An ego state is a temporary set of behaviors, ideas, beliefs, and attitudes that a person takes on. If you’ve ever heard a friend switch voices suddenly because their mom or the boss has called them on the phone, you’ve witnessed ego state switching in action. The first three ego states on this map, Parent, Child, and Adult, come from Eric Berne’s book, Games People Play. Possibility Management has extended this to include three more: Gremlin, Demon, and Archetypal. If you really want to dive into them and get some idea of how you can play games other than the classics (e.g. parent-child with the people you call your friends or partners), go to an Expand the Box.
In short, the Ego States are marked by these qualities:
| Ego State | Characteristics |
| Parent | Driven by shoulds, musts, I/you have to, this is the right/wrong way. Acting from pressure. |
| Child | I need others to do this for me. It is all about me. I need attention. I am a victim. |
| Adult | Living in the Small Now. Feeling. Expressing. Having one’s own voice and authority. |
| Gremlin | You can’t catch me. I will do whatever is needed to avoid responsibility. Lie, cheat, steal, flirt, bully, joke around. |
| Demon | Sudden loss of energy. |
| Archetypal | Working with infinite resources, serving an archetypal lineage and Bright Principles. Some people might say “in flow.” Accessed through the Adult Ego State, so this is different from being in a Gremlin “flow”. |
Part of the map says that the Archetypal Ego State is accessed through the Adult Ego State. That, unfortunately, is turned by many into a trap. The Archetypal Ego State is clearly good, yeah? Ergo, the Adult Ego State is clearly good, yeah? Ergo, any other Ego State, if it’s preventing you from being in the Adult Ego State, is clearly bad. It is simple logic.
Yeah, yeah… there’s no such thing as “good” or “bad”… but c’mon, if my choices are Demon Ego State or the Adult Ego State where I can start accessing the Archetypal?? That’s what I’m here for, man.
There are no shortcuts in transformation1. Just because you see that Archetypal comes from Adult, and Adult comes from being in the Small Now, does not mean you can just “be in the Small Now” and be done with it. A map simply lays out what is in a territory. It does not and cannot communicate the richness of the soil beneath your feet. Only experience can do that. You still have to walk through the land. But maps are used as shortcuts to knowing, and Possibilitators are no exceptions.
Maps are flat pieces of paper, and holding one in your hand, you might be tempted to flatten experience and time. Distinctions that come just from the map, and not from your experience, turn into death traps. They feel good at first because they’re shortcuts. Ah! This is a guideline for dealing with the uncertainty of the world! It tells me which way to go! It is much like an ant tasting the first drop of sweet nectar on the lip of a pitcher plant; overly greedy, he leans in and drinks more and more until he is swimming in a pool of shortcut distinctions. “Free at last!” he thinks, unaware that these shortcut distinctions will drown him to death.
People are smart, and they learn to do the right thing in any context, at least while they are still stuck in school, which most people are. They learn about Feelings vs Emotions, Emotional Healing Processes, and Ego States, and something like this happens:
We don’t use emotions to negotiate. Ergo, emotions are bad! Don’t have emotions, you mongrel!
Emotions are for healing things. Got it! If I’m having an emotion, I better purple card myself and ask for an EHP, stat-a-mundo!
As with most things in life, the purpose of why you’re doing something matters more than the actual what that you’re doing. If you’re asking for an EHP because you should, because that’s what a good Possibilitator does, well, you aren’t being so much of an adult there. The EHP won’t have any power, anyway. EHPs work because there is a necessity to heal an emotion. If all you supply an EHP with is “because I should”, that’s the wrong kind of fuel for it. But if you don’t even try? If you’re willing to give your life to your Gremlin who wants very much to be reactive and tear down the relationship and not do any healing or transforming… well, what a pickle this is.
So what gives? How do you climb back out of the pitcher plant? Thankfully, in the realm of transformation and in a Radically Responsible Universe, there is always a way. We need not drown to death like our poor ant friends. Transformation never ends in a sticky drowning party unless you let it. (There is nothing wrong with having a drowning party if you really want. We are all inventing new hobbies all the time.)
The key is to live in the Small Now.
The key is that there is never a final end state.
The key is that you can’t trick reality.
The Small Now lasts about as long as it takes you to read a phrase in this article. Bam! Wait a second… and now… and bam! There it is again. I’d say blink and you’ll miss it but it’s not quite that fast.
As anyone who has been through an Emotional Healing Process can tell you, the way feelings flow in the body is never linear. Often, the body jumps from feeling to feeling, taking sudden 90 degree turns. Anger goes away, and sadness comes in. Then comes some joy, then some fear, and then maybe we’re back to sadness. Feeling the anger, as temporary as it is, was the key to feeling all the rest of it.
In a similar way, unless you’ve reached enlightened nirvana and the endless bounty of the Archetypal Ego State, in which case you’d probably not have clicked on this article to read it, ego states are a navigation. It does not work to try to jump straight to the final Adult or Archetypal Ego State. That is a fantasy. Doing that puts you in a rather large Now because you are trying to be in one state until the end of time. No. Ego states are temporary changes in behavior, and it may be natural to spend some time in Child or Parent or Gremlin Ego State. Actually, spending some time there might even be Adult.
What?? How?
Having something Bad happen, like making a mistake or getting a Beep! often sends people into emotional swamps. What else can be done instead of jumping ahead to “I’m going to ask for an EHP”, which would be total denial of reality? Don’t go to the Fake Adult Ego State!
What else is there? Well… it’s right there in the Ego State Map. Look carefully, right by the Adult Ego State: “Here and now… Now is too small for stories.” There’s another characteristic of the Adult that is not written in this particular map, which is to Feel. Let the outer layers of the story drop away; let the “should ask for an EHP” dissolve. What happens then is you might let yourself feel. Your feelings might actually be emotions. You might be reactive. Let yourself be reactive. It is just another layer, and there is no skipping ahead here. Let this layer, too, dissolve. It might take a while. You may not look like an Adult, but Adult Ego State is not about looking like anything. Adult Ego State is behaviors and actions, and your actions of letting yourself feel, of not covering things up, of being in the reality of how things are for you right now, are very much being Adult.
If you do all this, if you let the reactivity be there, if you let yourself feel, if you let yourself be in the Small Now, un-numb to what’s really going on for you, if you let yourself be a Mess, then, you might find yourself in an Adult Ego State. Call me. I’ll celebrate with you.
Experiment: Do things. Get Beeps. Be a Mess, if that is what is real. Do not be attached to Being a Mess for any longer than however long you really want to Be a Mess. Be okay with it if you only want to Be a Mess for a few seconds. Be okay with it if you want to Be a Mess for much longer than that. Let necessity, not a should, drive your next action.
- (Of course, except when there are. Sorry.) ↩︎