Rebecca Elston CTA P, currently facilitating a fascinating ECO TA series of workshops at Physis Scotland reflects on the learnings.
Having now completed week two of the five week Eco TA Workshops, I can confidently say that I’ve no idea what will emerge or how things will go, no matter how much planning I do! I am so enjoying these sessions and the co-creative nature of the learning for participants and me.
There is something striking for me in the lived experience of the coming together of self, other and place which feels like the Eco TA Frame of Reference (Elston, 2023) in action. Zoom as a place, with participants supported by their homes and inner and outer natural landscapes makes for such a rich intersection of experience and meaning making.
We started week one with an introduction of this model, encouraging specificity of beliefs in a bid to increase Adult (Berne, 1961) awareness, and loosen some potential grandiosity (Schiff, 1971). Who do we think we are as therapists, educators, coaches, clients, trainees… and what might we be projecting onto or assuming about the other? And how does the place in which we interact contribute to that sense? It’s been important to me to be clear about each encounter I have, that the sense made of it is true in that encounter only.
Eco TA Frame of Reference (Elston, 2023)
In week two, we have looked at ecology and script, bolstered by the work of Hayley Marshall and her explanation of the impact of landscape on ego states, and the greening effect that this has, on the clarity of our Adult thinking, and the connection with our somatic experience and protocol. The American Ecological Society define ecology as “the study of the relationships between living organisms (including humans) and their physical environment”, this sounds like a good definition for script analysis to me.
Deeply connected to co-creative process, with the inclusion of the relational process between human and more-than-human, the conversation around ecological script development has been rich and impactful. Expanding on the co-creative script matrix model (Summers & Tudor, 2000), allowing the sense we made of who we were in the room to also account for our sense of self in our other environments.
We still have topics of philosophy and approaches, client presentation in the outdoor container, and practical considerations about working outdoors to come, and I am excited to see where this process takes us.
The irony of working with outdoor process online is not lost on me, yet I am encouraged by the real connection to my landscapes that I have felt, and by the sharing in others’ relationships with their places too. I hope that the continued ecological relationships of all who have been involved can be enhanced and deepened through the perspectives that come from our sharing together from our little boxes on a screen.
Bio:
Rebecca Elston (she/her – CTA P / UKCP Reg) is an indoor and outdoor psychotherapist based in Nottinghamshire. She has been involved in the Eco TA movement since its inception and is an active contributor to the Eco TA community, having her work on script development published in the special edition Eco TA TAJ in 2023.
References:
Berne, E. (1961) Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy. New York: Grove Press
Elston, R. (2023) Making New Meaning With Eco-TA: Using the Aggregate Script Helix to Explore the Contribution of Place to Script Development. Transactional Analysis Journal, 53(1), 80–92.
Marshall, H. (2013) The View from Here: Greening the Adult Ego State, The Transactional Analyst, 4:1
Marshall, H. (2014) The View from Here: A Vital Protocol, The Transactional Analyst, 4:2
Schiff, J. (1971) Passivity. Transactional Analysis Journal, 1:1, 71-78
Summers, G. & Tudor, K. (2000). Co-Creative Transactional Analysis. Transactional Analysis Journal, 30:1, 23-40.