GAMES people play

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I think this should be required learning for us as teenagers.
I was only aware of some of this as being common interaction.
I am high functioning and I can easily follow the logic of these dynamics, but the one over-powering question and feeling remains with me of "WHY would you do any of this?" I mean having the option of simply stating things in an accurate and logically simple manner.

After watching these three videos tonight I seems very clear to me that I anger people more often than not by responding inappropriately to these kinds of prompts, and I'm sure that I've also often been accused of posing these types of prompts or intentions when I was not. People have expected me to have been playing these games and treated me as such.

I find this sort of thing repulsive. Not that it exists, but that it is accepted and expected to be common and normal in our society.


Transactional Analysis
part 1


part 2


part 3

Seeing this was really a big deal for me, - an eye opener and an eye roller at the same time.

It does explain how so much I have done and said has been misinterpreted and/or butchered in intent by others around me. It causes me to want to go back and re-think so many things that had left me puzzled.

This also illustrates how little importance the transfer of accurate information is in most communications.
Everyone seems to be engaging in terms of manipulative gaming. Who is the better gamester?

For those of us who are naturally child-like, it would seem to be a trigger for the other person to assume a parental role in the transaction. This has happened so many times to me, and usually with bad results. The other person feels the need to disrespect you.
From my perspective, my input was completely neutral, and so I would be expected a neutral response, but that almost never happens.

Thanks for the video. Interesting.

Intuitively, I've become more and more aware of this as I've gotten older. Sometimes I can feel tension in a rule and I just feel like "Okay, now is my time to apologize to restore the balance" (even if perhaps I might not have anything to apologize for). The reason I apologize is to protect myself, and I think that's an important point. Sometimes, the apology is necessary but other times I do it to save myself.

I've gotten better at picking up on tension between people. Sometimes, I deliberately ignore it just because it's so overwhelming to deal with but I do have the ability to sense it.

Also, I don't think these are necessarily deliberate games people play.

It's subconscious. There's always a subconscious desire to restore balance for the good of onself.

In some cases, one needs to throw a jacknife in the middle of it, but people like to keep things steady for the most part just to keep things calm.

This was interesting and complicated at the same time. I understand where this is coming from and notice I behave in 'child' or 'parent' states more than 'adult' states. Shame I can't find a therapist. Hahahaha. I laugh, but I really do wish I could.

I agree with heavenly, I don't think this kind of behaviour is something people do deliberately. I think it's how we're wired and how we've developed (or failed to) and it's all tied into a big web of 'why we behave the way we do' as individuals.

Darn it, i knew there was a pattern in human behaviour!

*buys time travel machine and goes back in time to undo some conversations that affected me in a very negative way *

I think transactional analysis describes some human behaviour quite well. Particularly with couples when things go wrong. I heard that the purpose of games is to avoid intimacy. I still don't understand how that sorry situation came about for so many "normal" people.

I definitely like the "I'm OK, you're OK" way of seeing things, which I gather is TA's recommended way of avoiding games.

http://www.emotional-literacy.com/osp.htm

The link takes you to a page where you can access writing by psychotherapist Claude Steiner, one of the best writers on games that people play.

There are some that you see on WP from time to time, particularly these two:


"Wooden Leg" (endless reasons for staying in the same unhappy dysfunctional mode, every suggestion is rejected out of hand with endless "why I can't do that" and unrelenting negativity, often following this with attacks on the posters who responded to the original request for help)

"Now I've Got You, You Son of a b***h" (poster makes what appears to be an genuine reply to an OP, but it is a snare, and when the poster responds to it in good faith, the game player responds with hostility/personal attack)

"The Wooden Leg" is a Victim's game (not a small v victim, but a large V Victim who identifies with the victim position totally) We are all genuine small v victims sometimes, that's not a game.

"Now I've Got You... " is a Persecutors game, looking for people to victimize.

"I'm Only Trying to Help You" is a Rescuers game, offering unasked for help and punishing the recipient for not taking it. It is used to control another. (Help can be the sunny side of control).

The classic 3 positions in games are Victims, Persecutors and Rescuers. Steiner writes well about this with great clarity. The desire to blame others underlies all 3 games, together with power struggles.

I think that on this forum the most common state would be that posters are NOT playing a game, even though it may often look to others like they are.
There are a great many situations with us where honest answers would look to fall squarely into one of the gaming scenarios. Just a few examples are real depression, anxiety, paranoia, etc... Some people choose to believe that depression does not really exist and it's all victimization. Some believe that paranoia just means that the person is hiding something, or that anxiety is just an act. Why do people often have these beliefs? Because in our society it is very often true, because most people are exceedingly fake and ARE acting in order to manipulate others.

However, when this belief is used with someone who isn't faking, then they are automatically dragged into the game.
The gaming consists of aggressive memes, which is why they are so resilient and persistent.
Just the fear of these memes can and will put them into action, even where they were not present before.
They are social poison.
They are the tools of social mobility for the psychopath and for those who copy the psychopaths.

We are often really dysfunctional, depressed, etc... but exist in an environment of these gaming memes.
How many of us here have given an honest and accurate communication, only to be pulled into a game or be accused of gaming?

I believe that many of us here are very poor at copying the favorite memes of psychopaths, but, perhaps due to projection, we get accused of gaming, being manipulative, being narcissistic, being psychopathic, being a Victim, taking the child position, etc...

For example, many of us are really child-like in some ways, so some people may assume that we are taking the child position within a transaction in order to manipulate.
Other people seem to automatically, or subconsciously, place us into a box or plug us into one of those gaming positions. I think we often do NOT expect this and therefore perform or react "wrongly" to the situation.
Instead of the transaction being complementary and becoming stable, it becomes crossed and unstable, often escalating into more serious conflict.

"I think that on this forum the most common state would be that posters are NOT playing a game"

I completely agree with this. The vast majority are sincere and not gaming it

This thread was a real eye-opener for me. So many times, I've subconsciously (or unconsciously) spoken in a manner to my interlocutor that suggested that I was the subservient one - being in "naive little boy" mode - or that suggested I was the superior worldly one (i.e. using big words, showing my Jeopardy-like knowledge), and casting a backwards glance, it's now more clear to me to see how I alienated certain people. When I see Sheldon Cooper on Big Bang, that's obviously a gross exaggeration of the "superior worldly" or "parent" personality, but I saw a little of me in there, thankfully today that's been sharply curtailed

Thinking of the dating context: as a young man back when, I went on several dates with young women and just didn't get what was "expected" of me, or how to play the courting game...while it was more instinctive to young NT males to be light-hearted, cocky, coy, not overly intellectual, spontaneous, etc etc...ostensibly due to some evolutionary programming...my logic-intensive "natural program" obviously wasn't wired for that and so I missed the subtext of these social role-playing games. When I played the "child" or naive little boy unwittingly, at say the age of 25 and the girl I was with was 22, she probably thought "oh, great, he's a mama's boy who probably still lives in her basement and has a sheltered life, what a loser" - and when I played the stuffy "parent" type, she probably thought "father figure, eeww" - then imagine her discomfort and weird-out factor when I suddenly expressed signs of interest after it should have been mutually obvious that I was in the "virtual family & friends zone" and she probably got more turned off than if she had a "regular" guy on the date who stuttered and had halitosis.

Thanks for sharing, olympiadis!

It's so complicated.

How can anyone make sense out of all this?