Erroneous Beliefs and Irrational Thoughts

By Karyl E Pope

A great deal of our everyday behaviour is determined by unconscious beliefs. Since these beliefs were formed in childhood, sometimes even pre-verbally, they are almost always irrational. If we can bring them into consciousness, we can hold them up to the light of reason, and when we see that they don’t make sense, then we can change them. Transactional Analysis founder Eric Berne wrote about some of these unconscious beliefs and behaviours. He called them “Drivers” because they tend to cause a driven type of behaviour. Berne warned us to watch specifically for five unconscious Internal Drivers. He listed these as: Hurry up; Be perfect; Please people; Try hard; and Be strong. These drivers tend to be rigid and uncompromising.

A “Driver” is a harsh uncompromising part of the personality that takes control. Although it has the power to drive us so hard that we become physically ill, it is, in fact irrational. Once it is thoroughly examined in the light of day, we can see that it is based on old beliefs that we learned long ago as children. These beliefs are simply not true. It doesn’t help very much, though, to just tell ourselves it isn’t true. The only way that irrational “Driver” part of us, will listen is if we actually show it that it is wrong, by doing things the very opposite way to what it is telling us to do. This takes considerable courage, because a Driver is very convincing. If you are planning to confront your drivers, make sure you line up some strong support, to be there for you every day until a new habit is formed and the driver is no longer in control of you.

Drivers are characterized by absolutes such as should, ought, always and never. They also scare us by telling us that we only get one chance in life and to fall short of the ideal is to be doomed forever. The driver believes only in extreme opposites such as right or wrong, superior or worthless, black or white, good or evil, success or failure. It’s either on or the other. There is nothing in between and there are no second chances. They give us catastrophic messages such as “I must always, never, etc or something unbelievably horrific will happen”. “If I am not a success then I am a complete failure and totally worthless, forever”.

Of course it’s not true. Part of your mind does know that. But another part may be remembering that something like this did happen when you were a child. Maybe it even happened a lot. The difference is that that was then, and childhood is tough. You didn’t have much power back then and it probably was awful. But now you do have power. This is now and now you are the big person who is in charge. Your choices definitely were pretty limited back then. Now is different! Now, you do not have to be around people who will hurt you. You can plan your life so that nothing terrible will happen, at least most of the time, though that may take a bit of practice. You may have an archaic belief that says “If I am not at the top I am totally worthless and on the scrap heap”. This is a crock. You don’t have to buy it any more! You can disempower that driver. You can stop seeing the world in black and white, excellent or terrible, good or evil, right or wrong, success or failure, top or bottom. In reality you are always a complex mixture, in many shades of grey and all are OK. The key is in looking a little closer and understanding. When you can do this for yourself you will be able to do it for others as well and your world will be a kinder place.

Let’s take a closer look at each of the five “Drivers” that Eric Berne identified;

1. You Must Always Please Others No Matter How You Feel
The person with this driver believes “If I always look after others they will be grateful and always love me” or “If I please others and always think of their needs before my own, when I really need help they will be there”.

Neither of these is true, to the extreme disillusionment of many people. If you act like your needs are not important, that is what others will think too. The people who will be most attracted to you will be selfish people who care only about themselves and believe the purpose of having others in their lives is so they will always have someone to look after them and serve them. And when you are really in need it is not likely anyone will be there because you have been teaching them for years that you have no needs and not only can but prefer to handle everything by yourself. Instead of helping you they will keep right on coming to you for help, because they are convinced that this is what you want. At any rate it certainly works for them and why look a gift horse in the mouth?

The truth is this. Your prime responsibility in this life is to look after yourself. That way you will be well and happy and of some help to others. Stop before every decision and ask yourself “will this be good for me?” If the answer is no, don’t do it. This includes favours for others whether or not they ask for them. Sometimes it will be good for you to help others. Just check and see. Sometimes life seems to be made up of helpers and helpees. Try not to be part of the problem by encouraging helplessness in chronic victims.

2. You Must Be Perfect in All Things and At All Times
The person with this driver has beliefs like these: “I must do everything perfectly or something unbelievably horrific will happen”
“I must never make a mistake. I must never let anyone down. I must get everything done on time”. If this Driver is running your life you can find these beliefs not far beneath the surface. The chances are you are asking for high blood pressure, ulcers, migraine, or other physical illnesses that come from continued high stress. Perhaps in your childhood someone was very critical and you were trying to avoid that criticism by being extra good. Perhaps something catastrophic happened and you decided that it would not have happened if you had been more perfect (that may or may not be true – it doesn’t matter). Perhaps your life was chaotic and you were constantly frightened, so now you are constantly trying to avoid life becoming chaotic again by being perfect.

Not every task is important enough to require this kind of time and attention. You will need to stop and ask yourself “How important is it that this job be done perfectly? What will the consequence be if I make a mistake or do not do it perfectly?” What you need to learn is that people in the real world are never perfect. All of them make mistakes. All of them let others down sometimes. All of them have problems and imperfections. All of them get criticised sometimes and survive. You need to know that somehow the mistakes usually get fixed up. Usually the people you let down will forgive you and in turn you will be able to forgive them when they let you down. Usually problems get worked out somehow without any disaster. It is OK for you to have problems and limitations. You are still a valuable human being. As you begin to see where and when you developed these beliefs, you can begin to see that now is different and create more realistic expectations for yourself and for others.

3. You Must Always Hurry.
If you work or play at a leisurely pace you will get into terrible trouble. (Because these beliefs were formed when you were a child, they tend to contain vague “terribleisms” to keep you properly terrified so you can avoid the bad consequences that happened or threatened to happen when you were little). “I must always hurry or I will not get done what has to be done for my survival (or, for the survival of my family)”. Like all of the drivers, it feels like a matter of life and death. And like all of the others you will not be able to talk yourself out of it. The only way out is to defy the Driver. Tell him or her to Fuck Off! And then proceed to walk slowly, talk slowly, plan your day and systematically work your plan.

In fact, hurrying is rarely necessary or helpful. It can lead to accidents and/or all of the stress illness mentioned above. For some reason you may have carried more responsibility than you could handle when you were a child. Maybe you were expected to accomplish more in a day than was possible. Or maybe you learned from a parent with the same habit and belief, that disaster is right around the corner and it will get you if you don’t hurry. In fact you may be actually courting that disaster by overlooking things that you would have seen at a more leisurely pace. If everything seems to be urgent, learn to stop and ask yourself “Is this really urgent? Does it have to be done quickly? Does it have to be done at all?” If the answer is no, slow down. You will need a lot of willpower to challenge this one. It is probably a deeply ingrained habit. You may have only two speeds: super fast and collapse. If it is a little early to leave for work you may think you can fit just one more task in at home (or visa versa), but that small task ends up taking a little longer than you thought so now you have to speed, your heart rate goes up; your adrenaline is pumping. Guess what this will do to your heart, circulatory system, your whole body, after a few years?

You will need to allow yourself more than enough time always, and watch yourself for self sabotage like dawdling, or fitting in one more thing. Allow yourself reasonable breaks, lunch hours, and holidays. At first it will feel decadent. You can stand it. Hang in there. Habits can be changed and you are worth it.

4. You Must Always Be Strong:
If you have this Driver your beliefs/commands will be these: “If you weaken all is lost. Never need others. Never flinch. Never cry. Never collapse. Never say I can’t. Keep going at any cost. Smile, no matter what you feel inside. The show must go on at any cost”. “Everything is More Important Than You”. If you have this one you probably despise weakness of any kind. You may go to extravagant lengths to hide (even from yourself) anything in your personality that you see as a sign of weakness. Again you may have learned this pattern from a parent who had the same belief. You may have suffered humiliation and shame for tears or any sign of weakness when you were little, maybe at home from the parent who has this same pattern, maybe from mean kids at school or a mean teacher. You may have had to be strong for a single parent who was almost at the breaking point and couldn’t have made it without your support & help.

But that was then. Now everything is different, unless of course, you have managed as many people do, to recreate the situation that you had as a child. Even then, you now have choices that you did not have way back then. This one is also a killer. It forces you to keep every emotion buried inside, and drive yourself to appear strong when you are hurting the most, to tackle challenges that may be too much for you, but could be manageable if you could just ask for help This Driver urges you to make the task more important than the person, and maybe to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs – you. People need other people. There is very little any of us can accomplish without other people. Your survival does not depend only on you. Learn to ask for help. Gather people around you that you can trust, people with whom you can exchange favours. That way everyone’s load becomes a little lighter. Let other people see your pain. How will they ever know that you need help if you always seem to be just fine?

It is safe to cry. It is safe to love. It is safe to need others. If you are a boss, teach other people how to do some of your jobs and then get out of the way and let them do them. Don’t do more than 50% of the work in any relationship. Accept compliments graciously and give them too. Learn how to develop your right brain. It can save you a lot of time and effort in the end because it will give you information by intuition that would have taken a lot more time and effort to get by thinking hard and working hard. You can do this in many ways these days. Do a search on the Internet for Soul expanding events, dance, art, dream workshops, or try writing poetry. There are some nice links on my web site that you could check into. If you are really serious about change you might go into therapy with someone who works with life patterns that begin in childhood. No-one is really strong all the time. If you can never have any small breakdowns you may end up having a big one. Don’t live your life pretending to be someone different from who you really are. That is self betrayal. Who you really are, I mean all of who you really are, is the you that needs your acceptance and love. If you try to get that love and acceptance from someone else it won’t likely be enough to help you to heal all of the flaws and limitations that your mind has decided to hold against you. Self acceptance works.

5. You Must Try Hard at Everything You Do:
When Eric Berne said this, he was not meaning just putting out your best effort at whatever task you set your mind to. Rather, he was talking about a pattern in which you are perpetually putting out more effort than is required to get what you need in your life. If you have this Driver you will measure your own worth by how much effort you put into things. And like the others, it can drive you right into the ground. If you are ready to confront this irrational belief, some of the questions you could begin to ask yourself are: Is this task worthy of this amount of time and effort? Is this the appropriate amount of effort for this particular job? Am I giving more than I can get out of this? Am I trying to get blood out of a stone? Is there a smarter way for me to get what I want and need? What would happen if I left some of these tasks undone? Am I catastophizing about possible disasters? Do I need to “let go and let God”? Remember you are the goose that lays the golden eggs. Look after the goose and there will always be more eggs. If the goose is exhausted there will not be many golden eggs. I have noticed that when I take the time to talk to friends and neighbours, the answers to many questions that I might otherwise have spent hours looking for, seem to just pop up in the conversations. Someone knows just the right person to help me. Or someone has just the thing I was looking for or the piece of information I was looking for. When we take time for love and laughter, we feel kinder toward the world, and the world in turn is kinder to us, and life is easier.

Eric Berne said that everyone has Drivers and it is very clear to me after 30 years in this work that we all will be working with our own demons as long as we are alive. But I do know that change is possible. In fact change is the only constant in life so we might as well make positive use of it. Try observing yourself to see if you have some of these rigid ways of thinking and behaving. You can’t change what you can’t see. But if you are able to consciously observe yourself being irrational, it will not be as hard as you think for you to change that behaviour. The looking and seeing, telling the truth about yourself, is the part that takes the greatest courage. The rest just takes perseverance and patience.

It Works If You Work!

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
© Karyl Pope 2004

Karyl Pope
Burlington, Ontario
905-639-4529
Permission To Reprint:

You are welcome to reprint this article in your own print or electronic newsletter, provided you include the following credit. Compliments of Karyl Pope

Please send me a copy of the publication in which the material is quoted.
info@kpopeassoc.on.ca