Transactional Analysis (TA®)

What it is
TA, based on the work of Eric Berne, is a set of ideas that explains what we do and why we do it. It provides a clear insight in to human personality, relationships and communication in a way that makes people say “Oh, so that explains it!” It doesn’t involve psychometric questionnaires.

Much of what we do today is based on what we learnt about the world and ourselves as children. TA explores the strategies we developed then and often still have in place, and encourages us to consider whether they are relevant to us as adults. Once we have this personal awareness we are empowered to make changes if we wish to. TA is hugely helpful for finding out why we do what we do and for identifying different approaches that help us get a different result.

Why We use it
TA is a vast framework of ideas and is used for many reasons, one to one with individuals, or with groups. Some of these are:

  • To explore why we sometimes find ourselves in relationships that don’t work and what to do to  improve them
  • To explore where our beliefs about ourselves come from and whether they are still appropriate to us as an adult
  • To explore how our beliefs may disable us and what to do about that
  • To help us understand how we communicate to others, why this may not always work and what options we have if we want to do something about it
  • To help us understand why we repeat strategies that don’t work for us and how to change them
  • To help us understand why we create certain kinds of relationship even when we know they are not helpful, and how to stop doing that
  • To help us be assertive
  • To develop strategies that help us cope with change and transition
  • To help develop coaching skills