Transactional Analysis : Rackets

From the lesson on strokes you know that as a baby you needed parental attention to confirm your existence and worth; worthy of positive parental strokes such as hugs and kisses, or worthy of negative parental strokes such as spankings or yelling. Either way, the strokes were important to you. Keep in mind that negative strokes (negative attention) are better than no strokes at all, even if those negative strokes themselves result in suffering. Bizarre but true. You probably know someone who repeatedly sets themselves up for 'bad stuff' even when they know better.

Being a smart little person, you very quickly figured out that if you expressed certain emotions, you'd probably get a stroke. And most of us also determined the one specific emotion that was a sure bet. After that, all we needed to do was create the feeling and express it in order to get stroked. But how do we create that requisite feeling? Very simple: we manipulate ourselves and the environment around us through our behaviour (words and actions).

Now for a couple of definitions. That feeling I just talked about, the one that had a very high success rate at soliciting strokes, is the Racket Feeling. It's a familiar emotion, learned and encouraged (by stroking) in childhood, experienced in many different situations and inadequate as an Adult problem solving strategy. In other words: As an adult you will have a favored emotion, seemingly justified by each situation, that does nothing to solve the immediate problem. Whatever emotion you experience most frequently under stress is probably your racket feeling.

The manipulation I talked about above is the Racket. It's a set of scripty behaviours employed outside of awareness to manage the environment with the result of a racket feeling. In other words: As an adult, when you get stroke deprived and do not recognise it and take conscious action to get strokes, in all likelihood you will resort to the out of conscious method you employed as a child - you'll set up a situation to have your racket feeling.

So you're driving along in the right hand lane of a four lane road. Singing along with your favorite song on the radio. Driving the speed limit you notice a car is tailgaiting you. The male driver cannot pass because of traffic in the adjacent lane. Several cars pass before he is able to swing into the passing lane. As he accelerates by, he honks his horn. You galnce over. He's giving you the finger, red in the face, and shouting at you. But rather than reacting in a knee jerk way, you conclude that he's just executed his racket. You turn your attention back to the road - no point giving him the strokes he wants and thus encourage that behaviour. From his point of view, he got 'caught' behind a 'slow poke' and his frustration was justified. But from a TA point of view he got himself behind you in order to feel angry - he needed the excuse. Otherwise, he could have done whatever it was that all the other passing lane vehicles had done. Not in awareness, he set it up!