Strange Ways Your Parents Author Your Life Path

and how to re-claim authorial control.

If I asked, “Where do your limiting beliefs come from?” you might mention:

• Mass media programming
• The corruption of Western culture
• Your lack of focus or discipline

But what if your deepest constraints are the limits your caregivers instilled into you?

Transactional analysis (TA) is a wry, playful psychoanalytic theory and form of therapy that can help you disentangle yourself from the psychological programming you received in early childhood.

According to TA, this programming stems (in large part) from the language our caregivers’ imprinted onto our psyches in childhood.

When you break this programming, you’ll naturally free yourself of the compulsions that keep you stuck in degrading, repetitive circumstances and mindsets.

The Narrative Universe Between the Parent & Child

According to transactional analysis, our life scripts determine the trajectories our lives take. Dr. Eric Berne describes life scripts as unconscious pathways created and reinforced by our parents. As we develop, our life scripts sink their teeth deeper into our psyches because we unconsciously look for evidence to justify them.

While most parents think of themselves as loving, these are only conscious intentions.

From a psychoanalytic perspective, every conscious intention has a shadowy, unconscious underbelly that betrays its opposite.

Our parents’ unconscious impacts on our psyches hold the most power to direct our life trajectories.

These lingering, unconscious effects arise both from the phrases our parents used to describe and control our behavior, as well as the covert dynamics in our childhood environments.

How the Primal Dramas of Childhood Inflect your Everyday Life

“There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent “— Carl Jung

Our parents reinforce our life scripts through three central means. These are…

Injunctions

Injunctions are prohibitions that restrict free behavior. Through injunctions, our parents told us what we shouldn’t do and be to maintain their approval.

Examples include, “Don’t take up too much space,” or “Don’t be so sure of yourself.” They can sometimes be direct, but often they’re more implicit or atmospheric.

Attributions

Through attributions, caretakers reinforce specific behaviors. While injunctions tell us what we shouldn’t do to win their approval, attributions tell us who we need to be and what we need to do to maintain it.

Examples include “You never worry,” “You’re so shy,” or “You’re clumsy.”

(Psychological) Witchcraft

Transactional analysis focuses on two layers of interaction: the social and the psychological. The social level is the realm of overt behaviors and statements.

By contrast, the psychological refers to the subtle, covert layer of communication that lurks on the surface of overt social dynamics. Psychological witchcraft speaks to the veiled level of communication that works its way into the subconscious mind.

It’s rare for parents to make statements as blunt as “You’re powerless,” or “I want you to die.” Instead, statements like these are conveyed implicitly: through jokes, glances, body language, and other subtle gestures.

How to Wrest Back Authorial Control (the Fast and Fun Way)

When trying to change their lives, most people make the mistake of relying on action alone. Action and hard work matter, but they arise from a deeper source: our identity.

You can liberate yourself from compulsive patterns — and create more satisfying alternatives — by developing awareness about the language you use to talk to yourself. Our inner conversations convey the narrative constraints our parents placed on us in childhood.

When you intervene on your inner conversations, you’re shifting the level of influence these constraints have over your thoughts and behaviors.

Make Your Scripts Explicit: A Simple Exercise for Psychological Freedom

Affirmations are a common recommendation in the personal development world. Every day, millions of people stand in front of the mirror and say, “I’m powerful,” or “Money flows to me.”

The problem with affirmations is they depend on emotion. If you’re repeating positive affirmations while feeling tense, dull, and fearful, they’re only increasing your inner resistance.

For affirmations to work, you need to either be in a positive or a neutral state. The irony, of course, is that we typically flock to affirmations when we’re feeling pain.

To change your programming (and the behaviors that spring from them), you can’t rely on suppressing or fighting it.

Instead, I want to invite you to radically embrace your negative programming. Get playful with it.

Making your prohibitions explicit is a strategy Carolyn Elliott introduced in her book, Existential Kink: Unmask your Shadow and Embrace your Power.

This is a shadow integration exercise that asks you to take note of the language you use to punish or critique yourself. Write these phrases down, then recite them into the mirror.

Cackle, use a deep, spooky voice. Dance around your room and say, “I absolutely refuse to feel okay unless the world approves of me,” or “I will continue to torture myself over mistakes I made six years ago for the rest of my life!”

Often, the phrases we use to punish ourselves today have attributions and injunctions baked into them. When we try to paper over them, we paradoxically reinforce them. Why?

Reality creation teacher Quazi Johir said it well:

“Life responds to the nature of our thoughts, rather than their content.”

In other words, when you affirm success and bounty but feel fear about bills, inadequacy, or your broken relationships, whatever you strongly feel will enlarge and multiply itself.

When you can give a taboo level of awareness — and even celebration — to the punishing phrases trawling your consciousness, you liberate stuck energy. You rob them of their power to torture you.

In embracing, playing with, and celebrating your dark programming, you infuse humor and lightness into it.

This is mental alchemy: you become the powerful alchemist of your inner life, rather than the slave to what your caregivers imprinted onto your psyche before you had a choice in the matter.

For more on how to alchemize fear, uncertainty, and envy so that it supports your juicest, most pressing intentions for this lifetime..

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