#178 Change your life. Using TA in coaching
If you have young children who come home from nursery, or primary school and let rip with challenging behaviour, it is probably because they have been trying to be good all day. Now that they feel safe at home, they can let their hair down.
Sound familiar?
Psychologically (within a Transactional Analysis frame), at home they are being nurtured to believe ‘I’m ok, You’re (mummy/daddy) ok’. But at school, something else is happening. Children are getting a different (controlling) message. They are conditioned into the status quo by school (and subsequently) workplace culture that reinforces either an ‘I’m ok, you’re not okay’ or an ‘I’m not okay, you’re okay’ Life Script.
Allow me to explain. The young child who struggles to do as they are told – sit still, be quiet, pay attention, all the things that suppress our Free Child and force us into conformity with the Adult world, will respond in one of two ways:
(1) ‘I’m ok, it’s your rules that are stupid’, or
(2) ‘I must be stupid because I can’t fit in with your rules’.
Our Life Script is formed before we hit teenage years (usually around 7-9yo). School, university, and working life reinforce it. The status quo is that we have a Life Script that is either ‘I’m okay, you’re not okay’ (the powerful in society), or ‘I’m not okay, you’re okay’ (the powerless). For many people, it fluctuates between the two. We’re okay some of the time, and not okay some of the time; however, one will predominate.
Without self-reflection, we can spend a lifetime living in accordance with our Script, which becomes predictable, even to the point of our death.
With reflection – dare I say with the help of a coach - we can change our Life Script, we can re-write it with a Life Position that is ‘I’m okay, you’re okay’.
I’m currently a member of an Advanced Educational TA learning group (having undertaken my TA Foundation Year in 2025), and I’m interested in exploring the use of TA in coaching through my supervision practice. If you want to explore how to use TA in your coaching, contact me to discuss supervision packages.
