Eric Berne's bestselling book, Games People Play colorfully captures some of the more typical scenes and enmeshed dialogues people embroil themselves in. "Look how hard I've tried, "I'm only trying to help", and "why don't you, yes but", all follow predictable scripts, scenes, and transactions.
In "why don't you, yes but", the victim in the dialogue feigns a desire for advice, growth, or change. But every offer of advice or help is met with some reason it won't work or is not feasible. The person operating out of a Child ego identity that presents itself as helpless but willing, persecuted but not out of the fight, beleaguered but ready to do whatever it takes may bemoan their difficult economic straits.
The helpful friend might suggest, "why don't you go back to school and get better qualified for better paying jobs". The helpless victim responds, "yes, but I can't leave my children during the day to go back to school".
The friend then suggests, "you could take night classes online". "Yes, but my teenager likes to unwind on the computer at night with computer games". And round and round it goes.
The helpless victim has written a life script so engrained in defeat and failure that the possibility of success is more than they can bear. Such a possibility might actually be harmful to a psyche deeply attached to a defeatist identity, if not handled carefully.
These unproductive external scenes and dialogues may actually be the result of internal dialogues that have been innocently embraced in formative years. The internal messages received of "you'll never amount to anything", "you never do anything right", or "why can't you be more like your brother or sister", result in internal dialogue, "voices", and scenes rehearsed over and over again.
If only the helpful friend or family member could listen to the internal dialogue tape that has been played over and over, or view the scenes that actually happened and have been written into the current script, perhaps they would not be so quick to write someone as not being willing to change or help themselves.
(continued from part 1)
