Articles

Ego Fortification, Contracts I

Acting as Your Own Therapist
Transactional is suitable for self analysis and application of its concepts to yourself. It therefore makes sense that you aren't necessarily dependant on a therapist; that in fact you can make a contract with yourself and monitor progress yourself. It would be best to have some independent source to confirm the contract and we would suggest you write it down.

Also it would probably be best to set down a regular time to evaluate progress, although this would only be possible on a subjective basis. But you could try to estimate the frequency of occurrence of unwanted behaviors and record this. This would be a close approximation to what a therapist might do, although you would not have the advantage of an independent, experienced observer to gauge progress.

In order to do this you would need to have an excellent knowledge of Transactional Analysis and how to apply it in a therapeutic milieu, so you would probably need to have been thru a complete treatment.

Writing it down would be advisable to avoid a process of "contract creep", where the terms and purpose of the contract of the contract were gradually changed by a biased memory. We are very good at changing how we remember things to better suit ourselves. If you feel there is a need to revise the contract in the light of experience and progress, this should also be written down. Fooling yourself doesn't help. Writing it down also helps to make sure the contract is clear and well-defined.

This would be best done in conjunction with the Adult-Ego. Very specific and clear instructions to the Adult-Ego should be given and preferably should include some way objective way of measuring progress. In this regard, remember that what you measure is what you get, so choose something which is meaningful in terms of improvement to measure.

It may be very tricky to determine some suitable measure, but this step could make the difference between success and failure. On the other hand, you are almost sure to achieve some progress and persistence might take you as far as you need to go. But if you don't have some measure, you will need to rely on a subjective "feeling as to progress and this would be very unreliable.


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