Strokes and racket development

Already mentioned has been the role of temperament in racket development and how the use of emotions in parenting can also effect the development of certain rackets.

However one of the more powerful ways of fostering a racket is with strokes. When a child displays a certain feeling how do the parents respond with their stroking patterns. Do the strokes they give foster the feeling being displayed or tend to hinder its development.

This is reasonably easy to ascertain. One simply recalls when they were young and how they observed the parents responding. See the chart below:

The patterns of stroking others does not stop in childhood but we are constantly being stroked in certain ways for the emotions we display. In many instances both parties are unaware of what is happening as it is unconscious communication. Indeed the vast majority of human communication is unconscious as this diagram shows.

To ascertain these conscious and unconscious stroking patterns with those in your current life one simply changes a few questions. See the diagram below:

Of course this is a two way process. Whist you are being influenced by the stroking patterns of others you are also influencing them in exactly the same way. To gain some insight into this one can answer another series of questions:

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Factors in racket development

This post draws on the content of the previous two postings

In one of the previous postings I presented the following list of innate emotions.

Sad - depressed, down, flat, melancholic, bored, gloomy, low, dull 

Scared - worried, nervous, frightened, anxious, terrified, trepidation 

Shame - disgust, embarrassment, disgraced, humiliation, degraded, humble

Happy - joyous, delighted, peaceful, playful, glee, contented, glad 

Love - affection, adoration, liking, fondness, friendly, intimate 

Grief - Loss, lamenting, mourning 

Despair - Vacuum, nothingness, hopeless, blank, desolation, numb 

Sexual - romantic, seductive, passionate, sexy, sensual, lustful, amorous 

Anger - fury, rage, resentful, rebellious, annoyance, hate, spite, sarcasm

The development of feelings that become rackets will be due to a variety of factors one of those being the natural temperament of the child. The differing temperaments will result in a proclivity to have certain feelings and indeed develop particular racket feelings. These are listed below:

Fight - anger, sexual

Flight - scare,  shame

Freeze - scare, sad, despair

I also mentioned that a few emotions can be used as a way to parent children so as to get them to comply to the wishes of the parents. Those three being scare, guilt and shame. Thus one can initially look at racket development in a mathematical way.

If the child’s innate temperament is for flight and the parents use shame as a way to socialize the child then we have an additive effect:

Natural temperament of child is flight - 1 point of shame

Parents use shame as a socializing tool - 1 point of shame

In this case the child will have a doubling effect and hence could develop quite a strong shame racket that develops. 

The three other options are

Option 1

Natural temperament of child is fight or freeze - 0 point of shame

Parents use shame as a socializing tool - 1 point of shame

Total 1 point

Option 2

Natural temperament of child is flight - 1 point of shame

Parents do not use shame as a socializing tool - 0 point of shame

Total 1 point

Option 3

Natural temperament of child is fight or freeze - 0 point of shame

Parents do not use shame as a socializing tool - 0 point of shame

Total 0 points

In options 1 & 2 there could be some shame racket development whereas in option 3 there would be very little resultant shame racket development.

Attributions

There are other ways which will make emotions prominent in the personality (i.e. rackets). One of those is by attributions. The parents (or others) attribute a certain emotion to the child or adolescent.

When talking about their children to others in ear shot of the child parents may say things like

“She is the timid one.”

“He is the angry one.”

“She always happy and smiley.”

The child is told it is a certain way and in many instances the child will take that attribution on as the parents are imbued with psychological power by the child.

"He is the naughty one." Parents need to be careful with their attributions.

Furthermore in Transactional Analysis this is what is called a carom transaction. The parents do not speak directly to the child but talk about the child to others whilst the child listens on. This is a particularly potent transaction, more powerful than if the parent is speaking directly to the child. Very as well useful for a therapist in group or family therapy.

The other one of note are the feelings of:

Sexual - romantic, seductive, passionate, sexy, sensual, lustful, amorous

This is particularly important for the physically attractive female and the parents need to be very careful with it or it can become quite a substantial racket. The physically attractive girl hears comments about how pretty she looks and then when she reaches adolescence it truly starts. The parents often continue with attributions and carom transactions about the teenage girl and her physical appearance. In addition to this the psychically attractive female suddenly discovers how it effects males attitudes to her. She quickly learns that she can get ‘stuff’ from males because of her physical attractiveness. I don’t mean by having sex with them but at a subtle and often unconscious level she and the male communicate with the sexualness in the background at the very least.

This leaves the physically attractive woman in a precarious position because she can so easily get seduced by her own seductiveness. She learns at a conscious and unconscious level that her physical and emotional sexualness works. She starts to use it more and more often without her even being aware of it. In essence it becomes a racket. The sexualness is used to get males in particular to behave in a particular way. Any emotion can be used to manipulate others including sexuality with the physically attractive female. Over time she starts to rely on it, often without her even being aware of it and that leads to all sorts of negatives for her later on. 

The physically beautiful female needs to be careful not to be seduced by her own seductiveness such that it becomes a racket.

It is indeed a  difficult thing for parents to deal with. They need to somehow communicate to the physically attractive girl and adolescent not to rely on what their attractiveness can get them when there are going to be significant and powerful pressures to do so. However at the same time for her to enjoy her physical appearance. A difficult line indeed for parents to walk to avoid such a racket developing in the psychology of the girl.

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Parenting and the use of adverse emotions

One of the most primary tasks of any parent is to facilitate the development of the Adapted Child ego state in their son or daughter. 

When a child is born it is all Free Child ego state. The parents must do something to the child such that the Adapted Child ego state increases and is used by the son or daughter when necessary. The child learns how to conform when necessary such that it can exist in a society. It learns how to behave appropriately when necessary. So over time the FC must decrease and the AC must increase. How much the AC must develop is a matter of debate. However that is not the topic of discussion here. What is to be discussed is how parents can go about doing that with their son or daughter.

In this diagram CC has been used instead of AC

There are many ways it can be done and most are well known. The parents can use techniques like time out, consequences of behaviour or simply talking with the child such that it understands why it needs to conform in a particular situation.

There is another way to get a child to conform that is particularly effective. It involves using emotions. These are quite powerful at getting a child to behave in a way the parents want and hence they are used because they do work. There are three emotions that can be used in this way and they are fear, guilt and shame.

These are obviously painful emotions that people do not like feeling. As a result people, including children will modify their behaviour in order not too feel them. 

If things go wrong here she could end up feeling shame.

Fear

Parents can use the fear of abandonment to get a child to conform.

“Unless you go to bed now mummy will get a policeman to come and take you away.” 

A child at a playground is not following mother’s directive to leave now to go home. Mother just starts to walk away in the direction of home. Most children will begin to squeal loudly in protest (and fear) at mother walking away. Eventually however most will succumb, leave the playground and follow mother. It works.

Guilt

“Mummy felt upset and really sad that you did not behave properly at nana's house.”

“You promised mummy you would clean up your room and you haven’t done it.”

The child feels guilt and it works so next time the child will behave in the way mother wants it to. 

Shame

“You should be ashamed of yourself for...”

The parent in some way derides or humiliates the child in front of its peers or siblings.

The child feels shame and it works so next time the child will behave in the way mother wants it to.

These two children are being compliant. How has that been achieved?

These are usually quite effective ways of getting a child to modify its behaviour to do what mother wants. They work. 

But there is a problem. They have unwanted long term side effects. The boy who has been threatened with abandonment by mother may grow up and have dysfunctional relationships with women because of it. 

He may constantly feel the threat of abandonment and become pathologically jealous. He may habitually pick women who do cheat on him and leave. 

He may forever remain single because he fears the abandonment that might one day happen.

If shaming is used as a way to get a son to conform then he will grow up and develop what is called a shame prone personality. In adulthood he will experience the feeling of shame more often than others do. Shame is a very unpleasant emotion and can have devastating consequences on the self esteem. Many a social phobia can have some kind of shame component as can happen with chronic shyness or a sense of just feeling worthless.

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Temperament and racket

Below is a list of the nine innate feelings that occur in humans. Each basic feeling is followed by a list of derivative feelings that come from the basic feeling.

Sad - depressed, down, flat, melancholic, bored, gloomy, low, dull 

Scared - worried, nervous, frightened, anxious, terrified, trepidation 

Shame - disgust, embarrassment, disgraced, humiliation, degraded, humble

Happy - joyous, delighted, peaceful, playful, glee, contented, glad 

Love - affection, adoration, liking, fondness, friendly, intimate 

Grief - Loss, lamenting, mourning 

Despair - Vacuum, nothingness, hopeless, blank, desolation, numb 

Sexual - romantic, seductive, passionate, sexy, sensual, lustful, amorous 

Anger - fury, rage, resentful, rebellious, annoyance, hate, spite, sarcasm

Innate temperament can be conceptualized a number of ways. One is with the model of fight, flight or freeze. Children are born with these tendencies as a basic way to deal with problems and stress in life

The differing temperaments will result in a proclivity to have certain feelings and indeed develop particular racket feelings. These are listed below:

Fight - anger, sexual

Flight - scare,  shame

Freeze - scare, sad, despair

Freeze temperament?

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Paradoxical intervention - Haley

As you can see from this and my previous posting I have been rereading some of my Jay Haley books. This actually comes from a book written in 1976. Yikes!!

“in summary, one of the reasons for failure of some therapies has been that they assume one can go from an abnormal state directly to a normal state. It is more productive to think in terms of stages between abnormality and normality. Faced with a malfunctioning system, one can think of how to transform that into another malfunctioning system that can then be shifted to normal.” Jay Haley  

As I mentioned before I have some books in my library that I have kept for many years as you can see. 2012 - 1976 = 36 years. Of course I have thrown out many books over the years but there are some that I have just intuitively kept and some of them are the Haley books. In my view they have a creativity, insight and simplicity that is rare. 

Haley’s proposal is where one suggests the client goes from abnormal state 1 to abnormal state 2  and then to normal. I find I use that approach some of the time. I was doing supervision the other day and I suggested this approach to my supervisee. And then I read about it in Haley again today!

The supervisee’s client was suffering panic attacks. I suggested to the supervisee that she request the client experience a panic attack in the session. As the client is sitting in their chair they begin to experience the panic attack symptoms and has a panic attack there and then in the room with the therapist. Some clients will do this and some will not. Clients usually find this suggestion surprising which needless to say my supervisee did as well.

What is being suggested is the client move from abnormal state 1 to abnormal state 2.

Abnormal state 1 = client in everyday life spontaneously experiences a panic attack

Abnormal state 2 = client voluntarily produces a panic attack in the counselling session.

Abnormal state 2 will tend to disempower abnormal state 1. Often in the clients mind the panic attack is seen as this large ogre that looms in the background only to make an appearance as it wishes. If the client voluntarily produces the panic attack they are at least in part taking charge of it. Or they are at least seeing that they can voluntarily control it. They see that as they have a panic attack in front of the therapist the therapist sits there with them not panicking and simply being sympathetic to the clients plight and probably nurturing to them at the same time. The panic attack does not frighten the therapist is experienced first hand by the client. In my view this will then make it easier for the client to move to the third stage which is the diminution of the panic attacks (what Haley calls the state of normality)

Another example where I could use this approach is with the patient who presents as being highly controlled or controlling of others. The usual basis for this is the person is frightened of loosing control of them self. They have created a myth in their head where they believe they can suddenly go out of control, run amok doing all sorts of weird, embarrassing and possibly dangerous things.

Abnormal state 1 = being highly controlled

Abnormal state 2 = experiencing a sense of being out of control

The client is invited to become precisely the thing they fear most. In the counselling session the client is invited to loose control. Let go of their tight grip on control, give it up for a period of time. Experience what it is like being in the counselling session with the therapist and feeling out of control. 

If the client does this then they are more likely to move to the state of normality where the need to be in control is lessened.

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What is love?

Are you in love with him/her?

You really did love him didn’t you?

These are questions not uncommon for a therapist to ask. Well I ask such questions in my work as a psychotherapist from time to time. Generally speaking most people can answer those with a degree of certainty.

When asked such a question I have found that most can answer the question quite quickly and feel a degree of certainty in their answer whether that be yes or no. Sometimes you get an answer like, 

“Well I could have if...”

there had been time, or if circumstances would have allowed us to 

and so on.

The point at hand is that generally speaking people tend to know. This has always surprised me a bit over the years because it raises an odd situation. The person who can answer this question is one who has contact with their Free Child ego state. When they answer the question it is the Free Child that speaks. However ask them to explain what love is and they can’t, as no one can.

Thus we have the odd situation where the Adult ego state cannot explain what love is but the Free Child knows if it has it or not.

The person who finds it difficult to answer is that who has poor access to the Child ego state aspect of their personality, especially the Free Child. That is why when asked the one’s who respond reasonably quickly are the ones who generally know. Those who take a bit of time tend to be those who go to their Adult ego state for the answer and of course the Adult ego state cannot answer it. The Adult ego state does not know, instead it is the Free Child that knows.

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How long does it take to form a new habit?

Habit is all about the relationship between repetition and automaticity. If a person starts a new behaviour and repeats it every day how long does it take for that behaviour to become automatic (habitual).

A person smokes marijuana everyday for a year. He then stops smoking marijuana = the new behaviour. How long will it take for the non smoking to become habitual or automatic. The answer is that there is not a linear relationship between repetition and automaticity. Instead the relationship results in an asymptotic curve as shown in this diagram.

The early days of the repetitions result in a quick increase in automaticity. After a time this slows and there is a plateau effect in the automaticity where more repetitions result in little increase in the automaticity.

A behaviour is generally regarded as fully habitual when a person reaches 95% of asymptote. A 100% is when further repetitions result in no more increase in automaticity and there is a complete plateau. Research suggests that the time to reach 95% of asymptote takes 66 days. There can however be considerable variation with a range from 18 to 254 days.

Hence it can be said that for one to become a fully habitual non marijuana smoker will take 66 days. At that time the fully formed habit assists the person not to smoke marijuana again.

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