What is Your Life Script?

By Nancy Anderson

A life script is based on illogical decisions made around the age of puberty about how life will turn out for you. At the time, you were too young, isolated, or overwhelmed to know you had options. From then on, life may have run its course to failure in love and work, until you decided to change your script.

 Three Life Scripts

Think of a life script as a third party, like the director of a movie in which you and the supporting actors play the roles assigned to you. If you signed up for the Victim role (“poor me”) you can’t solve problems, so you expect people to solve them for you.

As a Rescuer (“let me help you”) you are supposed to solve others’ problems, so you can’t be happy until “they” are happy. When your role is Persecutor (“it’s all your fault”) others are responsible for your problems. When they don’t solve them, you get angry. Can you see how these three scripts interconnect, and that the outcome in every case is failure? Maddeningly, failure,.not success, is the payoff you work for in life, since that confirms the script.

The next time you read a novel, watch a movie, video or television drama, or listen to lyrics of “he/she done me wrong” songs, notice who plays the roles in The Drama Triangle, a concept created by the psychiatrist, Stephen Karpman.  The conversation goes from “poor me” to “let me help you” to “it’s all their/your fault,” and then it starts all over again.

To opt out of the roles in the Drama Triangle, you need to become aware of the roles you play and stop playing them. This is not easy since script behavior is automatic: stimulus then response, stimulus then response.

 For example, someone you know has a habit of making poor choices and is about to make another mistake. Without thinking, you offer a solution. The game begins. The other person appears to change so you feel hopeful (the hook). Then he (or she) does what he has always done and fails. Now you feel hopeless. The game ratchets up a notch.

When you say anything about the poor choice, the other person makes excuses, rationalizes with, “well, I’m getting better” or the conversation shifts to what you do wrong (gotcha!). Then you question yourself, feel guilty, or you get angry, all of which ups the ante.

 Then the other person gets defensive and the game escalates until the relationship stalemates or ends: game, set, and match (remember the goal for both of you is failure, not success). Does this sound familiar?

 To keep the game going, first you have to blind yourself to the other person’s part of the problem. Then you have to continue in this denial so as not to threaten the relationship. To change you have to be willing to try what feels uncomfortable and wrong and you have to continue to do this until the subconscious accepts the new outcome as true.

For instance, someone you know complains about an ongoing problem and then asks you what to do. This time you say (and mean it), “What do you think will solve the problem?” If this person asks, you say what you think and leave it at that. You don’t check back to see how they are doing.

 How to Become the Victor

When you catch yourself playing the role of the Victim focus on the solution to the problem, instead of complaining, or hoping someone will rescue you. When you are tempted to play Rescuer give the other person a chance to work through the difficulty, or not work through it. Nurture and encourage, but don’t enable.

Instead, trust that people can solve their problems, if they are willing to do the work. As the poet Keats said when he heard about the misfortune of a friend: “He will have the pleasure of trying the resources of his spirit.”

When anger or impatience causes you to shift to the role of Persecutor accept responsibility for your part of the problem. If you are involved with people who play any of the roles in the Drama Triangle say to yourself, “This is a game that always ends in failure and I choose not to play.” This decision puts you the role of the Victor, the person who solves problems.

Nancy Anderson is a career and life consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area and the author of the best selling career guide, Work with Passion, How to Do What You Love For a Living, and Work with Passion in Midlife and Beyond, Reach Your Full Potential and Make the Money You Need. Her website is workwithpassion.com.