You can learn to listen and understand yourself

Eric Berne describes three states of the ego that coexist in each of us: The child, The Father and The adult. They are not stages of age or personality types, but different ways in which we interpret experiences, assign meaning to relationships, and choose to respond to the world around us. They coexist constantly and are activated differently depending on the context, the people we interact with, and, above all, the experiences we carry with us.

The child it is the place where our earliest emotions, needs, and adaptations remain recorded.

The Fatherthey maintain the rules, values, beliefs, and relational patterns that we have internalized from those who have cared for us or represented authority.

The adult it is the only part capable of looking at the present with discernment, of distinguishing between what belongs to the past and what belongs to today’s reality, and of consciously choosing how to respond.

Most of the time we do not consciously choose the state in which we communicate. In situations of pressure, conflict or vulnerability, we respond from places that, when they were young, learned that this is safer. If we did not feel seen, chosen or important in our childhood, it is possible that in adult relationships we may seek, without realizing it, people to repair that experience. We are not just looking for love, appreciation or validation. We are symbolically seeking that Adult who will take the place of the Father that we felt we had lost or did not have as we needed.

Similarly, when our decisions were met with criticism rather than trust, it is possible that we learn to orient ourselves more easily according to the expectations of others than according to our own discernment and responsibility. The critical voice ends up being internalized and, over time, it no longer seems to belong to the external critic. It becomes the natural way we evaluate, compare, and relate to ourselves. Thus, many of the dialogues we have with ourselves today are actually the echo of conversations that began long ago.

But the dynamics do not stop there. As we grow, we do not remain only in the position of the Child. We begin to occupy, in turn, the position of the Parent in the relationships we build: with our own children, with our partner, with our colleagues, with the teams we lead or even with ourselves. Without noticing it, we often repeat the tone, the rules and the ways of relating that we have internalized. Sometimes we perpetuate them almost identically. Other times we choose the opposite extreme, convinced that if we do exactly the opposite we will avoid the suffering experienced once upon a time. And both can represent forms of adaptation to the same relational history.

This repetition does not speak of our lack of maturity, but of the strength of the experiences that have shaped us. Our relational history continues to communicate through us, even when we believe we are only talking about the present. It is expressed through perfectionism, through the need for control, through the difficulty of asking for help, through the tendency to justify ourselves excessively or through the belief that vulnerability must be hidden. Often, we react not on what is happening in front of us, but on what the current situation triggers from our previous experiences.

The values we have received in our family or in the environments in which we grew up are essential. They provide us with guidance, identity, and meaning. However, there are times when they cease to be points of orientation and become positions that we feel we must defend at all costs. The more intensely a value has been defended, idealized, or proclaimed in our history, the greater the risk that we will develop an emotional rigidity around it. At that moment, we no longer listen to understand, but to confirm what we already believe. The dialogue becomes confrontational, and differences in perspective are perceived as threats, not as opportunities for learning.

Perhaps that is why we spend so much energy on disputes about the way things are, forgetting that, at their core, people often share very similar needs. Beyond opinions, rules, and beliefs, there is the same need to be counted on, to be seen, respected, and accepted. When we only look at the form, the differences seem irreconcilable. When we manage to descend to the content, we discover that many of the conflicts are actually about the same human need expressed in different languages.

The role of the Adult is not to silence either the Child or the Parent. His role is to listen to both of them. To observe what belongs to the past and what belongs to the present, what is worth preserving and what can be transformed. The Adult does not reject the values, but looks at them with discernment. He does not deny the emotions of the Child, but offers them a space in which they can be understood without automatically leading every reaction.

Perhaps the process of maturation does not mean becoming someone else, but starting to notice what we contribute in each relationship. To understand what we select from the experiences of others, what we continue to repeat from our own history, and how we choose to count in the lives of those around us. At the same time, it means developing the patience and gentleness to accept that people will always see us through their own life experience, not through our eyes.

No one can make us count more than we choose to count in our own eyes.

Through the created context, the true encounter with ourselves begins and we become available to look at it.