I am working my way down Berne’s time structuring categories, his ways of understanding how and why we spend time with each other.
If you missed last weeks posts it may be worth popping back a post to read about low risk, low reward ways of connecting with each other and ourselves.
Activities
Activities are where we spend most of our time as adult, even as school aged children -we do things together. Be that work, where most of us spend a lot of our hours or on shared tasks and interests such as sports, music or volunteering.
It’s higher risk and higher reward.
Many of us get a lot of satisfaction from completing tasks, there is reward, a little hit of all important dopamine. If the task is shared and we are in a team where we feel valued and supported, that the endeavor is shared and we are all pulling in the same direction. Well that’s a lot more dopamine and several other neurotransmitters too! It’s risky though. Relationally we are putting ourselves out there and we don’t fully know what will happen next. There is the potential for failure, for being left out, to dominate or dismiss others and to be on the receiving end of challenging interactions.
For some activity recharges the battery, fills up the tank, replenishes and restores like drinking cold water on a hot day. For people who need to withdraw to replenish though it can feel more like being give a cup of tea on the beach…too much, too hot, not pleasant. And that is hard when we spend so many of our waking hours in this way.
How we structure this time with other then is really important in how we meet our needs, how we replenish the battery, how we feel effective, seen, understood and appreciated.
Games and rackets
It sounds like fun…like frisbee on the beach or hide and seek, or building dens together when we were kids.
That’s not what this is.
Berne’s concept of games is a whole months worth of posts on its own. It is related to so many other concepts in TA it is pretty much impossible to do a stand alone post that captures their significance.
Games and rackets are a way of connecting with others that usually leave us feeling bad in someway. They give us a pay off and not in a nice way.
Imagine for a moment a parent and a child, the child says I’m bored. This statement is a request to the parent to solve the problem of boredom. The parent then comes back with a ton of solutions, you could do a jigsaw, draw a picture, watch the TV, play outside, do your homework. Each solution is rejected in turn until the parent becomes frustrated and states they can’t help. It’s a stuck place which leaves the child feeling not seen and not heard and the parent feeling frustrated….horrible feelings, but at least they are feelings and the dyad have interacted.
There are many sorts of psychological games and essentially they are a way of trying to get our relational needs met that ultimately not successful.
The level of damage they do varies enormously. Gossip, feeling misunderstood or not seen by a friend parent or partner, mild scandal at the parish council. They leave us with a bad feeling but ultimately if our resilience and sense of being ok in the world is intact, we get on with life.
They can escalate though …sometimes we get really hurt in ways that change us and make us more cautious about relationships, sometimes we hurt others in ways that are difficult to repair. Affairs, debt, betrayal by friends, spending money we don’t have, living without things we need because we won’t spend money we do have. They damage us and others.
Distressingly they can escalate further and impact us in ways that are life changing. Criminal convictions, addiction are just two examples of how trying to get our needs met in this way is ultimately deeply damaging to our psyche.
Intimacy
The word intimacy can often be used as a substitute for sex, and sex does indeed fit in this category when it is consensual, loving, wanted and invited.
However I find the image of a new baby are more useful example. They are totally vulnerable, totally themselves, no hiding, no concern about anything other than the moment they are in.
Have you ever noticed the power of that vulnerability?
The presence of a sleeping baby will silence a room, there is awe and wonder and care. The presence of a distressed baby will send the whole vicinity into action mode as the people around them seek to find and soothe the source of the distress.
This then is intimacy -I can be completely myself with the other person and completely accepted. In all my messiness and complication, in the demand and reciprocity of it all -what you get is me.
It is the realm of love in all its forms. Of seeing and being seen. Of closeness, belonging and deep sense of being ok both in yourself and with the other person. This is true however you are feeling. Intimacy is a spacious place. It has room for difficult feelings and deep joy. Play, sex, awe, wonder, grief, sitting on the beach in mutual contented silence…anything where all that is required of us is to simply be.
It is high reward relating.