TA: Chapters 8 & 9

Chapter 8: Stamp Collections

 

TA Brown Stamps

Whenever we get our feelings hurt, are afraid, or get mad, we may keep those mean feelings inside.  We call that saving our TA Brown Stamps.  Some people use different colors to talk about the different kinds of saved up feelings—red for anger, blue for fear, brown for NOT OK.

 

When someone gives you a compliment (a stroke) and you don’t accept it, TA says you are painting the gold stamp brown.

 

Brown stamps are “printed” inside us.  When a brown stamp is “printed,” we either throw it away or put it in a “stamp book” for a gotcha later.   A gotcha is a “Now we got you” for doing a mean thing to us earlier.

 

Our Child can do three things with Brown Stamps

• We can keep them and save them up for a big explosion
• Throw them away as soon as  they are printed
• Not print them at all.

 

Chapter 9:  Transactions

 

How You and I Talk to Each Other

 

A transaction is the giving and taking of a stroke, the way people talk to each other.   A transaction has two strokes.  One is the stimulus stroke which makes you “feel.”  The other stroke is the response stroke. 

 

When the lines of the stroke are parallel the information is clear.  We call that a straight or parallel transaction.

 

A Crossed Transaction

This happens when one person speaks Adult to Adult, but the other responds as a Parent to the Child.  People are no longer communicating—in fact, an unpleasant series of transactions or an argument may result.

 

Straight Transactions go from Parent to Parent, Adult to Adult, Child to Child, or Parent to Child.   As long as the lines don’t cross, we will continue to speak to each other.  If they cross, we’ll either stop talking or have a fight.

 

Early Transactions

Every transaction you have had since birth was recorded on your brain and you never forgot them.  The very important and painful transactions are most easily remembered.  Often we remember the feelings, but not what it was all about.

 

Double (Duplex) Transactions

Sometimes a transaction is hidden.  We say one thing but mean something else at the same time.

 

Sometimes double transactions happen without our knowing it—then it is a hidden transaction.  A series of these is a Game.

 

The most important transaction is the parallel one.  The reason is because that’s the one that makes sense and helps us understand ourselves and other people.

 

Not all transactions are verbal—gestures, salutes, frowns, smiles, touches, and other physical strokes are ways of transacting.

 

Exercises

 

1.         When you say, “Hello,” to someone, you are giving them a stroke.

2.         When you speak to someone from your Adult to their Adult, and they answer you the same way, you have a parallel transaction.

3.         When you speak to the Adult in someone and they answer from their Child, you have a crossed transaction.

4.         When a cross transaction happens, you’re most likely to have an argument.

5.         When two people speak at one level (like from Adult to Adult), but mean something else, like from Child to Child, they are having a double transaction.