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Ways to deal with Games:

There are various ways to stop a game, including the use of different options than the one automatically used. We can:

  • cross the transaction by responding from a different behavioural mode than the one the stimulus is designed to hook.
  • pick up the ulterior rather than the social message e.g. when a person says "I can't do this, I'm useless". Rather than saying "let me do this for you" instead say "It sounds like you have a problem. What do you want me to do about it?" (Said from the Adult ego state)
  • the opening message to the game always entails a discount. There are further discounts at each stage of the game. By detecting discounts we can identify game invitations and defuse them with options. (A discount is when we minimise, maximise or ignore some aspect of a problem which would assist us in resolving it. Such as saying in a whiny voice "This is too difficult for me to do", to invite someone to automatically help us).
  • replace the game strokes. Loss of strokes to the Child ego state means a threat to survival. We get a great many strokes from games, even if they are negative. However, if we don't obtain sufficient positive strokes, or give ourselves positive strokes, we will go for quantity rather than quality of strokes and play games to get them. This loss of strokes is also a loss of excitement that the game has generated.

The "Game Plan" (John James, 1973)

Another way to think about this is to consider the game role we or the other person is likely to take. One way to discover this is to ask the following questions:

  1. What keeps happening over and over again
  2. How does it start?
  3. What happens next?
  4. And then what happens?
  5. How does it end?
  6. How do feel after it ends?

We can then consider the reason we might have taken up a particular role, and then consider how to do things differently. We need to consider what our own responsibility is in this - if the situation is too violent for us to get involved what options do we have? We could call for help, get others to come with us to intervene and so on. We need to choose the appropriate assistance and take the action required.