Switching Parent-Child Roles In An Instant

My Father had a stroke & I needed to get him help

I found my father after he had a stroke last week, unable to stand up out of a chair. I had to call for an ambulance. I had to ask for help and help came, thank God. There’s nothing wrong in asking for help when you need it.

But, in a split second I was no longer playing “Child” to my father’s “Parent” position. I was playing caretaker (“Parent”) to my father who was, at that moment, unable to take care of himself.

Relationship Transactions Analysis

Karpman’s Drama Triangle is based off of Eric Berne’s transactional analysis work. Eric Berne wrote the book Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships¹. In it he wrote:

“The unit of social intercourse is called a transaction. If two or more people encounter each other in a social aggregation, sooner or later one of them will speak, or give some other indication of acknowledging the presence of the others. This is called the transactional stimulus. Another person will then say or do something which is in some way related to this stimulus, and that is called the transactional response. Simple transactional analysis is concerned with diagnosing which ego state implemented the transactional stimulus, and which one executed the transactional response.”

When you interact with other people you can be coming from a parental ego state, adult ego state, or a child ego state.

Eric Berne’s Games People Play describes the ego states from which we respond.

Complementary Transactions

If you and another person are complementing each other, playing parent to their child or vice versa, or interacting on the same level, then you won’t run into a problem with that other person. Because my father recognized that he needed help and was okay with being taken care of (for the most part²) he let me (and then the paramedics) take charge so it went smoothly.

Figure 2 shows complementary transactions where the lines never cross.

But, if my father had not recognized that an issue occurred and did not want to be put into a situation where he was receiving help, he could have become upset that I (and mostly the paramedics/hospital workers) were attempting to take care of him. People get upset when you treat them as if they are one thing (Parent/Adult/Child) but they feel as if they are not in that moment. When these interaction lines cross, you get problems with your social interactions.

Crossed Transactions

Eric Berne writes (and references Figure 3 above):

“The converse rule is that communication is broken off when a crossed transaction occurs. The most common crossed transaction, and the one which causes and always has caused most of the social difficulties in the world, whether in marriage, love, friendship, or work, is represented in Figure 3A as Crossed Transaction Type I.

This type of transaction is the principal concern of psychotherapists and is typified by the classical transference reaction of psychoanalysis. The stimulus is Adult-Adult: e.g., “Maybe we should find out why you've been drinking more lately,” or, “Do you know where my cuff links are?”

The appropriate Adult-Adult response in each case would be: “Maybe we should. I'd certainly like to know!” or, “On the desk.” If the respondent flares up, however, the responses will be something like “You’re always criticizing me, just like my father did,” or, “You always blame me for everything.”

These are both Child-Parent responses, and as the transactional diagram shows, the vectors cross. In such cases the Adult problems about drinking or cuff links must be suspended until the vectors can be realigned. This may take anywhere from several months in the drinking example to a few seconds in the case of cuff links.

Either the agent must become Parental as a complement to the respondent's suddenly activated Child³, or the respondent's Adult must be reactivated as a complement to the agent's Adult. If the maid rebels during a discussion of dishwashing, the Adult-Adult conversation about dishes is finished; there can only ensue either a Child-Parent discourse, or a discussion of a different Adult subject, namely her continued employment.

Society’s Crossed Transactions

I don’t have the energy at this moment to get into social media and this plays a part, but I will quickly mention that we have supposed adults getting triggered into the Child ego state and acting like entitled brats and also people getting triggered into the “Parent” ego state where they see you as a Child who needs rescuing. When Berne writes that in order to realign the vectors you need to become complementary again, that may suggest that people who want to act like Adults will need to stop and switch to take on the role of Parent⁴ to complement someone’s activated Child role. (Or, if someone is trying to be a Parent to you, you need to get them back into an Adult ego state.)

This means people need to stop acting like adults trying to have adult conversations with other adults who insist like acting like children. We’re not getting anywhere with our interactions because of that. No one wants to look like the bad guy trying to parent other people who should already be emotional adults because they’re old enough by now. I’m writing this in hopes that it will help you to fill in the gaps with your interactions with others and see why they go crossed.

When Interactions Shift to the Drama Triangle

When interactions are complementary we don’t see an issue. You won’t usually get upset that someone is treating you like a child if you feel like one, and if you want/need help and some one treats you like a child to help you, you’d be thankful. And if you are having an adult conversation with another person who sees you as an adult, there are no issues.

But when things have gone crossed, these roles can turn into the Drama Triangle roles of Savior/Rescuer, Persecutor, and Victim. Someone who gets triggered into a Child ego state can feel like a Victim of some Persecutor. In the “Victim” state they see the “Persecutor” as higher than themselves, as having more power than they do. That’s why they long for a “Savior” to come in (also seen as having more power than the “Victim”).

The only way not to get sucked into the Drama Triangle is take personal responsibility, that aligns with the Adult ego state. Outside of the Drama Triangle, you would be acting like an Adult to other adults, but they may be triggered into acting like the Child or Parent ego state. In the Parent ego state they may try to baby you, which is why we have so much governmental overreach (especially to do with COVID).

If you’re interested in this I would highly recommend his book. I especially love that he can categorize interactions in this way and then later in the book describes the interactions (game play) that will occur. If you missed it, I wrote about the game “Now I've Got You, You Son of a Bitch.”

The relationship diagram in Figure 4, showing the nine possible vectors of social action between an agent and a respondent, has some interesting geometrical (topological) qualities. Complementary transactions between “psychological equals’* are represented by (1—I)², (5—5)² and (9—9)². There are three other complementary transactions: (2—4) (4-2), (3-7) (7-3) and (6-8) (8-6). All other combinations form crossed transactions, and in most cases these show up as crossings in the diagram: e.g., (3—7) (3—7), which results in two speechless people glaring at each other. If neither of them gives way, communication is finished and they must part. The most common solutions are for one to yield and take (7—3), which results in a game of “Uproar”; or better, (5—5)², in which case they both burst out laughing or shake hands.

-Games People Play by Eric Berne

Epilogue

My father passed his cognition test. He’s now in rehab, receiving help with his walking. I appreciate any prayers for him, but I am becoming less worried as the days go by. But, something he said in the hospital stuck out to me, and I’ve been thinking about what other people said to me as well.

Am I a Savior?

My brother said I saved his life. He was looking at me like a “savior” and I didn’t know what to do with that. I kept thinking that anyone in my situation would have called for help when they realized help was needed. I thought, “No one but a psychopath would have left him sitting in a chair in that state. I did what anyone would do.”

Someone commented to me last week that other people may have gone along with not calling for an ambulance when their father protested. My dad did very little protesting, but it is true that if I had still viewed him as an Adult to my Child, then I would have just done what he told me to do. He wanted me to try to get him into bed, which if possible could have led down a dark path.

A Mirror to My Past / Parentification

When I was a young adult in college, I was not emotionally an adult. I didn’t feel raised to be an adult. My brother and I refer to ourselves as feral. We had to learn things on our own, the hard way. But when interacting with my parents I was still firmly in the Child ego state in my 20s. It would have been nice to have parents raise me to be in the Adult ego state in my 20s but that didn’t happen.

And, in my 20s my mother was dying of cancer. My family used me at this point, parentifying me. My mother had a friend who was married in Florida who offered to take care of her in her last days with lung cancer. The air was better for her there. But she didn’t die right away and they wanted to have a vacation. My father got me a plane ticket and I was supposed to watch my mother since no one else in the family could be there to take care of her while they vacationed. I was just a body to them, to be the one in the house while she was alone otherwise.

My mother, out of her mind because she was dying, told me to go buy cigarettes for her. I did something stupid and listened to her because I saw her as my Parent and me in the Child ego state was obedient. I eventually was pulled over and had to explain why I was driving a vehicle that wasn’t mine without a license.

I know I should have said “no,” but at that time in my life, it felt wrong to say “no” to my parent. I wasn’t taught to enforce boundaries and it’s so much worse when only a couple of years ago we were in that relationship of Parent-Child. I know how easy it is to get caught up in a relationship transaction like that. She expected me to be her Child and do what she said. Just like the government expects us to be its children and just do what they say⁵. But now, I know how much I have changed. Because I am learning to enforce boundaries and say, “No,” when the situation calls for it.

Last week, in the hospital, when my father said, “Barbara had to do some very adult things,” I responded, “I AM an adult.” And he said, yes, he forgets that sometimes. I thought, “I know, but I’m glad for the confirmation.” And, I’ve thought about why it bugged me, and I think the reason is that 20+ years ago I was barely legally an adult, and he put into a similar position where I had to be playing the role of Parent to my mother. She could have had a stroke, I may have had to call an ambulance, or what? Would he have expected me to just let her die in front of me? He put me into a situation (that he now describes as “very adult”) 20+ years ago. He said, “adult” but what he meant, if he knew anything about Berne’s work, was “Parent.”

Part of the problem is that I never had children. I am sure if I had had a decade or more of raising children, he would have gradually grown into seeing me as an adult who could enter the Parent ego state when I needed to. But we never got that.

I didn’t bring the past up with him. I don’t know that it’s worth rehashing in the future with him. But it’s certainly not the time now. But I wanted to explain here, with real-world examples, how this works. This relationship transaction pattern has been on my mind and I felt like it was worth an explanatory article.

Real World Impact

People had moments in their life when they were younger that get triggered now in their present, and they’re not consciously aware that they’re acting out of the Child ego state when they do it. And how you start a conversation (stimulate the other) can trigger these responses in others.

My mother telling me what to do, stimulated me to act like a Child. If she had said, “I would love to have some cigarettes, would you drive to get some,” treating me like an Adult, I could have had an Adult conversation and said “No, that’s not a good idea,” and listed all the reasons if need be. I know it was the cancer. I’m not angry. My point is to illustrate that how you talk to others can draw forth a response from them if they’re not conscious of what is going on. And most people are not conscious of these relationship transaction patterns. And, I really wish that someone had given me a “heads up” and had a conversation with me about how my relationship with my mother was going to change from her being the caregiver to me being the caregiver before I was placed into that situation. It would have been much easier to say, “No,” to her when I needed to.

Games People Play is such a useful book if you want to understand these interactions and why they go the way they do. And, remember, telling someone else that they’re doing these things won’t help them or you. That’s a Rescuer move. The point in understanding this isn’t to make other people change. It’s to change how you interact with other people.

If you act like a parent, attempting to “rescue” someone, then you may trigger a response in them where they may view you as a “persecutor” “parent” figure and turn into a whiny brat, or they may view you as a helpful parent, but decide all responsibility is on you, not them.

We have to be mindful of how we are stimulating others and try to interact with adults as adults. And, yes, we may have to act like Parents to people who act like a Child. But, let’s be mindful about this.

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1. This is an affiliate link if you want to purchase the book and also help the Substack out.

2. He did say things like, “Oh, no,” very gently. He didn’t want to have to pay for an ambulance. But in a clearer state he thanked me for doing what had to be done.

3. When people get triggered they are activating another ego state, and these days on social media, it’s often one of a petulant child.

4. I think this is, in part, why we elected Trump as the president, by the way.

5. And, weirdly, many people were terrified and triggered into a Child state and wanted to just do what the Government said to do.