verbal: a gesture, a laugh in reply, a smile. They can be physical: caresses, rocking, touch. They can be presents, obedience, and much else besides.
Every person may understand something different by what is PLEASANT. In his book “The Five Love Languages. How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate”, Gary Chapman set out in detail that simply giving another person attention in the way I myself understand it is not enough. Giving presents, for example. The other person may simply not feel that attention, quite simply because for them money or presents are the easiest thing of all and say nothing of any significance.
Strokes can be UNCONDITIONAL, and that is what we all long for (to receive))). But careful! As a rule the strokes people give are CONDITIONAL, a response to behaviour. The child has got up onto its feet — people smile at it. It has spilled the milk — people shout at it. And careful: strokes can be NEGATIVE. Shouting at someone and hitting them is also a “stroke”, a sign of attention.
We are good
When am I OK and they are OK too? It is the position in which I do not criticise those whose opinion I do not share. Yes, someone is keen on astrology and, for all the lack of any coherent explanation, it suits them. Might stars millions of light years away influence my fate? They might! Anything might be. Nothing is impossible! (It really is possible, isn't it?) Might it be the tidal force of the egregore of the Japanese tsunami acting in obedience to the great Bhe? — It might. Of course it might. Is it possible? — It is possible. They are OK, since what they say and what I say are both nonsense. And if it is all nonsense, then better the nonsense that is served up more simply.
When am I OK and they are OK too? When I have mastered the exercise “Total Yes” (http://www.psychologos.ru/articles/view/totalnoe_da). That is when I develop the reflex of breaking every statement down into (1) the sensible, (2) the empty and (3) the nonsensical. And of first agreeing with the sensible part, which is there in any statement. To practise the “Total Yes”, an acquaintance of mine deliberately listened to programmes by nationalists — and he could not stand nationalists. So he deliberately read their publications and looked in every sentence for something he could agree with, however repellent he found it. In simplified form, the position “I am OK, they are OK” looks like this in a negotiation:
“This is my pie!”
“Yes, it is your pie! This piece of the pie here is yours… and this one, the bigger one, is mine))))”
author
Yes, that is how it was!
When can I see the truth without distortion? The simplest check is how I relate to my own mistakes. “No, it is their fault” — that, forgive me, is distorted. “Yes, that happened, I made a mistake, I took steps to deal with the consequences, I gained new experience, and in future I will behave like this and like that” — that is plainly looking at the situation without distortion.
Looking at the world without distortion also means adopting the “Declaration of Accepting Reality” for yourself (http://www.psychologos.ru/articles/view/deklaraciya_o_prinyatii_realnosti). I am not accepting reality when phrases like these keep slipping into my speech and my judgements:
“They MUST …”
“This is NOT FAIR …”
“Why is it that I ALWAYS …”
“I have been BETRAYED…”
author
What thoughts come to a person who looks at the world WITHOUT DISTORTION? “The world does not care about me. Nobody owes me anything.” “I take it as given that people often turn out to be selfish, aggressive, stupid, ill-mannered, lazy, dishonest, ungrateful and so on.” “Anyone who leaves me in the lurch will be, for me, a person who sees everything differently from the way I do.” It really is an interesting thing, the Declaration of Accepting Reality
I start with myself!
This is my favourite slogan of all, the one you want to hang in the most visible place. “WE START WITH OURSELVES”. In other words, it is the ability to look in the direction of your own development without slipping into the Victim position.
How far I hold to the Author position can be checked in personal relationships. We agreed to call each other, and he (she) did not call. “The swine, why did he (she) act so (basely)?” — that is the Victim position. “What can I do to get him (her) to call? What exactly did I do that might have provoked the breaking of the agreement?” — that is the Author position. The author of his own life will always achieve more, get more out of life and give more to those around him, because he is constantly sharpening new skills in order to get what he wants.
The simplest and most basic exercise for building the habit of being the Author of your own life is “Oopsie” (http://www.psychologos.ru/articles/view/uprazhnenie__kav_zn_oshibochka_kav_zn__-_zaschita_ot_samoedstva). It has three steps: (1) Arms out to the sides and say to yourself: “Oopsie!”. (2) Cross your arms over your chest, hug yourself gently and carefully by the shoulders and say to yourself: “I am good!”. (3) The brisk working palm forward and a short phrase: “To work!”. It is precisely in that short phrase that the Author position lies — yes, it happened, it did not work, let us go and put the consequences right.
Another simple exercise: for two or three weeks, replace the word “PROBLEM” in your speech with the word “TASK”. It sounds like this: “How are things?” — “Well, I have plenty of CREATIVE TASKS…”
“The swine, why did he (she) act so (basely)?”
this is the Victim position
“What can I do to get him (her) to call? What exactly did I do that might have provoked the breaking of the agreement?” this is the Author position
The simplest and most basic exercise for building the habit of being the Author of your own life is “Oopsie” (http://www.psychologos.ru/articles/view/uprazhnenie__kav_zn_oshibochka_kav_zn__-_zaschita_ot_samoedstva). It has three steps: (1) Arms out to the sides and say to yourself: “Oopsie!”. (2) Cross your arms over your chest, hug yourself gently and carefully by the shoulders and say to yourself: “I am good!”. (3) The brisk working palm forward and a short phrase: “To work!”. It is precisely in that short phrase that the Author position lies — yes, it happened, it did not work, let us go and put the consequences right.
Another simple exercise: for two or three weeks, replace the word “PROBLEM” in your speech with the word “TASK”. It sounds like this: “How are things?” — “Well, I have plenty of CREATIVE TASKS…”
Conversation feels good
When do we communicate through healthy patterns of transactions and strokes? As the actor Alexei Markov once put it, a person's most valuable resource is time. People do terrible things with time. They drag it out, fritter it away, spend it. And most often they sell useless time (work) for more useful time. Useful time is when a person gets the maximum of emotion per unit of time. When you tell a story, you give the other person information that helps them save time. That is why you have to prepare for any appearance, even in front of a single person.
Sometimes you come across people who tell negative stories. For them everything is bad. That is the Victim position, and there are many benefits to be had from it. And there is one main drawback, which shows up when the victim is left alone. A feeling of the meaninglessness of one's existence appears (nobody pities you, there is nobody to manipulate, there is nothing to do). Neutral-to-negative stories therefore do not help people survive and save time.
I would put it more simply: it is the ability to give another person positive emotions in the course of a long conversation, that is, to communicate constructively. We are not saints; you may lose your temper a couple of times and stir up something negative in the other person. That may even be necessary and useful. There is a nice formula for that too:
That is, if you have lost your temper once, be so kind as to put your companion in a good mood seven times over.
How do you learn this? That is already an advanced skill; first you would want to master the inner state “Good” (http://www.psychologos.ru/articles/view/vnutrennee_horosho), and the outward “Sunshine” (https://www.psychologos.ru/articles/view/solnyshko-dvoe-zn--daryu-radost-lyudyam-vos-zn-), and the skill of “Feeling into” (http://www.psychologos.ru/articles/view/razvitie_vchuvstvovaniya), and pacing from NLP.
I think about what to do!
In technical language this would be the ability to conduct an inner dialogue that cherishes and guides, that neither condemns nor excuses. It is when we start muttering under our breath. Muttering what, exactly? Listen to yourself…
We often withdraw into ourselves when we have “lost” an exchange. Say the boss has crushed me. Or I have had a row with my partner. My self-esteem has dropped, my mood is ruined, and I go out into the street and start replaying the situation in my head: “I should have said this, he (she) would have answered that, I would have replied this, and he (she) would have gone quiet. All men are pigs (all women are fools)!” Having beaten my opponent in fantasy, I calm down for a while and can get on with things in reality. Who was conducting that conversation? The Inner Child!
Muttering under your breath is the Inner Child's soothing emotional medicine. Take it often and for long enough and you can get hooked, and an obsessive-compulsive neurosis appears.
What inner dialogue does the Inner Adult conduct when he is sketching out his plan of action? It is easy to tell: if in our thoughts we want the other person to change, we are in the world of fantasy and in the Victim position. That is an offended child shouting. If in our thoughts we look for the mistake in ourselves and change ourselves in order to change the situation in the future, that is precisely the cherishing and guiding Adult.
So, let us sum up
So, we have thought our way through six signs of a healthy personality. Here they are, shorter still:
- Giving and receiving what is pleasant
- We are good.
- Yes, that is how it was!
- I start with myself!
- Conversation feels good.
- I think about what to do!
So what do we do with all this now?
