Workshop dynamics

A good friend was recently telling me about some workshops she had run. In it she mentioned there were some people who caused some difficulties and how they were dealt with. It got me thinking a bit about how I ‘operate’ when running a workshop. I have run a few workshops in my time and often there is always 1 who can do some difficult transactions.

Even before the group starts I am assessing the culture of the group. The personalities of the participants and how those personalities combine make each group a unique one. I get a good deal of this information in watching people especially before the workshop has started and in the breaks. Who talks to who and you get some idea of the sub groups in the workshop. 

Of course it can make a big difference if the group is voluntary or are the participants forced to come along. In a lot of organizational groups the participants are sent along by the company and that can make things more difficult. 

I will be alert for the attention seeker(s). This person is usually very vocal. Asking questions, making statements or reporting on them self during the group. They will often engage the leader a good deal and sit up the front or in some central position. This person can be good for the workshop as they can get others talking and asking questions. If the group persists over a couple of days or longer they usually start to irritate some of the other participants as they do get a lot of attention and this can bring up many childhood sibling issues. This can be a good thing for the group.

I am also looking for the joker. The person(s) who says funny things and makes people laugh. Once identified I will engage them and encourage them. I am wanting to establish a culture of Adult + Free Child. If I can help the group develop that culture then the workshop is on a much stronger footing.

Also I am on the look out for the troublemaker(s). As I said before there is usually at least one. Occasionally you get a group where there are none and that is good but most often there is at least one. 

They maybe high RC. Obviously the workshop leader is the authority figure in the mind of most participants and this will bring out the RC in those who are prone to that. They may challenge the leader in some form by questioning their ability, qualifications, personal experience, the truth of what you are saying and so forth. Or they may simply complain about things. They may do things like yawn openly and loudly or seek to disrupt the group in some other way.

Then there is the high CP troublemaker. They will verbalize their criticisms of the leader, content, workshop setting or some other thing.

Then there is the person who is simply high Parent ego state. This person may say they want to ask a question but it ends up being a statement. They have trouble adopting the student role in the student - teacher relationship. As I said before the more participants who are in A + FC the better. The high Parent person finds it difficult to adopt this position and in this way can be disruptive to the group process.

How I have dealt with the troublemakers has changed over the years. In the early times I would see them more as a challenge. Probably being less confident in myself I may have felt a bit threatened by them. This is less so now. I will tend to let them have their say and give them positive strokes. If they are interjecting quite often I will let them do that for a time and they tend to hang themselves. Basically I don’t ‘fight’ them and they tend to fade away and by half way through the day they are by and large silent. Take the ‘wind out of their sails’ rather than getting ‘on top’ of them and give them lots of positive strokes for their comments, suggestions and questions.

What will they be like when they are 30 years old and attending a workshop?

Finally one thing I have always found useful to group process is to make part of it quite personal, even in organizational groups. If teaching egograms I will get them to do their own egogram. If teaching life scripts I will get them to do their own life script analysis. If they ask a personal question even if it is a bit off topic I will answer it and go off topic for a while. If talking about symbiosis someone asks a question about how to deal with their troublesome teenager I will let them and give an answer even if it is not really on the topic. Very helpful in conducting a workshop I have found.

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Shame - What it is and working through

(Originally presented in

“Thoughts on Shame”. The Transactional Analyst. The quarterly magazine of the Institute of Transactional Analysis. Summer 2012, Vol 2 (3), Page 21 - 24.)

Introduction

I have always found shame somewhat of a perplexing emotion. It has some unique features that separates it from the rest of the emotions especially in how one deals with it therapeutically. This has lead me to research and study this emotion and hence the motivation behind this article. Writing on shame abounds in the literature including Wright, Gudjonsson and Young (2008), Gao, Wang and Qian (2010) and Wolf, Cohen and Insko (2010). In the transactional analysis literature an excellent statement on shame is made in a theme edition on shame in the Transactional Analysis Journal (April (1994)). Including articles by the likes of Erskine (1994) and English (1994).

Shame the emotion

In surveying the literature on shame one quickly comes across a debate about the nature of shame and what it actually involves. In this article the terms emotion, feelings and affect are used interchangeably. One commonly finds three concepts mentioned in relation to shame - internalized anger, guilt and shame itself. There are differing views on these such that one finds confusion in the literature about the nature of and definition of shame. For example Goss and Allan (2009) in their discussion of shame state, "It blends the different emotions of anger, anxiety and disgust, involves social comparison and can have different foci,…"(p303-304). Others have disagreed with this and attempted to distinguish the various emotions involved with shame including guilt and anger, (See: Gao, Wang and Qian (2010) and Wright, Gudjonsson and Young (2008)). This is also well summarised by Wolf, Cohen and Insko (2010) who state, "What are shame and guilt, and how do they differ? Within psychology, as well as everyday conversation, the terms shame and guilt are often used interchangeably. There is a general confusion about the distinctiveness of these emotions, possibly because of their many similarities."(p337-338)

As mentioned before anger and guilt are often mentioned as relating to shame or being part of shame. My own view is that each of these constitute three separate psychological processes. They are three separate entities. However they can and often do occur contemporaneously. This could then explain why some see guilt as being part of the shame experience or internal anger being defined as shame on other occasions. If one can define the three separate psychological processes this would clarify the nature of shame and its associated processes. Fortunately Transactional Analysis theory allows us to come up with quite clear statements about the distinct psychological processes involved in each of these three emotions.

Internalized anger

There are two ways in which internal anger can occur in ego state theory. See diagram 1.

Diagram 1

People can express anger at themselves from their Child ego state. When this occurs people will do negative internal self talk such as I am stupid, I was a geek talking to that girl and so on....

Anger can also be expressed from the Critical Parent ego state to the Child of the person. In this case the internal self talk starts with a “You” statement when an internal chastisement occurs. Examples may be “You were such a jerk talking to that boy”, “You can’t even get a simple report right”, “You stupid jerk” and so forth.

Guilt

Guilt occurs when the person has a sense of breaking an internal rule which they have for themself. If a husband thinks the woman next door is hot and foxy but has a rule inside his Parent ego state which says, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife” then he can end up feeling guilt for having such thoughts.

Or a person may steal money from his brother and later feel guilt about it because he has the rule in his Parent that you don’t steal from your brother. People can feel guilty the next day after a night of drinking too much. Alcohol decommissions the Parent ego state and thus people behave in ways that they usually wouldn’t. The next day after the alcohol has worn off they feel guilty because the Parent ego state becomes active again. Diagram 2 shows the transactions.

Diagram 2

Shame

Finally we have shame which is a natural feeling reaction to particular environmental stimuli. Often, but by no means always, it is associated with sex, nudity or intimate bodily processes such as urinating or defecating. A prime example is the enuretic child who wets his bed at night. When the child wakes up and realizes he has wet the bed it is very easy for him to feel shame and he can go to extensive lengths to try and hide it. Indeed parents need to be very careful not engender a sense of shame in a child when he wets the bed. It needs to be dealt with carefully so as to avoid this. What is being suggested here is that shame is one of the innate feelings that all humans can experience. Others such as Adams (2008) and Kaufman (1992) have suggested the same. In this way shame is a natural Free Child reaction to certain events. Thus we have the shame transaction in diagram 3.

Diagram 3

As you can see this differs from the guilt transaction in that there is no Parent to Child transaction before for emotion is experienced. This is consistent with Freud’s presentation on shame which is probably best summed up by Lynd (1958) who notes that guilt is usually more related to transgressions of clear moral codes and rules. No better example of this is found in religious texts which define what behaviors, thoughts and feelings are regarded as sinful. These are incorporated into the Parent ego state by the young child and when transgressed the individual most often will experience guilt. 

With shame the rules are much less codified and clear. Transgressions of them are more by tactlessness, errors in taste or bad luck. As a result the Parent ego state is much less involved in the process. Again the example of the enuretic child demonstrates this. Wetting the bed does not break a Parent ego state rule and generally would not be regarded as sinful. Instead it results from bad luck or factors outside the child’s control.

Presented here are three separate psychological processes – inward directed anger, guilt and shame. They can occur on their own or they can occur together. However if we see them as separate processes then we are afforded the opportunity to understand shame without the usual confusion of guilt and inward directed anger.

Unique qualities of shame

What does a therapist do when a client presents with feelings of shame? One knows what to do when a client is angry. They feel the anger, they express the anger and when ready they drop the anger. When a client feels sad the therapist acknowledges the feeling, the client expresses the sadness with some kind of crying usually, one listens to the client, empathizes with them and is compassionate. Then the sadness is dealt with. 

The natural Free Child reaction to anger and sadness is a therapeutic one. There is a natural desire to talk about it, to have some kind of catharsis and release the emotion. This natural urge will result in the feeling being ‘worked through’ often with the support of a compassionate other. The feeling is naturally dealt with and resolved which of course is a desirable state of affairs and makes the therapy process clear.

However shame is different. When people feel shame there is a strong desire to withdraw or change the topic. The person wants to go into hiding in some way. Common bodily expressions when one experiences shame include a bowing of the head, an attempt to hide the face possibly with the hands, a blushing of the face, possible sweating, body bent over on itself and possibly a closing of the eyes. It’s like the person is endeavoring to make them self as small and invisible as possible and there is a strong drive to isolate self. This seems to be the natural Free Child reaction to shame. The problem with this, is it does not deal with it in the therapeutic sense unlike anger and sadness.

In essence it is an avoidant, ‘Lets try and forget about it’, approach. Therapeutically this does not resolve the difficult feelings. They need to be brought out into the open, experienced and then one can ‘get over it’. The Free Child reaction with shame is to hide and avoid. With most other feelings the Free Child reaction is a therapeutic one that will bring resolution of the painful event like expressing sad feelings when one’s cat dies. With shame the natural Free Child reaction will not bring resolution or closure to the event. Thus shame is somewhat unique in this way.

Society likes a temperate woman

Working with shame in the therapeutic process. 

Paradoxically therapists are often working with shame even before being aware they are. For instance clients with bulimia or those who self harm often feel shame about their behaviour. As the natural response to shame is to hide often the client will not disclose such behaviour for some time. The goal here is to establish relational contact such that the client feels ready to disclose what they see as shameful behaviour but the therapist will only know that in retrospect. However when the client does finally disclose such feelings then one knows that successful relational contact with the client has been established. White (1998) discusses this in detail in his paper on transference and humanness of the psychotherapist. Such transferential and counter transferential contact is made when the therapist allows himself Free Child ego state contact with the client. This as he points out is surprisingly difficult to do but if done then the transference established will promote the client to expose their sense of shame to the therapist. Thus achieving one of the first crucial steps in working with shame in the therapeutic process.

The next step in this method of working with shame is to diagnose what is actually happening. As I said before shame, guilt and inward anger are often confused. The therapist needs to question the client to ascertain which of the three processes is occurring to see if the person is actually experiencing shame. Indeed one of the indicators that shame is present is the fact that the person has been reluctant to bring it up. Often there will be more than one process occurring concomitantly. Once established this can be explained to the client so they are aware of what is actually happening with their emotions in this way. Which of the three processes they are actually experiencing.

If inward anger is diagnosed then of course the therapist deals with that appropriately as he does if guilt is indicated. The main problem emotion here is shame because as I mentioned before the natural Free Child reaction to shame is not a therapeutic one. 

The therapeutic response I have developed is really quite simple. As the natural response to shame is to go into hiding one invites the client to do the opposite. To come out of hiding and bring the behavior and feelings of shame into the relationship with the therapist. Basically they talk about it and the therapist responds in an empathetic way, also disclosing their Child reactions to the behaviour and feelings of shame. The therapist expresses his Free Child responses to what the client is saying. The goal is to normalize the shame response in the client.

Once the client has made such a disclosure the therapist can also raise the events at the appropriate times. One needs to be somewhat forthright in this way as this assists the normalizing process. The more it is brought up, talked about in an open way with no ‘shock and horror’ responses from the therapist the less shameful it becomes. The shame loses its potency over time. If the therapist always waits for the client to bring it up then the normalizing process can be very protracted. If mentioned only very occasionally there may be little if any normalizing occurring at all. 

Often the therapist needs to be proactive here and raise the shame producing events especially if the client never initiates talking about it. This is where clinical skill comes to the fore. One does not want to be always bringing it up but it does need to be raised from time to time. How often that is, depends on the client and the circumstances. If successfully managed then over time the shameful event becomes something that can be easily discussed with little or no shame reaction. At this point it can be said that the shame has been worked through.

Conclusion

While the Free Child of the client has a natural drive to work through feelings like anger and sadness this is not the case with shame. Hence the therapist needs to intervene to halt the natural hiding away reaction by the client to their shame. The therapist brings out the shaming experiences at appropriate intervals, they are discussed and over time the potency of the shame significantly reduces such that open discussion can occur and there is little sense of shame in the client.

References

Adams, S.A. (2008) “Using transactional analysis and mental imagery to help shame-based identity adults make peace with their past.” ADULTSPAN Journal. 7, 1, 2-12

English, F. (1994) "Shame and social control revisited." Transactional Analysis Journal. 24, 2, 109-120.

Erskine, R.G. (1994) "Shame and self righteousness: Transactional analysis perspectives and clinical interventions." Transactional Analysis Journal. 24, 2, 86-102.

Gao, J. Wang A. and Qian, M. (2010) "Differentiating shame and guilt from a relational perspective: A cross cultural study." Social Behaviour and Personality. 38, 10, 1401-1408.

Goss, K. and Allan, S. (2009) "Shame, pride and eating disorders." Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy. 16, 303-316.

Kaufman, G. (1992) Shame: The Power of Caring (3rd ed.). Rochester, VT: Schenkman Books.

Lynd, H.M. (1958) On Shame and the Search for Identity. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Wolf, S.T., Cohen, T.R. and Insko, C.A. (2010) "Shame proneness and guilt proneness: Toward the further understanding of reactions to public and private transgressions." Self and Identity. 9, 337-362.

White, T. (1998) "Psychotherapy and the art of being human." Transactional Analysis Journal. 28, 4, 321-330.

Wright, K., Gudjonsson, G.H. and Young, S. (2008) "An investigation of the relationship between anger and offence-related shame and guilt." Psychology, Crime & Law. 14, 5, 415-423.

Stage fright and performance anxiety

What is stage fright?

This it seems safe to say this is an anxiety based condition

I will mainly talk about people giving a workshop or some kind of public speaking as I have dealt with this mainly, including my own public speaking. However I have dealt with many others over the years who present the problem of stage fright in a wide variety of areas. For instance I knew a woman who plays the guitar and she used to get very anxious before any performance and used to take Beta blockers before auditions.

That is one solution to stage fright, some kind of anti anxiety medication. I recall another client who was very religious and had strong views against drugs or alcohol of any kind. She had to give a presentation in a tutorial to fellow university students. I recall being surprised when she said that before the tutorial she dank a glass of beer. She was that anxious that she dropped her views on alcohol to deal with the fright. This demonstrates just how significant stage fright or performance anxiety can be for some people.

I think it is fair to say that every person who does some kind of public presentation suffers stage fright to some degree. The Free Child ego state will naturally be nervous as you are performing to some degree. You are up there in front of an audience who are all looking at you and who will make a judgement of you of some kind. 

For some however the anxiety is neurotic in that it is beyond the normal degree of stage fright or has some other psychological meaning. People who present for stage fright or public speaking anxiety in counselling usually have all sorts of thoughts and produced many scenarios about how the audience will negatively asses them. Interestingly however, stage fright has little to do with them (the audience) and much more to do with you. In most cases the audience is somewhat irrelevant to what is going on psychologically.

There is a small group who suffer stage fright because of a problem in the Child ego state of the presenter. In this case the person has significant doubts about their own worth or OKness. They feel bad as a person in themselves. In their mind they start to link performance with OKness such that if they perform badly then that proves they are a bad person or their sense of personal worth is diminished. 

This person can suffer very badly from performance anxiety because each time they go out and perform their very sense of self worth is on the line. Whilst this does occur I would say that this is a small group of sufferers of stage fright. Most sufferers usually have an active internal Critical Parent ego state which they project onto the audience. This is why I say stage fright has much less to do with the audience than the performer them self.

When a client says the audience will think they are bad, performed poorly or give them a highly critical assessment I usually respond with - “Some will and some wont”. Those in the audience with a high CP will give a critical assessment no matter how good you are and those with a low CP will give a non critical assessment no matter how bad you are. (This is to be distinguished from an Adult ego state assessment which audience members can also make, however this is not usually what the stage fright person is anxious about.)

Stage fright is about how much CP the performer has in their own mind. Usually those who come from a background with highly critical parents often have their own high CP and those with less critical parents will have a lower CP and suffer less performance anxiety.

Dealing with stage fright is about 

Increasing internal NP

Reducing internal CP

Developing a strong A

Making sure the Child feels OK about self such that its OKness is not linked with performance.

After a presentation of a workshop or performance of some kind one needs to use their Adult to make an assessment and hence a robust Adult is most useful. Sometimes you do well and sometimes you don’t do so well. An Adult ego state assessment allows the presenter to get better and learn from each presentation they do. It is important to assess self but it must be an Adult assessment and not a CP assessment.

Finally there is a related type of stage fright that is solely a male condition. Indeed, it is often referred to as stage fright. Some men cannot stand at a urinal and urinate especially when there is another man standing next to him. However even if no one is there, for some men the thought that another man may enter the toilet and stand at the urinal is enough to produce significant anxiety. 

When that happens either the internal and/or external sphincter will not release and the urine cannot flow. He will have to wait for a cubicle to become available or urinate elsewhere. In many ways this is similar to the stage fright I discussed initially. It is an anxiety based condition that can revolve around a Be Perfect type of mindset and is a kind of performance anxiety. He thinks the other men will see he is not urinating and imagines they are making a CP assessment of his ‘performance’ at the urinal.

Whilst this may seem odd or even mildly humorous. Urinating can hold a special place in the male psyche that many women do not understand. Most men can recount urinating competitions when they were young boys. Competitions to see who can urinate the highest up the wall or over the longest distance are important psychological rituals for any young boy. With the winner achieving a special status amongst his peers (no pun intended). Who knows, maybe the grown man who cannot urinate in the public toilet suffered damage to his psyche by poor performances in these early urinating competitions.

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Working with the depressed person

This is not a statement on how to treat depression but some things which are often factors in counselling the depressed person.

Stroke deprivation. Depressive like symptoms can result from a person experiencing stroke deprivation. They are not getting enough strokes (positive or negative) so as to satisfy the Free Child. The Free Child can put up with such deprivation for only so long before it starts to psychologically deteriorate. If the level of strokes is quite low then the rate of deterioration can be quite rapid

Put another way, we all have our own level of relational needs. We have to get “X” number of relational units met each day. We have to feel and be involved in relational contact with another person reasonably regularly. However it seems the level required can vary quite considerably from person to person. For some the number of units of relational needs required are quite low and for others it is quite high.

Childhood depression is an interesting phenomena

However if they are not met then depression can result. Whilst the treatment of this seems clear, that is to have more relational contact, for some that is a most difficult thing to do as the schizoid personality will tell you. If it was easy to do they would have already done it and would not need to come to counselling to deal with it. In addition establishing a social life is not an easy thing to do. It takes time and sustained effort. 

If one is socially isolated making ongoing friendships is not that easy. People have busy lives and if a new person enters into your social world that means one other must drop out because there is only a certain number of hours in the day.

High Critical Parent. This is common in the depressed person. If the person drinks alcohol ask them if they feel the depression lift when they first feel the effects of the alcohol. If it does then you know a high CP plays a role in this persons depression. As I discuss in my book - Working with alcohol and drug users - alcohol quickly and effectively blocks out the CP. This can make drinking appealing to the depressed person because it gives them temporary relief from what can be a very savage and relentless internal critic inside their head. However this can result in a drinking problem.

Also what happens most often is the depressed person will keep drinking and then the personality is effected in other ways, the person gets drunk and then they end up worse off and feeling even more depressed. Whilst there is an initial positive outcome by turning off the CP if they continue to drink then this positive is lost amongst more negatives that result from the continued drinking.

Repressed emotion especially anger. Depression can result because the person has emotions they are not expressing and then releasing. This is especially so with any anger that is not being expressed. Instead it sits like a sore in the persons psyche slowly but surely pulling them down into depression. This again is a problem for the FC, as stroke deprivation is. A basic FC need is not being met and over time the person will psychologically deteriorate as I mentioned above.

The repression of emotion can occur in a number of ways

1. Don’t feel

2. Don’t feel x, feel y

3. Don’t express your feelings

4. Feel x, but express y.

In number 1 the person is not even aware they are having a feeling When the FC is that repressed or detached the person may not even be aware they are feeling angry, sad or scared. If they are not aware of it, they certainly are not going to express it in a productive and healthy way.

In number 2 the person becomes aware they are experiencing a feeling but it is a substituted feeling. Typically women do this when they feel anger and they substitute it for sadness. Typically men when they feel sad they substitute it for anger. Either way there is not the possibility of a healthy expression of the feeling such that depression can result.

Number 3 highlights the difference between the experience of a feeling and actually expressing a feeling. Two quite different psychological processes. Some people are aware of the feeling they have and it is an appropriate feeling but have an inhibition against the expression of the feeling.

In number 4 the person feels the right feeling but expresses a different one. When the woman who get angry starts crying which is more appropriate for sadness. Or the man who feels sad and all of a sudden he is showing anger.

In any of these depression can result because feelings are not being expressed in a psychologically healthy way.

Response to trauma not been worked through. This is similar to the one just mentioned but entails much more than just the expression of emotion. In this instance the person can see that the  timing of depression is related to an event. The person may have been in a bad car accident or been assaulted. They do not work through the trauma and hence depression can result.

Secondary gains. All of us have what is sometimes called normal person depression. We all experience depression to some degree from time to time. But it is not bad enough to be debilitating and we struggle through it and come out the other side without too much difficulty.

As with any neurotic state there is always the possibility of secondary gains forming. The woman who feels starved of love starts to feel a bit depressed and she tells a few of her friends and husband. She discovers that as a result of her disclosure all of a sudden she finds people being loving and caring of her because she is ‘ill’. A secondary gain has formed that meets her need to feel loved hence the depression can persist and magnify in intensity, often this is out of her awareness.

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Expressing internalized anger

The internalised anger transaction can take two forms.



Firstly the person receives information of some kind. It is disturbing information to which the person reacts in an angry fashion. The person may have been criticised at work, they may have got a “B” for an assignment when they expected an “A”, they may have been rejected by someone or many, many other possibilities.

Once the information has been acknowledged by the Adult ego state the internalised anger can be expressed in two ways which are indeed quite different in their origin and indicate two quite different psychological processes.

The person can express such anger at the Child ego state from the Critical Parent ego state (CP). This person can be said to have a large internal critic inside their head which at times actively scolds and derides them. The origin of this comes from an introjection in childhood of the parent figures around them.

The child may have observed mother and father being critical of others and themselves and he copies that. However the more potent source of an active internal CP is when the parents have expressed criticism of the person when they were a child. The young child is criticised directly by mother and father. This criticism is then internalised by the youngster and stored in their Parent ego state through the process of introjection.



Often the words the person says inside their head as an adult are exactly the same words that were expressed to the person as a child by mother and father. Or the self criticism is about the same kind of things mother criticised the about child as a youngster.

This type of self directed anger is the least pathological and the easier of the two to treat. As with all treatment contracts it is better to look at increasing some behaviour rather than decreasing behaviour. One would not want the contract to be - “I will decrease my Critical Parent comments”. Instead one would want the contract - “I will increase my Nurturing Parent comments”. If one increases their Nurturing Parent ego state then the Critical Parent will naturally go down. One focuses on the Nurturing Parent rather than the Critical Parent.



Interestingly if a person has a high internal critic directed at self then there is always the potential for it to be directed at others as well. If one is working with a client who has a high CP for self then one also wonders if there are high CP thoughts about the therapist as well.

Some with a high CP for self can also have a high CP for others. Those critical thoughts of others may be openly stated or they may never be stated and just remain internal thoughts. But the potential is always there compared to the individual who does not have a high internally directed CP.

Child ego state anger
As the diagram shows the other type of internally directed anger comes from the Child ego state and is directed at the Child ego state. As a consequence these angry statements are not introjects from our parent figures. Instead they result from decisions that the Child has made about itself. These represent more serious psychopathology and thus the person can be seen to be more ‘damaged’.



The nature of the CP statements tend to be; “I am bad because...”

The Child ego state angry statements may also be precipitated by an event and thus one gets statements like: “I am bad because..... and there is an inherent badness in me anyway”. At other times there may be no precipitating event and the person simply expresses anger at self for no obvious reason. At times this can result in self harming type of behaviour.

Whilst an internal directed CP is common, almost every one has an internal critic of some kind. The internally direct Child statements are far less common. It requires the person to believe and feel there is something basically and intrinsically bad about self. This probably represents 5% of the population. As a result it is much more difficult to treat as one is looking to remediate a basic belief about self and not simply encourage NP statements to counter the CP statement from the Parent ego state.

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