By Jeff Bell
As a parent, have you ever chastised your child and thought “Jeez that sounds like my Dad, I promised myself I would never say that when I became a parent.”
As a leader, have you ever found yourself laying down the law, pointing the finger at someone and saying: “I have told you repeatedly, do not…!”
Most of the things that we learned about the world and still hold onto today, yes, we learned from our parents, before we even knew it. The chances are, most of those things still live deep within our psyche. They will come pouring out when we are under stress or when something reminds us of our childhood.
And what about the “Things are not like they used to be!” claim?
These are all examples of us being in Parent. When we imitate our parents or some other authority figure early in our life—a teacher, a sports coach or a group leader. These are not our own words and they are not about the present.
Essentially, we have seen something that reminds us of these incidents from our childhood or our youth, and these words and responses elbow their way forward. We are in the grip of a compelling force tying us to the past through regret, resentment, disappointment, or even vengeance.
We might alternatively be recalling something that seems positive like “the good old days”—but these too are an illusion. They don’t actually exist. They are mere figments of imagination or memory that don’t help us live in the present. In fact, they sap our emotional energy, cause us to make poor choices and interfere with our enjoyment of life.
What not to do?
Living in Parent is inescapable. And in some instances, it is necessary and useful. Particularly when a child is hurt or wanting, and we provide the necessary nurturing. Or when we need to set boundaries and the child is not understanding the reasons, but without the compliance their physical or emotional life is at risk.
We often need to dip into Nurturing Parent when we have young children, but if we are a leader of adults, maybe not so much.
If we dip too often into Controlling Parent, our children will suffer and they will find it difficult to fully form their appropriate adult behaviours. If we use withdrawal of affection to control our child’s behaviour, we and they will certainly suffer deep and long term emotional damage. Again, as a leader of adults, use of the Controlling Parent will almost certainly make any situation worse.
For Parent we may also use “manager”.
What to do?
Responding to the world with all our grownup resources, appropriate to the dynamics of the world around us and to the particular situation, is called being in an Adult ego state.
In Adult, we free ourselves from the negative experiences of the past, our regrets, our disappointments, our embarrassments or our resentments. We are also not bound by anxiety about the future–when we worry about what might or might not happen, fretting about what people may think about us, stressing about not being on time, not being successful, not being acceptable or not being enough.
We are present and in the Now. This is the only place where everything is real and we respond accordingly. Our ability to deal with what is in front of us has been determined by our experience and knowledge and development of judgement and our effectiveness. Everything we need, we already have. We respond to the best of our ability. We are alert and receptive—in our Flow. We can do no more than that.
In fact, we find that this state of Adult allows us to use our full physical and emotional energy and we are calm and therefore at our most creative and resourceful. We make better choices and we form better relationships because we interact at our best. For Adult, we may also use “leader”.
As a parent, we need to find the right timing for not being fully in Parent. The child will be ready.
As a leader, Parent may be used sparingly.
But we function mostly in Adult…and we draw the same from others?