No sooner do we begin to know other people than we discover their broken heart. – Jacob Needleman
Trauma refers to an event or series of events that cause psychological or emotional harm to an individual. Understanding its forms, symptoms, and impact can help us begin the healing process. Trauma, particularly childhood trauma, does not have to be extreme to have an impact.
Four types of Trauma*
Trauma of Omission is subtle, often overlooked, and refers to when our emotional, physical, or developmental needs are not met because of neglect, circumstances, or lack of knowledge.
Trauma of Commission is less subtle, common, and refers to times when things are said and done to us as children that never should have been said or done—name calling, harsh punishments, shaming.
Shock Trauma is less common and refers to a time when we experience an unusual event we are not prepared for nor have control over—death of a parent, a serious illness, witnessing a violent act in the family, bullying.
Post-Traumatic Stress is the most serious and occurs when we experience a catastrophic life event out of our control—kidnapping, rape, war atrocities, witness to a murder, a natural disaster.
In both Shock and PTSD, we are catapulted into another reality so rapidly that our psyche cannot make sense of it and floods us emotionally. Many responses occur.
Trauma Responses
efforts to numb or block out feelings
ignoring the trauma by splitting off (dissociating)
need for high arousal experiences to feel alive or avoid unpleasant feelings
depriving self especially around success or out of guilt
re-enactment of trauma or projecting past onto the present
dysfunctional attachments or conflictual ties with people
difficulty trusting self, others, or life itself
anxiety and depression
Life Script Formation
It is not our fault that we were traumatized, and we could not help but be impacted. When a child’s needs are not realized, when cruel words are said, when a child finds herself alone in a traumatic moment, the child feels helpless or abandoned. Not having the perceived power or words to stand up for herself, a loss of trust sets in. In the language of transactional analysis, the child inside of us makes important decisions and comes to certain conclusions:
“My feelings and needs don’t matter”
“It’s not safe to be close”
“I’m not important”
“I must be bad”
“People disappoint me”
“Life is scary”
“I will never trust again”
A life script is set in motion. This personal unconscious plan has a beginning, a middle, and a predictable ending. And that ending will support our core beliefs and life decisions unless we uncover and change them.
In Is It Love or Is It Addiction? I state that trauma results in a violation of trust, the base foundation of healthy relationships and life itself. Our instinct is to want connections and success but because of trust violations we also fear the very thing we desire. Childhood trauma, if unresolved, can impair our esteem or will lead us to intimacy disorders such as love addiction.
The stories that follow speak to the four types of trauma, the formation of life script, and how each person’s trauma and script fed off the other.
Lindsay’s Story
I unknowingly married a man who was prone to having affairs. Furious when this came out, I blamed many of our relationship problems on him. He broke the trust; he had to change. Then I began to blame myself and saw his actions as a statement about me. I was the one who felt unimportant, unattractive, and stupid. And though I could justify these thoughts via Kevin’s actions, I couldn’t stop them even when our relationship started to heal. They were deep. I finally got help. My therapist suggested I look at what was going on inside of me that kept getting triggered in the relationship.
As I got into my story, I realized that my past experience was the filter through which I viewed myself and Kevin. I really thought I had a good childhood. Then I started to remember. I remembered being ignored and feeling lonely. I remembered being verbally abused by my older brother. When I asked my parents for help, they blew it off. I decided that what my brother said about me must be true.
The feelings I had back then were exactly what I felt when I learned about the affairs. Every time we had an argument, in my mind I heard Kevin saying, “Lindsay you are stupid” or “Your opinion isn’t important to me.” I would take it one step further and hear “And I am going to leave you for someone who is more attractive than you.” I had been working hard to change Kevin to be the partner that would affirm what my family did not affirm. I realized I had to heal my trauma, and I had to believe in my importance, intelligence, and beauty.
Kevin’s Story
I didn’t know I had a problem until I realized I married the woman I loved, but I couldn’t stop my affairs. Going into recovery was the condition of Lindsay staying in the marriage. At first, I took the brunt of the problems in our relationship because I broke trust. But after being in therapy for a year, I realized we both brought stuff from the past to our relationship. I hate to admit to the cliché, but Lindsay did remind me of my mother. Though she didn’t say it aloud, I heard her saying “You are really bad.”
I went headlong into my trauma history. I had a tough time feeling anything in life except excitement, but I thought this was a guy thing. But I had been shut down for years. As I got into my ‘script’ I started to remember things and emotions I didn’t know I had —terror, rage, grief. I shook and teared up when I remembered when I was forced to watch my dad beat my brother and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I remembered my mother tying me to bed for hours. I was terrified, but then I went somewhere else in my mind and shut down my feelings.
Such experiences led me to believe that I was bad and that my feelings didn’t matter. Waiting for Lindsay to magically rescue me proved futile. Her trauma collided with mine. There has always been legitimate love in our relationship but there was also a hidden need to fix our wounds. Of course, we did not know this. Now we talk about our triggers when we recognize them, and we are learning to appreciate the little boy and little girl in each of us who has a story to tell.
Excerpts from Is It Love or Is It Addiction? Third Edition
*The first three types of trauma are my personal descriptions and may be in the diagnostic manual under different headings. PTSD is in the DSM 5 diagnostic manual.
When I was invited to chair a discussion about an aspect of the conference theme for the 2025 World TA Conference in Montpellier, I decided to tackle the word “Legitimacy” as it affects TA professionals and clients worldwide.
I began by asking for input about what we mean by legitimacy and what is its value in our field.
Having started as a counter movement to psychoanalysis, the history of TA is that of being an outsider to what was considered legitimate in psychotherapy. Eric Berne gave two contrasting messages: we want TA to be accessible to all people, and we want transactional analysts to be seen as “real doctors.” Today, we have a journal that strives for recognition while fields of application multiply, each field with its own communities of standards.
In some countries and professions, being seen as a legitimate field of practice entitles transactional analysts to licensure, degrees, or other recognition, and in others it is simply a specialization to be combined with credentials earned in universities or other certifying agencies.
We began the discussion with comments by Emily Keller, a play therapist and play therapy supervisor, and Elvin Aydin Keles, a therapist who is serving as Director of Research and Innovation for ITAA. Among other topics, Emily spoke about the Certified Transactional Analyst designation defining legitimacy in TA circles, and Elvin brought in TA’s standing among other disciplines as identified by citations in related fields and journals.
A robust and varied conversation covered the following questions and many other reflections both internal and external to the world of TA.
Questions
What concerns about TA’s legitimacy are present in your country and / or field of practice?
How does legitimacy matter from the point of view of our clients and for people who are entering professional training?
What policies or practices increase or decrease TA’s legitimacy?
What can / should ITAA, EATA, other TA associations do to make TA legitimate, or more legitimate, in your field?
What forms does legitimacy take in different societies? Should TA be presented differently to be accepted in different contexts? How?
When do concerns about legitimacy block innovation? (For example, Eric Berne risked being ostracized to establish something new.) Are we seeing anything like that now?
What are your thoughts about legitimacy in TA as it relates to training, certification, literature, and service to clients? Please share your comments in the field below.
Lucy Freedman, MAT, CTA-P,E,O. President, ITAA Foundation
Much of the distinction between therapists and coaches has resulted from licensing laws, third-party payment reimbursement systems, and credentialing regimes – all choices made by the provider and the type of business they want to run.
As often happens, the systems designed to keep people safe and standards high become slanted in favor of those at the top of the pyramid while chasing whichever markets appear most lucrative at the time. Counselors become therapists become coaches depending on what is most popular.
Packages that promise psychological transformation of the personality through their particular mental models offer tidy solutions to common neuroses and worries. These formulations do provide help in a miasma of social and personal concerns of living today. At the same time, they are invested in selling their solution as the quickest or most effective or most widely-used method, or in maintaining their legitimacy against other approaches.
How can a person seeking assistance distinguish what is the best kind of support for what they are going through? How can providers offer discernment about what kinds of clients and issues they can best serve?
The truth is that the client is a human being and their needs are not generic. The ability to make contact with another human being (not an AI trained program!) and sort out what’s going on is a valuable privilege that deserves clarity and profound respect. The provider’s ability to assess the type of issue and the proclivities of the client, without having a pre-defined solution, is what makes them worth the investment of time and money.
If you are not willing to invest time in determining the approach that is appropriate for you at this time, you take whatever the marketplace offers and it’s probably as good as any. If you are willing to explore with someone who has a range of experience and skill, you will be able to design the path together and create the milestones that matter to you.
Of course, everyone has filters that come from their training. This tells the client what kind of provider to choose – what models do we want to know the provider has available for working with us? The cost also varies by levels of licensing or certification, and what is covered, if any, by insurance.
The value of using a mental model such as transactional analysis (TA) is that it is based on contracting between the provider and the client in the context of a deep understanding of human development. There are no predetermined one-size-fits-all methods, but a thorough understanding of how we have become who we are and a range of change processes to fulfill our hopes and dreams.
In the contracting phase, the transactional analyst can suggest a combination of methods or can see a direct path to resolving the issue that the client brought in. If he or she is trained as a coach, therapist, consultant, or counselor, they can offer services from that background and make referrals to other specialists.
If I am trained as a coach, I don’t do a deep dive into toxic family patterns or third-degree early decisions. If I am trained as a therapist, I can recommend a coach for a career path or lifestyle change. As a consultant, I can tell when my client needs to work with someone about their family system, rather than taking that on during an organizational development project.
Many transactional analysts have practiced and been supervised in multiple areas of application so they may have the range to address a variety of issues. Their ethical requirement is that they don’t represent themselves as qualified in other fields.
The core material of TA will illuminate the presenting issues so that the provider and client both gain value from those insights which serve as a basis for further work in whatever direction turns out to be most beneficial for the client.
The relationship between provider and client is the central factor in determining the effectiveness of the engagement. One of the benefits of TA is that all work is done by contract, so that you know what you are getting. Based on the contracting process, the client is free to continue or conclude the engagement as agreed. It’s a representation of TA’s fundamental premise that people are OK and can make informed decisions for themselves.
Whether you call your helper a coach, therapist, counselor, or teacher, be sure that they know how to choose and use the right tools for the job at hand.
Eric Berne, the founder of Transactional Analysis (TA), famously said: “No change occurs without a contract.” He emphasized that a contract is not a formality but a catalyst for transformation. It’s a mutual agreement about desired outcomes—where each participant understands why they are here, what they want to achieve, and what responsibilities they carry.
In TA, contracts are built on three distinct levels:
Administrative — covers logistics: where, when, how often, under what conditions, and at what cost the meetings occur.
Professional — addresses the content of the work: the client’s request, objectives, and structure of collaboration.
Psychological — brings to light underlying expectations, inner scenarios, and potential resistances that might either support or hinder progress.
This structured approach aligns remarkably well with the standards of the International Coaching Federation (ICF). One of the eight ICF Core Competencies is Establishes and Maintains Agreements—a process of co-creating a clear, intentional, and accountable foundation for the coaching relationship.
A contract in TA must be:
Clear: both parties understand and agree on what is being established.
Bilateral: formed collaboratively, not imposed unilaterally.
Doable: the goals must be realistic and achievable within the given format.
Such a contract ensures not only effectiveness but also emotional and professional safety. It becomes a space of trust, mutual respect, and maturity—not a constraint but a supportive structure.
It’s important to understand that contracting happens on two levels: an overarching contract for the entire coaching process, and a focused contract for each individual session.
The overall contract defines the direction, scope, and intended outcomes of the full journey. The session-by-session contract focuses on the client’s current state, immediate goals, and specific context. This dual-layer approach adds both flexibility and relevance to the work.
When the book, I’m OK – You’re OK by Tom and Amy Harris first came out it struck a nerve. People want to feel OK, and they want to feel OK about other people too. The question was, how to do that? Hierarchies and cultural biases say otherwise. Some people are more OK than others, no? The official line, at least in the US and other democracies, is that we are all equal. But psychologically and behaviorally, we enact one-up and one-down feelings and actions.
The wonderful thing about Transactional Analysis, or TA, is that it provides a roadmap to living in an I’m OK – You’re OK – and They’re OK lifestyle. Our work as Transactional Analysts is to weed out our not-OK feelings and beliefs, and grow our ability to accept ourselves and others.
Accepting ourselves doesn’t mean we don’t want to change. Yes, we are changing and growing out of learned patterns and ingrained social constructs so that we can enjoy the much happier feelings of OKness. We can avoid passing limiting beliefs to our children, our partners, and our communities. We can turn idealism into reality through empowering beliefs and behaviors.
To do that, we uncover the sources of our early decisions, get in touch with what’s possible today, and practice being OK with ourselves and others. Eric Berne, MD, whose book Games People Play was wildly popular, promoted the idea that we didn’t need to have a doctorate to understand ourselves and our psyches. He created TA with simple language that we can all understand and use.
OKness is a statement that all people are born with inherent dignity and worth. Whatever we experience and decide after that is a response to what we experience in our early years. Then we live out those decisions, even though our toddler selves had no idea there was a world beyond our families and that we would be capable of much more as we grew up.
TA covers everything from those early decisions to the games we play to reinforce them and the life scripts that have predetermined, often negative, outcomes.
OKness is about outgrowing the early limiting decisions, reinforcing our ability to honor our deepest selves as well as the value of other people, and creating the lives we want to live in the world to which we want to belong. The simple language of TA can be deceptive. It addresses life’s persistent questions and supports health for oneself and in relationships. It is useful at home, at work, and in community life.
One way to learn about TA and begin to apply it is to complete the basic TA Practitioner Course (TAP), approximately fifty hours of study and application, with support for using it in your life and in your profession. To learn more about becoming a TAP, click here.
