By Marijke Arendsen Hein
TSTA Psychotherapy and Counselling
“Your Adult can listen and participate properly only when your Child feels comfortable. Therefore, I would like you to pause for a moment and consider whether you would enjoy having the person sitting behind you gently massage your shoulders. Likewise, you may offer the same to the person sitting in front of you.”
I had never experienced anything like that at a scientific conference.
After some hesitation, I joined in and experienced a warmhearted sense of connection. The ice was immediately broken and, indeed, my Child felt accepted and welcomed.
It was the summer of 1976 and I was attending an international TA conference in Villars, Switzerland, for the first time. In my memory, it was also the conference where EATA was founded. Mary Goulding was one of the initiators, and one of her students was my trainer, Arnold van Westering.
The atmosphere was hopeful, innovative, and perhaps a little overenthusiastic.
With TA, we truly believed we could make a difference.
Our clients were our equals, people who had experienced many traumas during their childhood. In order to survive, they had developed their Script by making decisions that were functional at the time. But the good news was that they could now make new decisions and give their lives a different direction. It sounded like music to my ears, a joyful message: You do not have a disease. You can do something about it yourself.
I feel grateful that TA came into my life, that I completed the examinations, and that I was able to contribute to the development of TA in Europe. The structure that EATA continues to provide still guarantees the quality of professionals working with TA. I have learned so much from TA, both professionally in my field of psychotherapy and personally in my own life.
There in Villars, together with five other women, I helped to establish a peer supervision group. We became a stable group: women from six different EATA countries. What one of us did not know, the others could add.
Even after completing our TA examinations, we continued working on ourselves within that group. Three times a year we met for two days. We discussed literature, difficult cases, personal successes, setbacks, and how to deal with them.
We spoke Danish, English, Dutch and French, yet we shared the same language: TA.
We respected one another, challenged one another, supported one another. But above all, we learned from one another.
The life position I’m OK, You’re OK has become a lasting attitude in my life, something I continue to strive for every day.
Thank you, Eric Berne. Thank you, EATA. Thank you, NVTA.
