Injunctive Messages 5
IN PLAIN LANGUAGE
Recently, I was going through the DON’T TOUCH Injunctive Message (IM) with one of my patients, an extraordinarily bright man who works in accounting. As we were discussing the different aspects and how they affected his life, he made a comment, “You know, I don’t really know what an injunctive message is, but I understand the concept, ‘A believable falsehood,’ and I don’t have any idea what a redecision is but I understand the phrase, ‘A new belief based on what is actually true.’”
Well, that captured my attention. I had to agree, the descriptive phrases were more, well, descriptive than the technical jargon. If you will look at the Revised Master Charts, you will find that the top phrases on the charts have been flipped. Whereas I had had the clinical titles at the top, I now have the descriptive terms. In this way, the charts become more accessible to people other than those of us who study this stuff for a living.
The entire point of the charts is to make something that is quite complex understandable; and not just to clinicians. In his inimitable style, Eric Berne said that all theoretical psychological writing should be rendered in language understandable to a fifth grader. He had a point. (It is not lost on me that in the spirit of the above that he would not have used the word, “Inimitable.”)
Here are the descriptive phrases that now hold pride of place on the charts…
A BELIEVABLE FALSEHOOD: This is after all what an Injunctive Message (IM) is. Look at the list of all twenty-six IM’s (up from twenty-five with the addition of DON’T WANT), each of them a specific DON’T message of some variety. They are all patently untrue. We are all entitled to our survival, our desire to be attached to others, a sense of our own identity, the feelings of competence and accomplishment, and the feeling of security based on wisdom and acceptance.
WHAT THE PERSON FEARS TO BE TRUE: This describes the experience of what I call, “The Despairing Decision,” one of the two decisions to the IM. I think this phrase catches the gravity of the decision. This is not a decision the person wants to make. It just seems to be the inevitable truth. Remember, very small children are not able to discriminate between themselves and the outside world. No child was ever able to think, “My father’s outburst and angry voice have nothing to do with me. It’s because he is an alcoholic.” The thing the person fears to be true sounds much more like, “There must be something wrong with me that I am treated this way.”
THE PERSON’S BEST ATTEMPT AT HEALTH AND RESILIENCY: This describes the other decision in response to the IM, “The Defiant Decision.” It always has some quality of, “I’ll show you,” and this is good. It is good to find the resources to fight back, to find a way to assert oneself, and have some sense of empowerment. The best quality of the defiant decision is that it is an antidote to the feelings of helplessness arising from the Despairing Decision. And it works, at least temporarily.
BEHAVIOR PATTERNS THAT STEM FROM THE DEFIANT DECISION: This phrase is a description of what I call, “The Coping Behavior.” If you will, this is the “institutionalization” of the Defiant Decision. Taken as a sum total, Type A Behaviors are Defiant Decisions that have become lifelong habits. They become prescriptive to most life situations. It harkens the old saying, “If the only tool a person has is a hammer, everything will look like nail.” The coping behavior IS the way to experience empowerment regardless of the side effects. And they create their own reality. If I go about the world with the proverbial “chip on my shoulder,” a classic coping behavior, I will attract like-minded souls and will have plenty of justification for my intense responses and trigger-like hostility. The coping behavior moves from tool of choice at a certain time in my life, to a sense of, “This is who I am.”
A NEW BELIEF BASED ON WHAT IS ACTUALLY TRUE: This is how I see what is called, “A Redecision.” In my writing, a Redecision is always the acquisition of a new belief based on what is actually true: A person has the right to be here (Survival), to be close (Attachment), to know themselves as they really are (Identity), to possess a feeling of accomplishment and its concomitant self-esteem(Competence) and to feel at home in the world (Security). It always bemuses me that “Redecision” is not a word in the English language. Type it out on your computer and it will have a red line under it indicating a misspelling. My mentors, Bob and Mary Goulding, coined this word. They invented the concept. They had a different view. They did not see Redecision as a process of changing beliefs by acquiring a new one. For them, it was an action in therapeutic time where the person changed their cooperative belief in the IM (they used the word, “Injunction”) and changed their life in that moment. In looking back, I believe they helped people access and energize their Defiant Decisions. And it feels a lot better to be in the energy of the Defiant Decision than the malaise of the Despairing Decision. Worlds better.
A PROCESS TO CREATE NEW HABITS: These are the words that describe what I call, “The Resolving Activity.” I am greatly indebted once again to what I have learned from Dr. Friedman and all of my colleagues who treated Type A Behavior (TAB). One of the keys to changing TAB was what we called, “Drills.” These were nothing more than daily assignments of behaviors that would have been common for Type B’s but unimaginable to a person with TAB, such as, “Find a long line and stand in it patiently.” In the same way, the prescribed activities, whether thoughts or attitudes, included in the Resolving Activities would be normative for someone without a particular IM; but remarkably unique, even fantastical to someone under the thrall of an IM. The best way to replace an old habit is to create a new habit. In this way, the new belief has a way to express itself, especially in times of stress or uncertainty.
LOVE SPOKEN WITH WISDOM, ENCOURAGEMENT, AND COMPASSION: In moments of extremis (loss, stress, rejection, disappointment, failure), the last thing any of us needs to hear in our heads is, “You idiot,” “I always knew you would fail”, or “Way to go dumb ass.” Too often, that is just what is heard, even if not in those exact words. What we need in those inevitable moments is a different more soothing voice that can help us to put things into perspective. There is a big difference between, “Well, you can just kiss your life goodbye,” and “You always come out of these difficulties better than you were before.” This is what I call, “The New Parental Stance that Heals.” Each of us has an “Internal Parent,” what is called in Transactional Analysis parlance, “The Parent Ego State.” Consciously or unconsciously, the un-evolved “parent” in our heads is collaborative with the IM. In order for the “New Belief Based on What is Actually True” to be reinforced until it is accepted reality, is for the internal parent to be congruent with the new belief. Read through the twenty-six phrases in this column and I think you might say to yourself, “Yeah, I’d like to have those voices in my head the next time I screw up.” Coincidentally, they are excellent voices to have in your head the next time you succeed and need someone to be really proud of you. At all moments in life it is good, even necessary, to have a voice within our hearts and heads that continually expresses unconditional love for us.
The next post on Injunctive Messages will discuss the concept of moving the “set point” from the bitterness about life and oneself inspired by the IM’s, to the healing that takes place from the new beliefs and new habits to support them.