So a major goal of Life Script Analysis is to peel back the embedded layers of messages, injunctions, positives, and negatives, and help one understand the script that has been guiding them. Many believe this script is crystallized as early as the age of five, since the child has been learning from even the earliest months of infancy what to do, how to respond, how to behave, and whether or not he or she is deemed a "winner" or "loser" in life.
Because the life script tends to be set so early, it is influential in determining what kinds of roles people play in their relationships, whether Parent, Adult, or Child, and how they transact and respond in those roles. A person could choose to play the role of Critical Parent or Nurturing Parent, or when in the ego state of the Child, they could be the Natural Child, characterized by an endearing freedom and vulnerability, or the Adaptive Child, marked by a tendency to rebel or to sacrifice their true identity in order to fit in.
These roles become conflicted and confused by the art of provocation. The Adaptive Child knows how to "push the buttons" that provoke the Critical Parent. The goal of that provocation may simply be to get a negative stroke, since that would be better than no strokes at all. Yet provocation and the tension it arouses is hardly a desirable way to relate to others.
As the script, roles, and patterns of provocation and game-playing become clearer through Life Script Analysis, the individual can begin to do the crucial work of granting permission. Permission needs to be given by trusted counselors or peers to edit or re-write the script, and permission needs to be given to oneself to begin to write the new lines and chapters of a happier story.
The negative message of "don't get too close", needs to be replaced with the positive permission to feel and experience one's own thoughts and emotions. The negative message of "do not exist" or "do not be" needs to be replaced with positive permission to find life meaningful.
A new song can be written. You may be exactly where you wanted to be today, for good or ill, but it doesn't mean you can't land someplace new tomorrow.
(continued from part 1)