Unfortunately for everyone, we seem to go around the world with scripts in our minds. A script is a collection of expectations about how events will unfold and how we should best respond to them, built up out of the worst moments of our childhoods and our most immature and frightened deductions. The tragedy is that unaware they exist, we let them determine our futures, insistingently layering them onto situations in the here and now that could have had far more benevolent endings.
The solution is to recognize that there can be different endings. Yes, I made a mistake, but the result doesn’t have to be a cruel reprimand. Yes, the partner let me down, but they can and do still love me very much. I could get annoyed, but the emotion doesn’t have to escalate uncontrollably. In other words, what happened originally doesn’t have to keep happening, but only if we can first understand what actually happened.
To help us with this, we should explore the past by completing the following sentences:
- When I make a mistake…
- When I trust someone…
- If I get too emotional…
- If a partner has to be out of touch for a while…
The end goal of maturity might be defined as the ability to approach as much of life as possible without a script.