Module 02. Glossary
Terms of the module
- Anti-bite
- Circular logic
- Codependency (12 signs)
- Cognitive distortions (11)
- Four floors (Worker — Master — Manager — Boss)
- Goals (24 steps)
- Keeping the positional advantage (“But you’re a doctor…”)
- Life script
- Parental injunctions (12)
- Psychobiological reserves (PBR)
- Secondary gains (12)
- Self-permission
- SOMED (the cycle and rebuilding it)
- Stealing responsibility (19 manifestations)
- Winner and Loser (life position)
Anti-bite
A technique for getting out of a game at the moment of the bite: instead of the habitual automatic reaction, name it out loud and choose a different behavior. The formula: cushioning + “your words (behavior) make me want to A. Instead, I invite you to B. This matters because C” + taking the lead. To a barb: “Okay. Your words make me want to justify myself. Instead, I invite you to say straight out what upset you: it’s important for me to understand. What happened?” The technique does with a hook what psychoanalysts since Paula Heimann have done with countertransference: the feeling the other person has stirred up is not an obstacle but information about what is happening between you right now, and, once spoken aloud, it turns from the driving force of the game into a description of it. In Berne, a game rests on both participants acting on the hidden level; the anti-bite brings the hidden onto the open level, and carrying on with the script becomes awkward for the provocateur themselves.
Having chosen to react differently, I step out of the captivity of the past: a game is transference in miniature, a repetition of an old scene with a new partner, and the named wish to justify yourself, to take offense or to strike back stops being in control. The limit of the technique: it is designed for relationships where talking as equals is possible; with a habitual aggressor the more reliable course is to cut back contact. One of the eight techniques for utilizing hooks (module 7); it builds on the hook — bite pair (module 1).
Circular logic
Two ways of looking at a problem. Linear logic: “this happened because…” — an event as the result of past causes. Circular logic: “this is happening so that…” — a situation as part of a repeating cycle in which my current behavior sustains or recreates what I’m complaining about. The view comes from systemic family therapy: Gregory Bateson and the Palo Alto school showed that in relationships there is no first cause, only punctuation — each participant places the commas in the shared chain so that the other one comes out to blame. Their classic example coincides with the course’s: the wife nags — the husband withdraws — the wife nags harder; he withdraws because she nags, she nags because he withdraws, and who “started it” is impossible to establish, and there is no need to.
The value is that instead of searching for the culprit you find the point where you can break the circle with your own move: the only element of the system directly available to you is your own. It is an antidote to blame and helplessness: the only thing you can change is your own move. This is exactly how SOMED (my contribution to the cycle), the cycle of abuse (module 3) and the view of the family as a system (module 6) work.
Codependency (12 signs)
A painful preoccupation with other people — their needs, controlling them, rescuing them, thoughts about them — while forgetting about yourself. Taking responsibility for others and refusing responsibility for yourself; in the “8 states” model this is the Parent in a minus state. The word came from the practice of helping the families of addicts, where it was noticed that an alcoholic’s wife organizes her life around his bottle no less than he does himself, and the illness turns out to be shared; Winnicott described the healthy model of what is disrupted here: the mother is completely absorbed in the infant, but only for the first weeks, and then lets go — the codependent person stays in this absorption forever, and with another adult at that. Signs: obsessive focus of your thoughts on the other person; a feeling that you need to control them; readiness to solve their problems and rescue them; readiness for self-sacrifice; a panicky fear of separation; shame and guilt for someone else’s behavior; long periods of fear, guilt, resentment, anger — chronic stress; attempts to dominate and to take on all the household duties; sexual problems; anger and quarrelsomeness at the slightest provocation; denial as a defense; low self-esteem that depends on others.
Outwardly it looks like devotion and care; inside, it is anxiety and losing yourself: “I’m fine only if he’s fine”; in a therapist’s office such a person answers the question “and what do you want?” with a long silence. It shows up as stealing responsibility and as the role of the Rescuer in the Karpman Drama Triangle. The way out is to bring the focus back to your own life and let the other adult be the author of theirs. In love relationships the same logic is explored as emotional dependency (module 4), and the illusion “when he changes, life will begin” — as the “IF” trap (module 6).
Cognitive distortions (11)
Systematic errors of thinking that the mind slides into on autopilot: shoulds (“I must,” “they have to”), polarized thinking (“either good or bad”), overgeneralization (“always,” “never”), filtering (I see only the negative or only the positive), discounting (“it’s no big deal,” “so what”), predicting the future, catastrophizing (“all is lost”), labeling, exaggeration, personalization (“everyone is looking at me”) and mind reading (“she surely thinks I’m stupid”). The catalog was compiled by Aaron Beck, who noticed the same logical glitches in the speech of depressed patients, and Albert Ellis, who called shoulds the chief of them; the course also describes a pyramid in the spirit of cognitive therapy: core beliefs about yourself, others and the world — on top of them, distortions — on top of those, automatic thoughts, which are what set your state. Psychoanalysis adds a question that cognitive therapy usually doesn’t ask: what the distortion protects against. Catastrophizing, for example, often guards against disappointment — whoever expects the worst is never let down.
A distortion produces an extra, disproportionate emotion and burns psychobiological reserves for nothing. The skill is to catch the distortion and bring the thought back to the facts: “what facts do I have? is this really always true?” The rules of how the mind works and the techniques for inner calm (module 8) work with them directly; the harshest distortion — shoulds — is explored separately in module 9.
Four floors (Worker — Master — Manager — Boss)
The course’s own metaphor: a factory viewed from the bottom up. The first floor, the Worker, moves equipment — his success depends on events: there’s an order, there’s a bonus; his wife said no — that’s bad. The second, the Master, moves workers — his success depends on actions. The third, the Manager, moves processes and resources — on decisions. The fourth, the Boss, moves attitude and state: the vision of the future, the mission, work on one’s state. The factory is run only from the fourth floor. Psychology has long known the first floor under the name of Julian Rotter’s external locus of control — the conviction that life is shaped by circumstances; the course adds to this a ladder leading upward and a claim familiar to psychoanalysts from Winnicott: being comes first, doing second — the state you act from matters more than what exactly you do.
Imagine it’s not a factory but you: you spend time on every floor, each one is needed depending on the situation, but you are in control only from the fourth; the check is simple: if your mood by evening is fully explained by what happened during the day, you spent the day on the first floor. The course’s guideline for the focus of attention: state — 70 percent, decisions — 20, actions — 8, events — 2. Next to the model is the “slingshot”: a neutral event — state — decision (plus or minus) — action — the next event. Ways of returning to the fourth floor: the questions “what do I choose instead of this, and why does it matter?”; saying out loud “I know what to do, and it’s easy”; “my world takes care of me, even if I don’t think so right now”; “I have enough, everyone works for everyone”; allowing yourself to live through the emotion; “it’s time already”; in a feeling of injustice — “there is a balance, the task is to figure it out”; “I am like a gift: who I am, what I do and for whom.” The model is developed in the techniques for inner calm (module 8).
Goals (24 steps)
Goal setting as a skill of the Adult. Five foundations: a person lives in a world of their own ideas, and working on a goal is working on those ideas; the future is the cause, the present is the effect; in the outer world a person sees what is in their inner world; the very process of setting goals trains the nervous tissue and is inspiring; having answered the open questions, you are already different: the you who answered the questions and the you who didn’t are two different people stepping into different tomorrows. The model has absorbed the best of coaching and of the well-formed outcome: an image of the goal in sensations, measurability, resources, an ecology check; but two of its questions come from psychoanalysis: “what will you get by not achieving the goal?” looks for the secondary gain, and “why does it truly matter to you” checks whether this goal is yours or inherited from the script — other people’s goals are reached joylessly or not at all.
Twenty-four questions lead from “what do you choose to invite into your life in the next five years” through the degree to which it depends on you, a detailed image of the result (what you will see, hear, feel), measurability in numbers, resources and support, the deep “why it matters,” the benefits of achieving and of not achieving, “who you need to be and what you need to be able to do,” a timeline with stages, markers of an ecological path, review, obstacles and plan B — to the first step, thanking yourself for it, and the summary. It rests on “want / can / must” from CAP+ and on the vision of the future; the one-year version is “Hello, My New Year!” (module 5), the ten-year one — the session on four horizons (module 10).
Keeping the positional advantage (“But you’re a doctor…”)
A five-step response to a request for professional advice in unsuitable conditions: “just take a quick look, I sent you a photo, you’re a doctor after all (a lawyer, a programmer).” The request is built as a double bind, described by Gregory Bateson: you are expected at the same time to answer as a friend (quickly, simply) and as a professional (accurately and responsibly), and either of the two answers will turn out to be wrong. Psychoanalysis is well aware of the cost of such situations: the frame — time, place, conditions of work — is not a formality but part of the help itself, and advice given outside the frame heals no better than a prescription written on the dance floor. The answer: got it, I see the issue matters; precisely because I’m a doctor, I can’t give recommendations from a photo; the thing is, without a detailed examination any advice will not only not help but will do harm; let’s do this — I’ll send you a number, book an appointment, and I’ll tell you what to bring; this will help avoid risks A and gain advantage B, plus taking the lead. To a repeated hook: “Do I understand correctly that you didn’t hear what I just said?”
The technique preserves professional boundaries, doesn’t devalue the specialist’s work and protects the person asking from off-the-cuff advice; a specialist who answers “from a photo” takes two risks — making a mistake and getting people used to the idea that his work is worth nothing. It is a demonstration of the Adult position in a double-bind situation and an offer of an appropriate format instead of free work. It rests on the refusal of the Well-Adapted Child and on the principles of agreements (module 1).
Life script
An unconscious life plan — the sum of beliefs about yourself, others and the world, and of habitual emotions. It begins to form long before birth (a child’s self-awareness is preceded by others’ awareness of the child), is put together in childhood, reinforced by parental injunctions, the system of punishments and rewards, habitual SOMEDs and a unique pattern of cognitive distortions, and is justified by the life that follows, ending the way it was predestined: “I told you so!” The definition repeats Berne almost word for word: he compared the script to a play written in childhood and acted out by an adult who doesn’t realize it is a play; French psychoanalysis clarifies where “long before birth” comes from: Piera Aulagnier described how parental speech assigns the child a place, a name and a role in advance, and the child is born already a character in someone else’s story.
The power of the script is in its invisibility: until it is recognized, a person repeats it, thinking that “that’s just how it turned out,” and each confirmation feels like a discovery, although it was predicted. Awareness frees you from the script. At its root is the Winner’s or the Loser’s position. Further on, the theme goes deeper in the shell, self-esteem and script processes (module 8) and gets a rigorous map in early maladaptive schemas (module 9).
Parental injunctions (12)
Prohibition-messages absorbed in childhood — a system of punishments and rewards that has become the regulator of thoughts, emotions and behavior. The list of twelve injunctions was compiled by Robert and Mary Goulding, who observed which early decisions most often lie behind adults’ difficulties; in psychoanalysis the same material is called the superego — parental prohibitions that have become an inner voice — and Winnicott showed the price of obeying them: a false self that lives correctly, but not its own life. The course’s twelve injunctions: don’t exist (“get lost,” “I don’t want to see you”); don’t be yourself (“little Seryozha can already read, and he’s younger than you”); don’t be a child (“big boys don’t cry”); don’t grow up, that is, don’t leave me; don’t think (“eggs don’t teach the hen”); don’t succeed (“who draws a horse like that, Picasso?”); don’t do anything (“leave it, I’d better do it myself”); don’t be first (“sit there and keep your mouth shut”); don’t belong (“you’re not like everyone else”); don’t be close (“don’t trust anyone, keep your distance”); don’t be well (“why are you so feeble?”); don’t feel (“don’t you dare cry,” “don’t be angry”).
An injunction is rarely spoken as an order — more often it is a sigh, a look, a comparison, and the child accepts it as a condition of love, building it into themselves; the injunction is the rule itself, and the Critical Parent (module 1) is the voice that speaks it. An adult recognizes their injunction by what is inexplicably hard: asking, resting, keeping quiet about yourself. Once you recognize it, you get the chance to rewrite the family script and act from your own goals. The answer to an injunction is self-permission, and beyond that — “I allow myself” (module 6) and counter-permissions (module 8).
Psychobiological reserves (PBR)
The inner reserves of energy that we spend in any physical and psychological activity. The course’s image is an ink-blot reservoir that fills up and gets used up. The idea goes back to Hans Selye, who discovered stress: he suggested that the organism has a finite supply of adaptation energy, and every anxiety draws on it just as an illness or the cold does. Every internal organ is subordinate to the nervous system, and every time a person gets nervous, they deplete their PBR: the reserve goes on negative automatic thoughts born of cognitive distortions. Joyce McDougall, a psychoanalyst who worked a great deal with psychosomatics, described how the body begins to speak in symptoms where the psyche can’t cope with an experience — the PBR runs out before the person notices that they were “just nervous.”
The same task from the boss at the end of the day costs a person with many distortions (“this is a disaster, they don’t value me”) a night’s sleep, and a person with clear thinking (“I’ll have to work hard, but it’s doable”) only the effort of the work itself. You need to take care not only of your body but also of your psychological state: PBR can be spent or saved by changing your attitude to events. Hence the “four floors” model, scarcity and abundance (module 5) and the techniques for inner calm (module 8).
Secondary gains (12)
A hidden, often unconscious benefit from your own problem, which is why the problem holds on so firmly. The concept was introduced by Freud when he was examining why a symptom doesn’t go away even after it has been understood: besides the primary gain — the symptom relieves an inner conflict — there is a secondary one: the illness brings care, frees you from obligations, gives you power over those close to you, and parting with it doesn’t pay. The course names twelve such gains: being able to lash out at others; justifying your selfishness and laziness by helplessness; attracting attention by calling yourself useless; justifying loneliness by unworthiness and bad luck; letting yourself go; considering yourself unique — “nobody else has anything like this”; avoiding unpleasant duties; taking risks for the adrenaline; taking responsibility off yourself; justifying yourself with an old grievance; justifying your reproaches of others; getting sympathy and pity.
The honest question “what do I lose if this problem disappears?” often uncovers something unexpected: along with the migraine goes the only legitimate reason to be alone for a while. Recognizing the gain is not a reason to blame yourself but a chance to get the same thing (attention, rest, safety) in another, non-destructive way. One of the fourteen reasons for resistance to change (module 5); the 24-step goal model has a direct question: “what will you get by not achieving the goal?”
Self-permission
Consciously permitting yourself what was forbidden by a parental injunction: “I’m allowed to live my own life,” “I’m allowed to feel,” “I’m allowed to make mistakes,” “I’m allowed to be successful.” In transactional analysis a permission is a therapeutic act, the opposite of an injunction, and the Gouldings called its result redecision: the new decision is made by the same child part that once made the old one, so the adult understanding alone that “this is irrational” is not enough — it has to actually become allowed. This is not a slogan but a quiet inner right that is regained gradually and reinforced by actions: permission to rest becomes real on the first evening spent without guilt.
The course also offers a very simple version: “I’m furious? I allow myself ten minutes of fury” — name the emotion and give it time; a feeling that is named and dosed passes, a suppressed one builds up. Against the childhood “not allowed” stands the adult “allowed.” The theme develops into “I allow myself” (module 6) and the twelve counter-permissions against the Inner Controller (module 8).
SOMED (the cycle and rebuilding it)
A model for taking apart a repeating unwanted cycle: Situation (what I see and hear) → Sensations in the body → Thoughts (in direct speech) → Emotions → Actions by which I keep this cycle going again and again. The same five elements underlie cognitive therapy — a model in which the situation, thoughts, mood, physical reactions and behavior are linked in a ring, and each element pulls the others along; the course adds to it a strict order of questions and the requirement to write the thoughts down word for word, in direct speech, because “I thought he didn’t respect me” and “there he goes again, treating me like I’m nothing” are different thoughts with different emotions. The five questions uncover your own contribution to the problem and the point for change — most often it is a thought or a bodily signal that used to slip by unnoticed: tensed shoulders appear a minute before the irritation.
The second half of the model builds a cycle with a plus sign, as in solution-focused therapy, where instead of analyzing the problem you describe the desired future: what situation I choose to create instead of this one, what I choose to feel in my body, what thoughts to think, what emotions to experience, what small step to take in the near future, what was useful and what the first step will be. In essence, this is an expanded ABC model, supplemented by the body. In the Winner, the SOMEDs point the same way; in the Loser, they point in different directions; the script is put together from childhood SOMEDs, and parental injunctions are their regulator.
Stealing responsibility (19 manifestations)
A characteristic sign of codependency: a person takes on what doesn’t belong to them — the feelings, decisions and life of another adult. “I have to make sure he doesn’t get upset” is a typical formula. Claude Steiner, a student of Berne, has a handy criterion: you are rescuing rather than helping if you do what you don’t want to do, or do more than half the work in a shared task; stealing responsibility is rescuing turned into a way of life. The course explores it using the example of life alongside an addict: denying the problem (“he can always quit”), minimizing, money “is better off with me than with the neighbors,” paying someone else’s debts, covering up, allowing your boundaries and the order of your home to be violated, gifts with conditions attached, promises you won’t keep, suppressing your feelings, self-blame, over-control (“where are you? who are you with?”), forgetting your own needs, a sense of hopelessness and, finally, unwillingness to see these points.
The paradox is that it harms both people: it deprives the other person of independence and experience, and the “thief” of their strength and their own life; and the more responsibility has been stolen, the more helpless the person it was stolen from looks — which again justifies the guardianship. The Placating Parent (module 1) steals responsibility under the guise of care. Giving responsibility back to each other is the basis of getting out of codependency; in module 8 the same idea is phrased as responsibility for your own choice, not for other people’s feelings.
Winner and Loser (life position)
The two extremes of the scale that underlies the script; there are no pure specimens, and the theme is measured on a scale from 1 to 100. The concept of the life position belongs to Berne: back in early childhood a person decides whether they are OK and whether others are OK, and then spends their whole life collecting proof of it; Berne also distinguished the scripts of winners, losers and “non-winners,” and his followers reduced the positions to the simple formula “I’m OK — You’re OK.” In Melanie Klein’s language, the ability to hold in mind at the same time “I am good” and “the other is good,” without casting anyone as bad, is a sign of maturity, of the depressive position, whereas splitting — “someone here is necessarily not OK” — is an earlier way of surviving. The Winner’s position: I’m OK — You’re OK — They’re OK. He sets and achieves real goals, looks for and finds confirmation of positive beliefs, makes decisions from CAP+, wants to, is able to and does keep the laws of agreements, doesn’t manipulate and doesn’t let himself be manipulated, can confidently say “no,” lives in the plus states, separates facts from opinions, values time, can delay gratification and doesn’t bite on hooks. If the obstacles are insurmountable, he sets other goals.
The Loser considers himself or others not OK in any case, doesn’t believe it is possible to cope and to change, regrets past decisions, hands out and demands kicks, is afraid of strokes, remains hostage to parental prohibitions; his escape doors are wide open, and his life runs in the cycle “prohibition — lapse — guilt — punishment — prohibition.” This is not about real achievements: a person who is successful by society’s standards can live from the Loser position inside, and their success is then a way of drowning out “I’m not OK” for a while. Becoming aware of your point on the scale is the first step toward shifting it.