Early Decisions and Redicisions
REFLECTIONS ON THIS STATEMENT BY MEYER FRIEDMAN, M.D.
“Changing your Type A Behavior (and beliefs) will be one of the hardest things you will do in your life.”
It is not the purpose of this paper to focus primarily on Type A Behavior (TAB)) even though I am an expert on the subject, and I have written a book about it. (Aspiring to Kindness: Transforming Male Type A Behavior) However, it is almost impossible to learn expertise in one area and not relate it to another. I know so much about TAB because I was personal friends with Meyer Friedman and worked for him and his institute for more than twenty years. I have conducted thousands of hours of groups dedicated to modifying TAB.
As with many things TAB is easy to comprehend as a concept. It is only two types of behavior: Time Urgency (TU) and Free-Floating Hostility (FFH). I have never encountered anyone with a high school or above education who found it difficult to grasp. A person can learn the most salient features of TAB from a dedicated afternoon of study.
But recognizing those behaviors in real time as one is demonstrating them is another matter. That involves an awareness of many things: voice tone, speed of speech, intensity of affect, facial expression, motor behaviors and much more. That is the hard part. It is even more difficult to substitute new behaviors in place of the old ones. Even more difficult than is to recognize and correct the thinking patterns behind those behaviors.
It is a difficult and it is possible.
It is the same with resolving Injunctive Messages (IMs). As much as my beloved teachers (and the founders of Redecision Therapy) wanted it to be otherwise, what they called a “redecision” cannot be attained in an afternoon session. You can do lots of good important work in an afternoon or a morning session, but to come out of it with a rewired brain is asking a little too much.
Dr. Friedman did not make the above statement because he was a pessimist about change or to be discouraging. He said it because he believed it to true. He said it so that people could have a sense of what they had taken on and would not grow discouraged as they encountered setbacks. After all, the first belief change he presented in his class materials was simply, “Type A Behavior (AIAI—Anger, Irritation, Aggression, and Impatience) can be changed.”
One of my late, and beloved colleagues, Dr. Virginia Price would refer to TAB as a “worthy opponent.” Again, she was not being discouraging, she was merely telling her group participants to not be surprised when it “knocked them down” again. Just get up, brush off and keep going. Tip your hat to it in respect. The issue is to keep going and to learn two vital lessons from each setback: 1) All setbacks are a sign of progress, not failure, and 2) A person can survive a setback.
In the charts on the even pages, we talk about moving from the left side of the page to the right side. That is, we are moving from Misery and Struggle towards Acceptance and Contentment. If you think you can make that journey or instruct others to make it easily and without setbacks, I want to come learn how you do it. I believe it is a bit messier than that.
As I am inviting you to reflect on what Dr. Friedman said about the difficulty of change, I will remind you that I was trained by two people who sought to help people change exponentially from short, concentrated pieces of therapeutic work. They never used the words “simple” or “easy,” but they implied them. It wasn’t that their methodology was incorrect, but that they asked too much of it. They created expectations that were not realistic.
Robert Goulding made this statement in his presentation at the first Evolution of Psychotherapy Conference in 1985:
“I want to talk about Redecision therapy. Redecision therapy is not simply making a decision to be different. It is the process in which we facilitate the client getting into his or her Child Ego State. From that state he relives an old scene and changes his or her part in it.”
(From The Evolution of Psychotherapy, 1985, edited by Jeffrey Zeig, p.305)
He and Mary Goulding believed that this reenactment of an early traumatic scene would be bring about lasting change if the person could construct in real time a corrective response to the early decision, thereby making a “redecision.”
In describing what he thought the lasting effect of such an intervention would be Bob said:
“What we do is facilitate memory by giving enough clues to help the neurons close to the synapses. We go around the resistance by going directly to the neuron pathways by giving the client back his own words. And he goes “click, click, click” and remembers.”
(p. 306)
This quote from the same lecture at the Evolution Conference was fascinating for me to rediscover. I believed the Gouldings expected their brief therapy techniques to realign the neural pathways in the brain. Here is Bob stating that belief. In other words, he is espousing his belief that a brief therapy can alter the neural pathways in our brains. The phrase, “click, click, click” was Bob’s way of saying that the change had taken place and was now implanted: easy.
I was also fascinated to find the following quote in Mary’s presentation at the same conference:
“For those of you who let yourselves have this experience (of remembering and reliving an old scene), you may notice that your feeling is the same old rackety one you experienced lots of times as a child. (A “racket” is a Transactional Analysis term for a chronic bad feeling that is not used constructively.) What you say about self, others, and life may be early decisions you made back then. Perhaps you’ve already outgrown or redecided these old decisions. Or perhaps you are still living them out.” (p.289)
For many of you reading this paper, it might be the first time you have encountered the word, “racket.” It was in frequent use during my early training. While writing a recent article (From Cure to Healing: Rethinking the nature of Cure Within in a Redecision Perspective TAJ, Vol.51, No. 3, 216-225) I referred to the concept of rackets and the editor asked me to use a different phrase because it might not be familiar to today’s readers even though the article was to appear in the Transactional Analysis Journal.
I mention this because the Gouldings taught their trainees to watch for rackets and confront them. They considered them “dishonest” feelings that were being employed by the client to manipulate other people and to maintain their “victim” stance in the world. They also believed that one could “easily” and willfully give up these rackets once they were pointed out to them.
Reviewing what was taught to me back in the 1970’s and 80’s has been fascinating for me. Remember that Bob and Mary identified one decision made in response to what they then called “injunctions.” Since that time I have argued for the existence of two decisions to each Injunctive Message: Despair and Defiant.
At this time the charts contain twenty-five identified Injunctive messages. If you look downward through them and read only the Despairing Decisions, you will find many statements in that column that Bob and Mary would have labeled “rackets.” And they would have approached them as something the person consciously held fast to for the “benefit” they could derive from them in the form of sympathy or of rescue from other people. They would say confront them and most of all don’t stroke them. That is, don’t give people further reward with sympathy for staying “stuck.” They would say a person can choose another feeling.
This is the heart of my divergence from my teachers. I don’t see these as feelings easily changed because I see the Despairing Decisions as just that. On the charts they are described as “What I most fear to be true of me or of life.” At another place Bob spoke of his belief that a young child had the autonomy to accept or reject an early Injunctive Message:
“Again, although injunctions and counter-injunctions are given, in order for them to be important in the child’s development the child must accept them. He has the power to accept or reject. (Boldness added) No injunction is ‘inserted in the child like an electrode,’ as Berne believed.” (Changing Lives Through Redecision Therapy, p. 39)
Having had an active and conscious hand in the process of accepting the Injunction, then that same child could later choose to change his/her response to that original message. Easy.
I could not disagree more. I believe the young child had no choice but to be deeply influenced by the power of an Injunctive Message. If the IM exists in a “pure” form with no countervailing messages in the environment, that child will decide the message is true and will respond in kind. And that response will not be only a feeling. It will become a profound belief which will feel integral to the person.
Since you are reading this paper, you are interested in what I am presenting here. In the charts look down the column under the Despairing Decision heading, all twenty-five of them. You might say to yourself, “I have felt or thought all of these things in my life.” And, indeed, who hasn’t? The difference is in degree and frequency.
The great difficulty I am going to present in this paper is changing the profound and unquestioned belief represented by the Despairing Decision and replacing it with what is listed under the Redecision column, which reads: “This is a new belief based on an unsuspected truth.” The important word in this phrase is “unsuspected.”
If someone is exposed to an IM in an atmosphere that is completely lacking any evidence of the “Unsuspected truth,” there will be nothing to counterbalance the power of the IM. That IM and its destructive message will seem true. The environment will have been “saturated” with the message.
In changing Type A Behavior, the great challenge is responding to a familiar stimulus in a different way. It is not uncommon for a person with unmodified Type A Behavior to feel an instant irritation if someone behind them in traffic honks a horn or whizzes past them. The person will do what has become intuitive: either physically demonstrate their anger or swear quietly under their breath.
Change has clearly taken place when that same person has a vastly different response to the same stimulus. When someone is following too closely behind their car while exiting a freeway, great change has taken place when the thoughts are of concern for the person behind them, “Maybe he has a sick child in the car and is trying to get to the hospital.” That is different from, “That person has no right to treat me in this manner. I’ll show him. I’ll slow down and see how he likes that.” It is going from the intuitive to a learned new behavior supported by a different way of perceiving reality.
As described in earlier articles, I believe the second decision to be what I call the Defiant Decision and it is described in the charts as: “My best attempt to be healthy and resilient.” Over time, repeating this reaction thousands of times, the defiance becomes the intuitive and comforting response to any event that stimulates the Despairing Decision. That process becomes canonized into the Coping Behavior.
In the Type A work, we teach our participants to not expect the world to change. We seek to prepare them for the world as it is not as they wish it to be, so they won’t be surprised when people continue honk in traffic and there are still lines that are too long at the local grocery store. We call these predictable events “Hooks.” That is, these small and unexpected events have the power to hook us in such a way as to stimulate our habitual behavior. We even tell them to expect thirty-five such hooks daily, especially if one lives in an urban area. The power for the person in those moments is not that they are more in control of the world, but they possess the choice to respond to a familiar stimulus in a different way.
My beloved teachers wanted people to have choice. They wanted people to no longer believe the falsehood contained in all the Injunctions. They wanted people to have choice in how they felt in response to familiar stimuli. They wanted people to choose survival, they wanted them to be able to maintain warm and close relationships, they wanted people to have the freedom to own their explicit identity, they wanted people to feel successful in the world and in their work and they wanted them to feel empowered to feel confident in their ability to cope with life.
They also ardently wanted a world in which people no longer killed one another. They believed that getting well also meant one must become dedicated to helping others. Without that, they found psychotherapy to be an exercise in narcissism. One of my pastors was fond of saying, “If you do no good for others, you do no good at all.”
And for all their talk about brief therapy, here is another quote from Mary:
“What are the limitations of this approach? (brief therapy) As I have stated, some people want more (therapy), and some people need more. They need more time and especially they need to experience over this longer time a healing relationship between self and therapists. They need more opportunity for reality testing; more simple discussion of the here and now; much more of the warm, close, empathic relationship that, at its best is the hallmark of long-term psychotherapy. In long-term treatment, the client may achieve the profoundly curative experience of an intimate, non-sexualized, nonexploitative relationship. Perhaps for the first time in her life she can say what she truly thinks, believes, and feels and still know herself to be valuable and lovable. In this relationship the client learns to trust and gives herself permission to grow. Within this model of long-term therapy, the client will make many redecisions and practice them in her relationships with the therapist and with others.” (p.290)
So, what is the point of my asking you to contemplate the phrase, “It will be one of the hardest things you will ever do” whether I am applying that question to changing TAB or to resolving Injunctive messages? In answer to this question, I invite you to view the Despairing decisions to the five IM’s contained in the “Survival” category. Below each Despairing Decision you will see the corresponding “Unsuspected Truth.”
DON’T EXIST:
Despair: No one cares about my life or whether I die.
Unsuspected Truth: Unconditional love and affirmation do exist.
DON’T BE WELL (or take care of yourself):
Despair: I am not worthy of attention.
Unsuspected truth: I need more help than I can give myself.
DON’T TRUST:
Despair: I feel defenseless and on my own.
Unsuspected truth: There are people worthy of my trust.
DON’T BE SANE:
Despair: I am terrified (in an unprotected and cruel world).
Unsuspected truth: Forgiveness, not revenge cures the misery of
Hatred.
DON’T TOUCH:
Despair: I’m unlovable (no one ever touches me gently).
Unsuspected Truth: I long for and need affection.
Please pause for a moment and study the distance between the Despairing Decision (which is truth to the person) and the new belief that can be attained by internalizing the Unsuspected Truth. You may think to yourself, “That is a difficult (if very worthwhile) journey to make.” The Despairing Decisions are not merely “Racket Feelings” that can be dispensed with through an active decision. And, even if they could be dispensed with, what would replace them?
In reviewing the Unsuspected Truths above, there are two common responses. Some people feel a sense of unreality at the concepts contained in the truths. They seem fantastical. They are concepts never entertained. It is easy to understand how the truths would not be available to them in a stressful situation. For this group it is clear to see that they are nowhere near possessing new beliefs that effectively counter the beliefs contained in the Despairing Decisions.
For others, they can recognize that these truths are plausible and most likely true. But again, they will not appear in a moment when an ancient Injunctive Message is being restimulated by what is happening in the environment.
And the Injunctive Messages we received when young will be stimulated on purpose or accidentally in present day life. It can be the result of someone’s intended ire or it might be the result of circumstance that is not connected to us personally at all. In moments of such stimulation, we turn to what we trust to be the truth.
It is obviously painful if the Despairing Decision makes an appearance in such a moment. But remember, we are “equipped” to handle the pain contained in those beliefs. With blinding speed, the Defiant Decision is activated and is expressed through the Coping Behavior. First and foremost, the Coping Behavior is comforting to the person using it. Specifically, it is comforting to the pain aroused by the emergence of the Despairing Decision.
It is not enough to say, “OK, I have stood up to that decision and I have stated I no longer believe it.” That is a good decision to make, but it does not prepare a person for the next time life stings them. Just as we prepared our Type A participants by warning them of the thirty-five hooks a day, so it is with the Injunctive Messages. There are traumas, great and small that life serves up to us on a regular basis. What is a trauma for one might well be a non-event for another.
Just as it is important for people modifying their TAB to recognize a hook in real time and name it as such, it is important for our clients to recognize the moment an IM is being stimulated and be able to name it. It is important for the person to be able to slow down so that he or she can feel the despair in their bodies in that moment. For the person to be able to say in effect, “I am feeling despair and my DON’T EXIST message is being stimulated.”
Why is it important to be conscious? Because originally the despair was overwhelming to the person, and they had no alternative to it until the discovery of the agency contained in the Defiant Decision. Without conscious awareness, even a small stimulus might feel overwhelming and trigger an immediate “I’ll show you” response. That can take place so quickly that the person is left without a conscious awareness that they had felt an ancient despair.
Without that awareness, the person loses the opportunity to respond in a way that incorporates the new belief that stems from internalizing the Unsuspected Truth. Without awareness, there is no choice except the old intuitive and “instinctive” response.
This act or slowing down and naming the terrified response to feeling oneself in an old scene and helpless allows the person to know that they are in the present, not the past. There are moments in life that will hurt our feelings or cause us to feel helpless, but they are not the moments of our childhood. Slowing down intentionally allows a person to remember they have a new source of agency in responding to the trauma triggered by current events.
I was chatting with one of my colleagues at the Meyer Friedman Institute. I don’t remember the content of our conversation, but I was complaining with frustration about something or someone. At one point in my harangue, she said, “John, I think you are forgetting that you now have a Type B place within you. You can handle your feelings from that new place.” She was right. I had done what had been habit for years. With her reminder I found I had the power and the choice to switch.
Eric Berne talked about cure being the attainment of autonomy. In saying that, he was expressing his hope that a person could be free of the power of their Script. Well, a script never completely disappears but it is a different day when a person can recognize when they are in script behavior and have the awareness and ability to make another choice.
On the monthly “Drill Cards” that I created for all the members of my Type A Groups, I included my phrase, “The process of transforming Type A Behavior is simply the creation of choice in place of our ancient and instant AIAI (Anger, Irritation, Aggravation, Impatience) reactions.” The key word is “choice.”
One’s life cannot become magically free of despair. There are many legitimate situations in life that should evoke some form of despair in us. If wars, famine, and injustice in all its variations do not disturb us, we should question our moral compass.
But it is transformative to be conscious that an ancient despair is becoming manifest within us and it has nothing to do with the wider world and its ills. This is the despair that presents itself when something occurs to cause us to feel as if we should not be here (SURVIVAL), can never satisfy our need for intimacy (ATTACHMENT), can never feel at home in our own skin (IDENTITY), can never have the feeling of accomplishment (COMPETENCE), or of ever feeling free to relax and enjoy life while assured we are able to handle life on its own terms (SECURITY).
It is transformative when we understand that those feelings are based on messages we internalized while young, just as we internalized the language spoken in our home and village. In the case of Injunctive Messages, what we internalized was false. And then we bent our lives to conform to the falsehoods. We were helpless to do otherwise. If there was cruelty in our growing up, we were victims. We were not taking a “victim stance” to manipulate others.
Our despairing decisions reflected that victimhood. And those decisions became “truth” to us over time. And we learned to fight those decisions, as best we could, armed with the tools of our childhoods.
When we can see the evidence of that falsehood at work in the consciousness of a moment and name the Injunctive Message, we have choice. We can choose to conform to the previous belief or harken to a new belief based not on the IM, but on the Unsuspected Truth. That is change.
It is manifest change when we or our patients can demonstrate a unique response to a familiar stimulus rather than a mindless and intuitive one.
The more that the Unsuspected Truths were embedded in one’s early environment, the more protection was provided against the falseness of the IM. For people coming from those environments, the Unsuspected Truths weren’t unsuspected at all. They were the obvious truths.
Injunctive Messages flex the most power in the absence of any protective influence. We have all been (or will be) witness to the most astonishing stories of survival amidst harsh physical and psychological circumstances while one was growing up. We are often witnesses to abuse or cruelty.
In hearing a particularly tragic history, it is not uncommon for us to wonder, “How did you survive that?” “Well, I had a grandmother who never said anything, but who would look at me in the worst of it and I could see kindness in her eyes.” “My uncle would smile at me.” “My father was dead, but I would hear stories of how he would walk miles to get medication for me when I was small and ill.” “I can remember my grandfather kissing me on the cheek and the scratch of his whiskers.”
In his The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky writes:
“You often hear people speak about upbringing and education, but I feel that a beautiful holy memory preserved from early childhood can be the most important single thing in our development. And if a person succeeds, in the course of his life in collecting many such memories, he will be saved for the rest of his life. And even if we have only one such memory, it is possible that it will be enough to save us some day.”
Through such a thin thread as a single impactful memory, some people are saved. Through such a small glimpse a person can see a ray of light to something better than misery and constant struggle. That glimpse is a view of the Unsuspected Truths. It is good to have a tree root to cling to if one has fallen over a cliff and is hanging on for dear life. It is better to live in a world far from those cliffs. It is a very good thing to admire the courage it took for people to form their Defiant Decisions. Those heroic thoughts or actions that said, “I will not give up, I will fight back.”
It is a great gift if a person can accept another person’s observations about their Coping Behaviors. That is also an act of courage in present time. It is not comfortable for another person to point out to us the destructive nature of some of our behaviors. Those Coping Behaviors have become habit and are comforting for us. Unfortunately, those same behavior discomfort others and are destructive to us over time.
When a person begins to truly consider that the Unsuspected Truths might contain kernels truth, it begins the process of letting go of the false conclusions contained in the Despairing Decisions. It is just like opening a window and allowing in fresh air.
The degree to which the discovery of the new truth will be upsetting to the old order of things rests primarily on the degree to which the Unsuspected Truths were absent from one’s early environment. It can be considered from one crucial point of view: the degree to which unconditional love was present or absent from the early environment.
If unconditional love was largely absent in the form of touch, emotional warmth, and loving speech, then the more transactional the early environment would have been. The absence of the unconditional requires the dominance of the conditional. Everything is quantified and must be earned. It becomes a quid pro quo world, hence the struggle with impossible expectations and eventually the misery.
Where there should have been a warm Emotional World, one finds the lack of emotional warmth that is the basis of the Practical World. St. Paul said it well, “What if a person gains the whole world (has everything the Practical World can offer) but loses his soul (the ability to give and receive love). what has he gained?” That is the great danger of a life robbed of the unconditional and chained to the conditional for all of life’s satisfactions.
There is one more observation I wish to share before I come to the end of this reflection on change. Not surprisingly it has to do with the Unsuspected Truths. I think of them in three ways, not unlike Bob Goulding’s reflections on the three types of impasses: first, second- and third-degree impasses.
In that conception Bob described a range of difficulty. What he called first degree impasses were seen as easy to resolve. Second degree impasses were exponentially more difficult and third-degree impasses were the most difficult. These are so difficult because the person does not feel a sense of conflict: “This is just who I am or how I am.”
We encounter a similar spectrum in dealing with the Unsuspected Truths. For lots of people many of them are not unsuspected at all, having been abundant in their early environments. For some they will easily recognize many of the truths and will feel relief with having them clearly stated and set forth.
For others they will be an astonishing and perhaps a doubtful revelation. They will feel resistance to taking them in. Their inclination will be to argue and to dispute. They will be active “non-believers” and will challenge us to prove them wrong. They won’t see this as an invitation into a gentler world, but a challenge to see who is right and who is wrong. Those are a lot of the people we see.
And then there are those who will be awe struck by a reality they have never known. They too will demonstrate disbelief, but not from the rubric of right and wrong, but from more wonder, “Could this really be true?” For these folks, even considering the possibility of the Unsuspected Truths will cause their foundation to shudder. It will cause them a deep unease, a profound confusion. For them it is like being told something monumental, such as “your parents are not your real parents.” “What!” Everything suddenly shifts. It is destabilizing and unnerving. That is the power of the Unsuspected Truths.
And please, don’t take my word for it. Look in the charts. Study all twenty-five Unsuspected Truths. You are free to disagree with me. Who knows? Maybe I will disagree with myself and alter the wording of one or more of them. I have certainly tinkered endlessly with the wording in the charts for more than thirty years.
But look at them. Read them. Ponder them. They are true. Or they contain truth. And they are the truths that can help us and our patients unlock the hold of the IMs. They are the truths which allow us to know that we are inheritors of the right to Survive, to Attach, to know our Identity, to feel Competent in the world and to feel Secure in the knowledge we know how to cope with life.
I prefer to think that what we are doing is majestic in its intention. I don’t think anything truly majestic is easy to accomplish. The important questions are, “Is it worth accomplishing?” and “Is it possible?”
AFTERTHOUGHTS
I began my training as a psychotherapist in the fall of 1969 even though I did not realize it at the time. I was a senior at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Kentucky. I had signed up for a course taught by Professor David Steere in which we were to learn about how to conduct group therapy using the concepts of Transactional Analysis and Gestalt Therapy.
In that class, and later in my training in California with Bob and Mary Goulding, I was to encounter many of the Unsuspected Truths. My life would not be the same.
The most striking aspect of encountering these truths is that for most of them, they were not dramatic moments. Looking in from the outside an observer would not have known that I had just learned something that was to alter the way I saw myself and the world.
I was talking to David one day in the hallway outside his office. I said to him that he seemed to be free of a constant pain in his stomach and chest. He demonstrated no look of pain. I asked him if it was true that he went about life free of constant pain in his midsection. He told me my observation was correct, that while he knew the pain I was talking about he did not experience it on a continual basis.
I told him that being in that sort of pain was normal to me and it was striking to think it was not normal for everyone. Then I said to him that I thought I must have a very strong stomach as I had been in pain for years and had never developed an ulcer. David said to me, not unsympathetically, “Well, keep at it. I’m sure you will manage to get one (an ulcer) someday.”
That was one of many feelings of disorientation that were to be common for me in the next few years. I felt disoriented because David was telling me that the pain in my midsection was not happening to me, but I was maintaining it. I think I felt what Fritz Perls called, “Organismic Disgust.” He used that phrase to describe what a person might feel on realizing that they had responsibility for maintaining a feeling of victimhood.
An even more powerful, but still undramatic moment came during a group I attended for a few weeks that David conducted. It was most likely my first experience with being invited to use the “empty chair” technique. The content and details of that piece of work are lost to me. Most likely, I placed my mother in the chair. The best I can remember is that I was talking to her, begging her to understand something about me. I don’t remember.
What I do remember is that this “conversation” went on for a while between me and her. At one point David came over and squatted down behind the empty chair and put his arm over it. Looking at me he simply said, “You really believe what you are saying to her,” except that he used an expletive in his original statement. My immediate thought was, “Yes.” Then I realized he was pointing out a flaw in my thinking, that I was making an argument for being a victim.
The earth turned slightly on its axis for me in that moment. I remember walking out of the building and the world looked slightly different and not in a pleasant way. It is not pleasant to feel disoriented. It was not immediately comforting to me to realize that I had been seeing the world and myself through a lens that left me feeling like a victim. I remember I went and sat for a long time in the chapel stunned by this new awareness. Growing up feeling like a victim was a common theme in my culture. That I was now responsible for maintaining that way of thinking was mind boggling.
That is the power of an Unsuspected Truth.
The introduction of these truths is not always so disorienting. I was sitting one morning at the Western Institute waiting for the nine o’clock session to begin. Bob came in a few minutes early. Informally we chatted. I said to him, “I am beginning to accept that I am smart, much smarter than I ever imagined. But that leaves me wondering, ‘If I am so smart, why have I felt so confused for most of my life?’” In return, Bob said simply, “If I had had a father who never talked to me, I would have felt confused too.”
Again, this was not some moment filled with memorable drama. I wasn’t beating on a pillow or scramming at someone in my past. No one noticed that Bob and I were talking. No group cheered for me in that moment. It was a moment when the fog cleared, and I could see something I had never realized. Obviously, I have never forgotten that moment. That moment ushered in a compassion for myself I had never felt before.
I have written before, perhaps exhaustively about my first interview with Dr. Friedman at his institute in San Francisco. At the end of that interview, he asked me if I was aware of the Type A Behaviors I had demonstrated during the interview and could I identify them for him. I could not. He asked me, “May I tell you?” Reluctantly and feeling some dread, I said, “Yes.”
He proceeded to tell me of at least seven or eight behaviors. I recognized them as he said them. I felt deflated, a mild case of organismic disgust perhaps or maybe just embarrassment. He could see behaviors I had read about but could not see in the moment they were taking place. He evinced no doubt that I could change them and become aware if I chose. I would have to choose. My habits would not change on their own or without the help of people who had had done so before me.
Driving home that Friday night I felt mildly downcast and buoyed at the same time. I could not have described why I felt downcast. Of course, I had impossible expectations going into the interview. I had expected the world’s leading expert on TAB to find me flawless. That wasn’t conscious, but why else would I have been downcast even though I knew he was going to invite me onto his faculty. Expectations.
I have one other transformative moment to share. This also comes from my senior year at the seminary and once again it occurred in a hallway. I was listening to two of my professors talk with one another. One was David Steere, and the other a professor, named Dr. Dan Wessler.
They were brainstorming, talking about possible future learning events they might present. They were being creative and bold with their ideas. They had confidence and wanted to try new things. They were talking about possibilities that they might be able to create, things never tried before.
In that moment, I thought to myself, “I want to have that sort of confidence.” I realized I wanted to know something so well that I could feel empowered to push new boundaries, to have the courage of imagination that I was watching. In that moment I realized I wanted to pursue the art of psychotherapy. I didn’t just want to dabble in it and add it to my list of things I knew something about.
What happened in that moment? In my words, I got a glimpse of the right side of the charts. I had been getting glimpses all that year. Without that concept or those words, I saw that I could get to the right side. I could achieve competence by devoting myself to one thing instead of everything.
Remember, many people have no concept that the right side of the charts exist. For some people, our greatest contribution to them will be allow them a glimpse into a world never imagined. For so many people they only dream of a world where they have maximum safety by being bullet proof and good at everything, the best at everything, if possible, but or competing to be the best.
Watching my two confident and creative professors talk, I did not wish to be like them. I wished to be like myself. I wanted to be more eager to learn the outer limits of my abilities than to have a safe life where I sought to please everyone. My professors did not know that I was having a revelation of a new life as they were having their conversation. They were living in that moment from the right side of the charts, and I was attracted to what I saw. It was infectious.
Late in that final year, David sat down with me. He knew I was headed to California the next year ostensibly to take another master’s degree. He also knew I had a plan to train with the Gouldings once I got there. He said to me, “You are headed for an enchanted place.” He was right. I was off in search of the right side of the charts. That was in the spring of 1970.
THE POWER OF ONE MOMENT
In that same conference, The Evolution of Psychotherapy, one of the presenters was Paul Watzlawick. In his paper, “If You Desire to See, Learn How to Act,” he shared this moment from the fictional writing of Victor Hugo:
In this connection, alexander (Alexander & French, 1948, pp. 88-70) refers to Victor Hugo’s famous story of Jean Valjean, in Les Misérables, Valjean is a violent criminal who, upon his release from a long jail sentence which brutalized him even more, is caught stealing the bishops’ silver. He is brought before the bishop but instead of calling him a thief, the bishop asks him very kindly why he left behind the two silver chandelier that were part of the bishop’s gift to him. This kindness totally upsets Valjean’s world view. (p. 93)
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Hugo explains: One thing which he (Valjean) did not suspect is certain, however., that he ws no longer the same man; all was changed in him, and it was no longer in his power to get rid of the fact that the bishop had spoken to him and taken his hand. (p. 94)
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We must bear in mind that Les Misérables was written in 1862, half a century before the advent of psychoanalytic theory, and that it would be a bit preposterous to assume that the bishop was simply an early-day analyst. Rather, what Hugo shows is the timeless human experience of profound change arising out of an unexpected and unexpectable action by somebody. (p.94)
Using this vignette, Watzlawick is showing that there can be transformative moments in our lives, positive transformation. Those moments inform us that the right side exists and beckons us toward it.
There is certainly the opposite where a negative traumatic event can convince someone adopt even more fiercely the Coping Behaviors found on the left side. Dr. Friedman was clear that there was only Type A Behavior, not a Type A Personality. He did allow that there were individuals who had used the Coping Behavior of TAB so extensively throughout their lives that there was little of their original personality left as they became elderly.
There are people who have placed their stake in the ground and have firmly and defiantly planted their flag on the left side. Those people are often what Dr. Friedman referred to when he said, “There are ten to twenty percent of our participants who will refuse to be convinced. You will not get to them and they will not change.” Again, he was not being pessimistic. He was friends with reality.
We cannot force anyone to accept the concepts we offer. Nor can we know when we are saying something or demonstrating a behavior that may be transformative to someone. We can be confident that change, transformation in a positive direction is possible and we are offering an invitation to at least consider that the right side of the charts is a possibility.
THREE CHANGES TO THE “COMPLETED AND FINAL CHARTS”
Attached you will find the updated charts with the changes in red. Two of the changes occur on page three. The word, “Unconsciously” has replaced “Always,” and “Habitually” has replaced “constantly.” These are minor changes.
On page seven you will see in red that I have totally changed the wording of the Coping Behavior for the DON’T FEEL SUCCESSFUL Injunctive Message. That represents serious thought and consideration. As you can see I have removed the words, “Habitual use of blame toward self and others for life’s mishaps” to “Constantly seeking to accomplish the impossible.”
While blame of self or others is not unknown for people with this Injunctive Message, I believe the new wording more accurately describes the Coping Behavior. Blaming is present but it is not the most defining characteristic. It is seeking to accomplish the impossible: to fix other people. Remember the Defiant Decision is “I will fix everyone and everything.” That Defiant Decision was in response to the Despairing Decision: “I feel I am always at fault.”
LONG PAPER!
I promise my next paper will be shorter than this paper. When I begin writing I imagine writing only a few pages. I am frequently reminded of the English writer, Oscar Wilde who wrote a letter to a friend with this apology, “I am sorry for writing such a long letter, but I did not have time to write a short one.”
My next paper will be entitled, “Changing Parents,” in which I will describe another difficult task: changing out the Injunctive Message for a healthier parent inside of us. More to come.
In the meantime, I hope this article has been helpful and has stimulated your thinking. I do my best to share my thoughts and experiences from my half century of doing the work I love.
And I love sharing it.
John
San Jose, CA
March 9, 2024
PS: If you are interested, my book Aspiring to Kindness is on my website here if you wish to read It.