“We
choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them” - Kahlil Gibran
I do
not know with what level of profundity Kahlil spoke these lines. All that I
know is that it conveys the deeper dynamics of experience in simple truth.
Various sciences have conveyed the above message but it is with the perspective
of transactional analysis that I thought it’d be interesting to share. For
those who do not know what transactional analysis is, it is a science that
explains the multi-dimensional approaches of and factors behind
communication\behavior in its various forms .
One
of its concepts is called ‘the racket system’. Below is the explanation from
Wikipedia: “A racket feeling is a familiar set of emotions, learned and
enhanced during childhood, experienced in many different stress situations, and
maladaptive as an adult means of problem solving. A racket is then a set of
behaviours which originate from the childhood script whose covert goal is not
so much to solve the problem, as to experience these racket feelings and feel
internally justified in experiencing them.”
In simple words, it is just a
cover on top of your real feelings. For Eg: In many instances, when a person is
hurt, instead of showing his hurt feelings (for fear of looking weak and
vulnerable probably) he may show it as anger. Some disguise fear as anger. This
is very typical of certain teachers \bosses who with fear of losing respect and
command over a class will maintain a strict angry tone in their behavior and
delivery.
There could be many examples of racket feelings and we
cannot have generalizations; everything is context dependant. Yet guilt is
always a racket feeling (that is what my trainer told and it seemed right) for
it has no constructive use.
It is interesting that we choose the feeling we want to
feel well in advance (decision moves from conscious to unconscious realm as the
child grows up) and then create\generate situations or distort reality by
clouded perception to experience the racket feeling. One may actually generate
an appropriate situation or misperceive reality so as to experience the racket
feeling.
How do I get to be noticed?
A good example can be the following, “there’s a
three-year-old child whose parents are working. The child falls sick one day.
Both the parents take off for days and spend time with the child. They play
with her, read stories, sing songs etc. It is quite possible that the child
will get the message that for it to have attention and to be shown love, it has
to fall sick. As the child grows, she may have the habit of falling sick often,
or getting depressed so as to get attention and love. She does not do it
intentionally as an adult. The decision made in childhood works from an
unconscious realm. Though she may consciously not like her behavior, unconsciously
she may want it. This is the reason that psychologists advise not to celebrate
sickness. We should celebrate health. A better way of dealing will be to give
equal attention in times of healthy and sick conditions and meetig the needs
appropriately.
Anything that we give attention to is one way of nurturing
it. Attention can be positive (Eg: appreciation) or negative (Eg: Criticism).
In school, the children who don’t study well are generally naughtier and throw
up tantrums. How else will they get the attention if all attention goes to the
top scorers? A teacher should therefore have a teaching design that addresses
the attention needs of all students independent of their scores. A practical
application of this awareness in a corporate world will be not to celebrate
lack of deliverables by giving too much negative attention to it. Encouragement
when target is achieved along with learning and corrective strategies from
failures (lack of achievement of results) can be a healthy way of dealing with
employees in terms of their performance.
It is interesting to see how these childhood strategies
get repeated in a corporate set up as well in a multi-dimensional way. In life,
we come across many who irrespective of their designation or profile get into
certain situations and experience the same racket feelings. Transactional
analysis states that our subconscious mind vibrates in certain states and hence
the appropriate situation and people come into their lives and they get into
reinforce their beliefs in order to experience the racket feeling. Thus we find
that there are repetitive patterns in one’s life.
It can be helpful for one to be aware of their real
feelings experienced during stress. It is interesting to note that the feeling
will be mostly the same across situations. This awareness can help a long way
in gaining peace within and without.
I am yet
to understand and convince myself of all the concepts of transactional
analysis. But I thought that this sharing could stimulate a healthy thought
process in the reader. Looking forward to others views on this subject!
No comments:
Post a Comment