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Provoking Humilities I

Transactional analysis describes four life positions. These positions are:

• I’m OK – You’re OK
• I’m OK – You’re not OK
• I’m not OK – You’re not OK
• I’m not OK – You’re OK

A child-parent tends to take the “I’m not OK – You’re OK” position. The adult is strong, certain, powerful and dominant. As one matures to adulthood, relationships should shift from child-parent to adult-adult interactions in the “I’m OK – You’re OK” position. However, when one party is stuck in a position other than “I’m OK – you’re OK”, the relationships take on less than ideal forms.

Two Common Parties in this Contest

Narcissists seek to keep their partner weak to maintain their own, superior position. They may do this by provoking humilities, aggravating others to extreme behavior and then pointing out the shortcomings to point out that person’s faults. Narcissists will manipulate others to shift blame to others in an effort to remain blameless. Narcissists will provoke others and then blame the other party for the fight; remaining calm while the other becomes angered is taken as a sign of superiority.

Narcissists do not care about the other person’s feelings. However, narcissists will take action to avoid being alone since they need someone else to affirm their perfection or to compare themselves against. Narcissists take the “I’m OK – you’re not OK” position relative to their partner.

Co-dependents sometimes take the “You’re OK, I’m not OK” pose, the opposite of narcissists. Co-dependents often pair up with narcissists. Co-dependents actively monitor and attempt to manage the feelings of their partners. The co-dependent will punish others by staying angry with them or maintaining the other partner’s bad emotions. By keeping the other person sad or upset, they show that they can hurt the other without physically hurting them.

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