i was going to attempt to write about this myself, but then i found this great article which i've summarised and added to.
Life script is the idea that we tend to have an unconscious life plan - like a story - that we make up as children about ourselves and about what's possible for our lives, which we tend to keep to and follow even when we are adults. It is mostly complete by the age of seven. To some degree though, it is an ongoing process of a self-defining, and sometimes self-limiting, psychological construction of reality.
The life plan is built by the child to make sense out of the world and to protect them from pain. In response to family and cultural messages, a child will make conclusive decisions about their character, how they relate to certain kinds of people, and the world at large. These decisions become a subconscious map that the individual unconsciously follows throughout their life.
Because these decisions are based on the child's limited information and processing skills, the map, or plan, can become self-limiting in adult life. we might keep choosing situations and people that hurt us, because we believe that's all we can hope for. in a less drastic way, it might mean we don't take up opportunities even if they are there, because they are outside our script.
think about how you expected your life to turn out as a teenager. Some people think that they will never meet anybody (a script decision about being alone) or they expect to do well in the world or in relationships. some people's script allow for more happiness than others. We can classify scripts in three different categories: winners, losers and banal scripts. A winner's script allows for the person who designed it to get what he or she wants in the end eg. someone might think as a child that one day they will be happily married and they fulfill this expectation in their lifetime. Loser scripts are those that end up with the person who lives them not getting what they want. A banal script is one which is built on mediocrity, nothing much is gained and nothing much lost.
how people seem on the surface is often no indicator of the script they may have written about themselves. there's a tension between the conscious and unconscious forces in a person's psyche, and people often have a conscious idea of who they are, which is completely different to who they fundamentally believe they are. you know those people that you meet that seem to have so much to offer, and yet they just can't get a break? these people may appear to be positive and upbeat, but you can bet that deep inside they believe that they are a loser. somewhere along the way, they made a decision that they had to hide this belief about themselves.
but no matter how someone seems on the surface, the buried issues always surface in some aspect of their life - often the same area, over and over again. your life will always eventually go in the direction of the deeply ingrained beliefs you have about yourself.
the article says that people follow their life scripts because they make life seem predictable. it makes sense that we would try to have control over something as tenuous as life, but it makes me think of a housefly trying to escape through a closed window. it keeps banging against the glass until it stuns itself, or finally cops on that it can't get out. and it's ironic, because in following an unconscious script, life still seems totally out of our control.
Whatever type of script you have written for yourself as a child, even if it is a winning script, it is still a pattern of thinking and behaving in the world which restricts your options. The ideal is to become script free, or autonomous. Autonomy is behaving, thinking or feeling in direct response to here and now reality rather than reacting to things based on your baggage. Autonomy is manifested by the release or recovery of three capacities: awareness, spontaneity and intimacy.
once you know what your unconscious life plan is you can change it. What seemed a generalized truth about life then might not be true for you anymore today. Re-decision is an emotional, cognitive and behavioral process. Scripts can be changed and disbanded all together. As an adult you are free to write your own story.
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* if you're a reader of this blog you'll know i like to define things ;)
3 comments:
I completely agree…… It's called Mindset!!
On my travels I was passing the elephants when I suddenly stopped, confused by the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope tied to their front leg. No chains, no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at anytime, break away from the ropes they were tied to but for some reason, they did not. The trainer was nearby so I asked why these beautiful, magnificent animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away.
"Well," he said, "when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them and, at that age, it's enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free." I was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn't, they were stuck right where they were.
Like the elephants, many of us go through life hanging onto a belief that we cannot do something?
very interesting.
Hmmm... thinking very quietly. Feeling it. Thank you for pointing this out. x
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