‘This jar has to be kept in the fridge, OK?’
I said some version of that sentence for years without ever hearing the last word in it.
There is nothing wrong with the instruction. The jar did need to go in the fridge. But that “OK?”
at the end was not an invitation to discuss. It was a small request for permission.
Catching a word like that is not a natural talent. It is a trained one. Transactional Analysis (TA) gave me the frame. Once I had it, I started noticing these moments everywhere — including the apologies I made before anything had gone wrong:
“Oh sorry, I didn’t realise you don’t have sugar in tea.”
A whole pattern came into view.
Looking back at my relationships, I could see that I withdrew from arguments easily, adjusted my behaviour to match whoever I was with, did things to be complimented and found it difficult to say no.
For a long time I had read these as separate habits — a communication style, a personality quirk, being ‘easy to get along with’. With the TA lens, I began to see them as one thing.
I leaned on two concepts for this work. One explained what I was working for. The other explained the currency I was being paid in. Between them, they answered a question I had never known how to ask: why did being liked feel so much like being safe?
Understanding the behaviour: Drivers
The first of the two concepts was drivers (Kahler, 1975).
A driver is a behaviour that offers conditional okayness. It reinforces an existential position of ‘I am OK if…’ (Kahler, 1975, p. 283).
Put simply, a driver is what one does in order to feel OK.
Kahler identified five common drivers: Be Perfect, Be Strong, Hurry Up, Please Others, Try Hard. The driver that most strongly influenced my behaviour was ‘Please Others’. It manifested strongly in interpersonal situations that involved disagreement, assertion, or the risk of disappointing another person. My internal sense of being OK used to be contingent on the other person’s approval.
When our stress levels are acceptable, driver behaviours are strengths. “Being fast, energetic, pleasing, strong and excellent is not the same as being in driver behaviour.” (Clarkson, 1992, p.18).
My pleasing was not simply a flaw. It helped me make friends in a new city, collaborate withpeople, and build deep personal relationships. Attunement to other people is not something I want to lose. What I wanted was the choice about when to use it.
Understanding the currency: Strokes
The picture sharpened when I placed drivers alongside a second concept. Berne (1964) defined a stroke as the fundamental unit of social recognition (p. 14). Steiner (1971) went further, describing strokes as a biological necessity — as essential to human life as food, water and shelter (p. 9). A stroke can take many forms: a greeting, a message, being included, being ignored.
Strokes can be unconditional (for who a person is) or conditional (for what the person does). The meaning of the stroke and whether it is positive or negative is determined by the recipient. Positive strokes invite an ‘I am OK’ feeling. Negative strokes invite an ‘I am not OK’ feeling.
Since my sense of okayness was externally anchored, I found it difficult to reject strokes that I didn’t want. At the same time, I actively organised my behaviour to receive the strokes I desired. Approval functioned as reassurance of my okayness, while criticism unsettled me. Which is exactly why saying no was so hard, and why my boundaries stayed thin. On the surface I was agreeable. Underneath, I was quietly accumulating resentment.
Where the pattern began
Growing up, I consistently got positive strokes for being an obedient child and negative strokes for being independent in my thinking. So I learned to do the ‘right’ things — the ones that brought approving comments from the adults around me.
My script decision had been to be a good obedient girl, who pleases everyone and troubles no one. My stroke economy (Steiner, 1971) reinforced the script, wherein I did not reject strokes when I didn’t want them and I didn’t give myself the right kind of strokes.
Holding drivers and strokes together helped me understand my adult interpersonal dynamics not as isolated communication issues, but as interconnected patterns rooted in conditional okayness.
Changing the pattern
Trusting my inherent okayness
The basis of the deep change in me is the internalisation of the TA principle: I am inherently OK.
I started to differentiate the here and now from a past pattern playing out in my mind. I realised that I don’t have to earn my okayness. The script belief that I need others’ input to guide me through life got shaken up. All of this personal work has reinforced my sense of inherent okayness.
Using contracts
Contracting has become my most practical tool against pleasing.
Berne (1966) defined a contract as “an explicit bilateral commitment to a well-defined course of action” (p. 21).
Contracting is how I honour my own needs instead of defaulting to the other person’s. It is how I show up as a psychological equal. It is a form of respect, for them and for me.
This plays out everywhere now — in work conversations, in friendships, in the small negotiations of an ordinary day. The two examples below are from home.
My son: “Mumma, I am thinking of going for the morning as well as afternoon cricket coaching tomorrow.”
Me: “I am fine if you will get in some study between the two.”
My son: “I will study after I come back in the evening.”
Me: “I am going to say no, because I know you will be tired and you will not be able to study.”
My son: “Ok, I will finish it tonight itself then.”
Me: “OK. This plan works.”
Me to my husband, about my son’s screen time: “I am concerned about his screen time.”
He: “We will have to tell him.”
Me: “We will speak with him. We will also have to spend non-screen family timewith him.”
He: “Are you referring to my screen time?”
Me: “No, I was asking for one hour of non-screen family time every day.”
He: “I can play some sport with him during that time.”
Me: “That is great! Thank you.”
Contracting has made my conversations different. The word OK is a way to show agreement, rather than seeking permission. The exchange has become more open, rather than me withdrawing at the slightest sign of conflict. And saying no has become a real option for me.
Expanding my stroke economy
If strokes are as necessary as food, then a narrow stroke economy is a form of scarcity — and scarcity is what made me hoard approval in the first place.
So I deliberately widened the circle of people and situations I interacted with: hosting board games meet-ups, catching up socially with psychotherapists in my network, a regular meet-up with TA friends in the city, a weekly writing catch-up with a friend. The more relaxed I became, the more of ‘me’ showed up in each.
Asserting my needs
I have also started giving more real feedback without sugarcoating it — learning to deliver a stroke respectfully while keeping its impact intact.
At my birthday lunch, a friend turned much of the conversation towards her brother and his troubles. I felt disappointed. I told her the next day, clearly, that I had not liked it. She received it and understood it. We continue to be great friends.
That, for me, is the whole shift in miniature: I said the difficult thing, and the relationship held.
Where I am now
The pattern is not completely gone. I still catch the occasional ‘OK?’ at the end of a sentence. The difference is that I notice it now, and I get to choose what I do next. More often than not, I meet people as a psychological equal, say what I need and negotiate before I commit.
I did not arrive at any of this through insight alone. I practised my way here — one noticed word, one held boundary, one un-sugarcoated sentence at a time. Which is also why I trust the method. I did not just read about it. I did the work on myself first.
About the author:
Ruchira Gupta, an IIMB graduate, works full time in the coaching and therapy space, after twenty years leading people and culture inside organisations. She is an ACC certified coach and a TA therapist, with a Diploma in Transactional Analysis. She founded BeingU.in to make concepts like belonging, courage and autonomy more accessible through one-on-one sessions and group workshops.
She calls herself a ‘gentle contrarian’, and her clients are people whosense there is more available to them in their own lives. She lives between Gurgaon and Mumbai, and away from work is usually to be found with a book, a board game, or a perfectly brewed cup of tea.
References
Berne, E. (1964). Games People Play. Berne, E. (1966). Principles of Group Treatment.
Clarkson, P. (1992). Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy: An Integrated Approach. Kahler, T.
(1975). Drivers: The key to the process of scripts. Transactional Analysis Journal. Steiner, C.
(1971). The Stroke Economy. Transactional Analysis Journal.
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