Caring

Transactional Analysis is an old model in the communication world.  The core of TA is that we can show up as the adult person we are, or we might show up from a childlike ego or a parental ego. When we are not in conflict (with others or ourselves), adults usually show up from their adult ego.

If we slip into being judgmental, however, it is the harsh parental ego taking control.  The part of us who believes that it is our job – and right – to order/assure/invite/nudge somebody else to be different from how they currently show up.

If I feel small and scared and want support and my spouse offers that, chance is that in that moment he is also ‘parenting’ me. He is putting on his protective parent ego and fights the dragons frightening me.  In that moment, I may allow my inner child to be soothed by a strong parent – like I would have if I had been five years old.

I don’t have to be in my frightened child ego; I could also be in my playful, emotional, curious child, and together we could go exploring like two joyful children taking in the world as if for the first time.

There is nothing inherently wrong about any of these three versions of our egos, and we can communicate fine through all of them.  But the communication goes awry when one person communicates from one ego stance and the other can’t/doesn’t want to match that.  We don’t “play the same game” if I want to interact as one adult to another and you want to parent me.  Or want me to parent you.  Or vice versa.

Or if we both address each other from our judgmental parent to the other’s naughty child – as when we both think the other’s position is misguided and it is our duty (in a steadily increased volume) to convince the other about that.  (Eventually, frustrated parents regress into a childlike stubbornness.)

Or that either of us perceive that this is what is happening.

As soon as the communication lines get crossed, we clash.

What does this have to do with caring?

I care about you.

How do you feel reading that?  How would you feel hearing that?  What does the word “care” stir in you?

Does it change if I write “I feel like caring for you”?  Does it become a little more dangerous now?

We start our lives – and often end them, too – needing the care of others.  It makes neither babies nor infirm or old people unworthy that they just can’t do something. However, if we dig into what forms parts of our self-worth, according to the psychologist Erik Erikson, a phase in childhood is devoted to building self-efficacy.  If we are thwarted in our development by overbearing parents who just can’t wait every time we fumble tying our shoes or buttoning our coat and sighingly do it for us, or ridicule us for being too slow, we might end up with feelings of shame rather than self-efficacy.  And when we feel shame, we double down on avoiding whatever causes that feeling.

The story running in my head is that if we, to this miserable situation, add how a child, frustrated by its lack of ability to do as expected by its care-taker, cries out its frustration, little boys may get an additional dose of shame for being ‘crybabies’ that perhaps is not doled on little girls with quite the same vigor.

Let this be a long preamble to a question that has haunted me for years:

Why is it that expressing caring thoughts for a man more often than not sends him into an emotional tailspin? 

(And no, I am not talking about my husband but about so many men I encounter in groups where these things are discussed.)

I am not a man.  I can guess but I don’t know how men think or feel.  And even in groups where such things are discussed, men run backwards from the subject of care as fast as you have no idea – differently than women do in my experience.  Guys, help me out here with your insights, please.

From the preamble, perhaps you can intuit I assume:

• that there is a connection with feeling inferior if we need care, so you can’t allow yourself to need care, and you certainly can’t allow anybody else to insinuate as much.
• that hurt pride is part of the mess.
• that receiving help – care – has been emotionally enmeshed with feelings of shame.
• that because I am a woman of a certain age, it is easy to instead hear your mother’s voice saying whatever she said when you were three years old; that you hear me coming at you from a condescending parental ego when you just want to interact adult to adult.
• that if not I but another dude expressed caring thoughts, it might land differently.

As ever when we ass-u-me, it can make an ass out of u and me, so I most heartily welcome having my assumptions challenged by how you actually think and feel.

Once we are past that, what might be other ways to express such care that wouldn’t activate those same emotional pathways?  Does support feel better than care?  I am happy to change my words so they trigger you less.  After all, I do care and have no desire to send you into emotional tailspins; and here words do matter.

Let me round this off with an observation coming from several young(er than me) men, none of them fathers, that they were mightily surprised hearing that mothers cared about their sons, even when they were well out of the nest and independently established.  That in return was a bit of a surprise for all the mothers in the room to hear, so we all got wiser.  (I think it was Paul Haury that mentioned that the more we invest ourselves in others, the more we love them, which makes it obvious why mothers usually love their progeny a lot.)  Readers who are fathers are welcome to chime in on what this is like for you.

One of the guys in the room, though, said something that I think can carry over to other relationships as well.  He said that we should decide which role we want our mothers to play and then ask them for that.  If a mother knows that this kind of service/care/interference is welcome, she can be happy with that and stop meddling in other things.  But all mothers I know want the connection kept alive – from both ends.

Without such boundaries and without any request, the alternative is often annoying.  Help, pushed at us, feels like unsolicited advice:  that it comes from the judgmental parental ego of “I know what is best for you.”  And that message is crossing the line for most people, regardless of whether it comes from a biological parent or not.

In return, perhaps you might consider to which degree “I know what is best for you” actually is the message expressed or just the way you translate “care” in your mind.

And what’s so wrong about being cared about/for, anyway?