While I love to take Saydee for her ‘walkies’ I very much enjoy the opportunity to take that stroll with a friend. So, when a friend’s daughter gifted her a dog (which is a whole other story) I found a walking pal.
Walks with this new pal are not always simple, they usually come to test my thinking, my opinion, my understanding of myself, the world around me, the human unconscious and much more. For this a curious woman … not curious as in weird … but curious as in questioning.
Strolling in the fading Sydney warmth, on a stunning autumn day, my pal turns to me, looks me right in the eye and asks, ‘Is there anything in your life you are not happy with’.
What a huge question! I am momentarily blindsided. I’m not in the habit of processing and thinking so deeply about life and such things off duty on doggie walkies … while my work week is occupied with such deep reflection; strolling in the warm sun I am thinking more about enjoying nature, where I am, what the walking is evoking, the flora and fauna and what might make a good photograph. I guess I am, ‘at the moment’.
Having said that I immediately know the answer to her question … interestingly I have been pondering this very question for quite some time.
Another facet of this friendship is that I often feel as if she has been silently wandering about in my head taking notes from my internal processing chip. She is apt to ask the very questions that have been pondering and that is foremost in my mind. This day is no different.
While I answer her question and we do our usual exchange of, ‘what about you’, it is what she says next that opens an even deeper dialogue, ‘… I grew up with my father teaching me that “if you can’t be happy with what you have got right now, then you will never be happy” …’.
It reminded me of a piece of theory from Dr. Eric Berne in Transactional Analysis. Berne talks about Process Scripts. Process scripts are how we live our lives based on early (mostly unconscious) decisions that we make about the world and how to be in it. He postulated that there are six types of process scripts.
My friends’ fathers’ comment makes me think about the ‘Until Script’. This is where something good can’t happen until something less good has been completed. For example; I’ll get a better job when the kids finish school, life begins at 40, I’ll travel when I retire … I have a hunch you might know what I mean.
What in effect happens in this Process Script is that life is on hold ‘Until’. As a result, life gets shorter and shorter while we wait for the ‘better event’ or ‘better life’ to occur. Does this resonate? I mention it here only to awaken the readers’ thoughts to his or her own internal process. Understanding such futile patterns can sometimes aid in seeing what we are doing to truncate our lives … and in the hope of creating change at some level, albeit minor.
Having said that, much of this processing is unconscious and therefore difficult to change. Change is the power of psychotherapy. To read more about what psychotherapy is … and is not click here ,or to read my book click here
In another blog series, I will discuss the six types of Process Scripts, be sure to click on the subscribe button to receive that illuminating blog.
