Most men who come to see me are carrying a load they packed long before they could choose what went in it: a set of rules about how to get through life, and a set of habits for staying upright while doing it.
I often use the image of a backpack in a storm. As children we each picked up a backpack and filled it with whatever helped us stay upright in the weather we were born into. Some of what went in were tools, ways of doing things that kept us safe and kept us loved. Some of it was stitched into the lining, rules about what we must never do. In Transactional Analysis these have names. The tools are drivers. The rules in the lining are injunctions.
The tools: drivers
Taibi Kahler (1975) described five drivers: Be Perfect, Be Strong, Try Hard, Please Others and Hurry Up. They are the "shoulds" a child absorbs, often spoken out loud, and each carries a promise. If I get it right, if I do not make a fuss, if I keep everyone happy, then I will be OK.
Most of the men I work with know Be Strong intimately. It was the boy who did not cry when he was dropped from the team, and it is the man who has not told anyone that he is not sleeping. Be Perfect and Try Hard are rarely far behind, particularly in athletes, where the habit of never being satisfied is often rewarded right up until it breaks something.
None of these tools is bad. A man who can stay steady under pressure, who keeps going, who cares about getting it right, has real assets. The trouble is that a driver does not ask whether it is needed. It simply switches on. And the OK it promises is always conditional, which is why it never quite arrives.
The rules in the lining: injunctions
Injunctions are quieter and more powerful. Bob and Mary Goulding (1976) described a set of them, including Don't Exist, Don't Be You, Don't Be Close, Don't Belong, Don't Feel, Don't Think, Don't Be Important and Don't Make It. They are rarely said in words. A child picks them up from a parent's face, from what happens when he gets upset, from what is never talked about in the house. In script terms they come from the parent's Child, the frightened or overwhelmed part of the adult who was meant to be looking after him.
What I try to hold onto in the therapy room is that the injunction is only half of it. The other half is what the child decided to do with it. One boy who feels Don't Feel decides, "I will never let them see me hurt." Another decides something quite different. Either way the decision was creative. It was the best a small person could manage with what he had, and it often worked.
Why the load gets heavy
The backpack does not get repacked as we grow. The weather changes, but the rules stay stitched in and the tools keep switching on. So a man in his forties can still be crossing his life as if it were the storm he grew up in.
The two also pull against each other. A man with Be Strong and Don't Feel will often look composed while carrying a great deal underneath. A man with Try Hard and Don't Make It may work himself into the ground and somehow never arrive. From the outside it looks like stress or burnout. From the inside it often feels like failure. What I tend to see is a man carrying weight he no longer needs, and paying for it in energy, in sleep, and in distance from the people he loves.
What therapy does with the backpack
I do not try to empty anyone's backpack. Those tools have value and the rules were there for a reason. The work is slower and, I think, more respectful than that.
It usually begins with noticing. Often the most useful moment is when a man catches the old rule in action, in a session or during his week, and recognises that what he is reacting to now is not what he was protecting himself from then. That realisation, that what he knows now is different from what he once concluded, can be quietly unsettling. It also tends to open the way to feelings that have been held down for a long time, and those need room and care.
A lot of this happens between us. If a man's rule is Don't Be Close, it will show up in how he is with me, and that is where the work is. Being met differently, often and over time, is what loosens something that was stitched in early.
From there, choice becomes possible. Usually it is quiet: a clearer sense of what he wants to keep, what he can put down, and how he wants to live now.
A note of caution
Drivers and injunctions are a useful map, but they are not a diagnosis, and no one is simply their script. I am wary of any checklist that tells you which ones you have. They are better discovered slowly, in a relationship, than assigned.
If you are curious about how these patterns show up in personality, my free books on Personality Adaptations explore them in more depth. You can find them on my Writing and Training page.
I offer psychotherapy for men in Falmouth, Cornwall and online across the UK.
References
Goulding, R., & Goulding, M. (1976). Injunctions, decisions and redecisions. Transactional Analysis Journal, 6(1), 41 to 48.
Kahler, T. (1975). Drivers: The key to the process of scripts. Transactional Analysis Journal, 5(3), 280 to 284.
Stewart, I., & Joines, V. (2012). TA Today: A New Introduction to Transactional Analysis (2nd ed.). Lifespace.
If you would like to talk about working together, you are welcome to send an enquiry.
