Transactional Analysis was amazing for me. My mother had a copy
   of I'm OK/You're OK sitting on the back of the toilet growing up
   and later on, "Scripts People Live". Sitting there, bored, I'd
   read them. This is before I went to Vail-Deane in 1986-1990.

   I totally absorbed it. I was 12-14 years old then and I'm 43
   years old now.

   My entire adult life so far, I've seen the things people do and
   say as a series of movie scripts they're repeating (like
   roleplaying/acting) - and they don't even realize it - AND I
   catch myself when I'm in the middle of a script.

   Then I try to stop it. I change my part of the script so that it
   leads to a diplomatic "everybody wins!" solution.

   It also lets me predict people's group behaviors. When I
   recognize the script they're on, even if I don't know the
   people, I know what they're going to say next. Makes me seem
   smarter than I really am, but really, I use it to resolve
   conflicts when I see it. Sometimes I use it to inspire somebody
   by appealing to the Joseph Campbell monomyth. Everybody likes to
   be a hero that's battling an impossible foe and I play the role
   of the Trusted Advisor (the Obi Wan Kenobi, Mr. Miagi, whatever)
   that gives them encouragement and then vanishes, leaving the
   encouragement with them, and then I wait 'til I hear of their
   progress later on. It's truly a force for good.

   Life-changing stuff.   I'm very glad you posted this and that
   Facebook's algorithms were intelligent enough to know that I'd
   like your post and showed it to me because it allowed me to
   speak straight about something that's been important to me for a
   long time, but I rarely talk about it directly. It's always good
   to have an opportunity to tell a personally meaningful story.
   One's own personal narrative, while not the "everything" of "who
   we are", nevertheless, is the easiest to work with and one that
   people readily understand. Helps me put my own life into
   perspective and allows me to share at least a part of who I see
   myself as with others.

   Thank you Zoey smile emoticon I can't say how TA will affect
   you, because we're all unique and on different journeys, but at
   least now you have a perspective from somebody who was
   positively affected by it.