Im Not Ok And Youre Not Ok Either

Sometimes, in the language of TransactionalAnalysis? (see ImOkYoureOk), it is ok for the "child" and "adult" parts of two people to interact, and the other crossed interactions. And a good transactional therapist will tell you that.

Sometimes, it is ok to not be assertive, to be aggressive or be submissive. And a good assertiveness trainer will tell you that.

There is, for me, something inhuman and sinister in the idea that we all should strive to be well-balanced, calm, responsible, mature, reasonable, adult, all the time. As can be read in those terrible The Little Books of this and that and their ilk (except the little book of Chaos and the little book of stress - Amoss), feeding the belief that we all are somehow entitled never to be upset, never unhappy. People who have no objective psychological condition taking Prozac because the "happy" them is the "real" them. Courses of psychoanalytic "treatment" that go on and on and on...

ImNotOkAndYoureNotOkEither, and that is the human condition. Deal with it.

But then, I am a chronic depressive, and am told I may have a touch of high-functioning AspergersSyndrome. So maybe my perceptions are skewed. Then again, there is evidence to suggest that the depressive world-view, while distorted in some areas, is, overall, more accurate that the "normal" view. -- KeithBraithwaite

I think it goes along with having an expansive mind, Keith. There is some literature on gifted folks (measured by I Q, YMMV & etc.) that identifies a category called "Depressive Realists." They're generally smarter than most folks by conventional intelligence measures. They also tend statistically as a group to have more pessimistic world views, and to be more accurate in their assessment and predictions of how things really are. It's an unfortunate label.

I speculate (I'm now outside the literature to which I refer) that such folks have broad and accurate assessments of current reality, and the possibilities available. That's the "realist" part. The "depressive" part comes along with expecting others to understand what you understand, or expecting to be able to realize the possibilities you can imagine. Perhaps from wanting to be able to realize the possibilities you can see. Folks with neither imagination nor aspiration are never missing a future they imagined but didn't achieve. That may be easy, but it's living like cattle.

One approach to this that works sometimes is to seek to learn what you can influence and can't. Another is to seek to learn how to influence, expanding what you can change, bringing more imagined possibilities into the world. -- JamesBullock

Without knowing the criterion exactly, I don't know if I would be characterized this way, but it does resonate with my worldview, at least. I find that the most common source of depression/cynicism comes particular chains of reasoning which trend like the following. Observe a complex system instantiated in the world around you, and realize that it is very suboptimal. Imagine both a more optimal state for the system and a reasonably practical way to get there. Then after reflection, realizing essentially why this improvement will not be made, and that these reasons are neither compelling nor rational. Finally, over time have this proved out (depression and/or cynicism sets in here).

Comments mis-interpreting this page moved (some time ago) to ImOkYoureOk hopefully with some clarification. Nothing is gained by having them in two places. Edits to this page increasing its technical accuracy wrt Transactional analysis, in the one place that that treatment's vocabulary is used for illustrative purposes, welcomed.

<rant> Prozac: America's answer to Coping Skills in the late 20th/early 21st century. It's also in vogue these days to classify people as having conditions and syndromes if they deviate in some way from average (notice I didn't say normal). I strongly suspect the deep reason behind this is to sell them "treatment"...but maybe I'm just being cynical.

Fact is, everyone is different. There is no "OK". In life, as in programming, reality never matches the diagrams. Get used to it. Besides...do you really want to be average all that badly? Didn't think so. --AnthonyLander </rant>

"Normal" was carefully omitted from my list of supposed virtues above, but I do feel that there is a strong normative stream in the learned dependence, excuse me, therapy industry. -- KB

I am normal, it's the rest of the world that's weird.

Yes, the therapy industry seems to be a SelfFulfillingProphecy. I get a kick out of your realism ("deal with it", "get used to it" :-) One note on the interpretation of "OK" - Harris didn't define it in ImOkYoureOk as meaning "not different", or "average", or "normal". In fact, he didn't really define it at all. He implies that it is the opposite of "not OK", which names a child's "negative feelings" (frustration, guilt, etc.) that occur during the "civilizing process" in the first five years of life. -- RandyStafford

That's very interesting. Is it then like this: Not OK is the condition you get in when you start interacting with others, and OK is the state you get in when you successfully deprogram all of that negativism later in life (if you can)?

Very close, but not exactly. The theory is that everyone starts off in an ImOkYoureOk state: they regard themselves and others as unconditionally good, and they expect that life will be basically OK. If they keep that attitude, their life will probably be basically OK.

During childhood, however, usually as a psychological defense against parents, some people evolve a different "existential position": regarding themselves as bad in some intrinsic way (the "depressive" position), or others as bad in some intrinsic way (the "aggressive" position), or both (the "futile" position, also the name of this wiki page).

If they keep this attitude into adulthood, they spend most of their life rationalizing their position: setting things up to fail, justifying one not-OK position or another (or all of them). If someone has fallen into this trap, they need to "re-decide": they need to recognize the position they've taken toward reality, and consciously change it--that is, consciously decide to have an OK life. -- BenKovitz

Certainly the suggestion that "ImNotOkAndYoureNotOkEither" is a venerable tradition, long explored and advocated by various religious institutions. It forms the psychological basis for Augustine's doctrine of OriginalSin, and as such has motivated much of western thought regarding morality, ethics, and "sin". The presumption that all of us are fundamentally "not ok" powers the engine that tells us that in order to be "saved", "well", "healthy" or whatever else, we "must ..." (fill in the blank yourself -- "accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior", "maintain an ongoing program of psychotherapy", "eat only organic and vegetarian food", etc.).

I suggest that, like EuclidOfAlexandria's postulate that parallel lines never meet, such a suggestion defines a particular universe. I would like to further suggest that there are other universes, premised on other suggestions. One, for example, is summarized by the phrase "OriginalBlessing?": that we are each created marvelous, lovely, and unique, and that our universe exists to celebrate this OriginalBlessing?. Just as there are multiple geometries, so too are there multiple universes.

Thus, I see little sense arguing about this. Some of us choose to live in a universe of OriginalSin. Others of us choose to live in one of OriginalBlessing?. We have the ability to converse and therefore share aspects of these (as well as other) universes. Ultimately, the choice of which universe we live in (and, in particular, which universe we die in) is our own.

-- TomStambaugh

I'm not sure that Tom's characterization of ImNotOkAndYoureNotOkEither here matches the author's original intent. That aside, I must point out that although in Tom's universe, there is little sense arguing about whether OriginalSin or OriginalBlessing? is "valid", in my universe, the analogy with geometry holds more tightly. That is, you are welcome to choose to live within Euclidean space, but out of love for you, I may try to convince you that if you assume that space is sometimes curved, your physics will more closely match the events you see around you. In my universe, I want people to tell me if the assumptions I've made do not match the events I see around me, and I hope they will not think me offensive or an idiot if I at well-chosen times, I try to do the same for them. -- DavidSaff

Yes, I agree. Something like DavidSaff's observation is what classical theology is supposed to be -- not an argument about what we believe, but instead a disciplined, rational, and logical exploration of a set of assumptions and their consequences: assumptions about God, the nature of God, and ourselves. I suspect that, as in geometry and mathematics, there is a set of assumptions about the underlying framework that we all make. We make assumptions about logic itself, mathematics, meaning, and so on. My view is that mutually respectful exploration of these assumptions and their implications is meaningful and valuable. -- TomStambaugh

Tom, I like your geometry analogy! (And David's extension of it) You are probably right that there is little sense arguing about this (although, when did that stop anyone?), but I'd like to clarify just a little: I don't buy either of OriginalSin (despite, or is it because of, my Catholic upbringing) or OriginalBlessing?. I don't think we're doomed to damnation unless we <your action here>, neither that we are entitled to paradise and would be there if only we <your action here>.

We just are, are human and that means pain and joy and confusion and clarity and loss and wellbeing and so on and so on, all mixed up together. I'm not OK and neither is anyone else, in part, because the kind of OK that ReevaluationCounseling seems to promote denies half of human experience: how could we be OK and still be human? There is no "sin", and there is no "blessing".

I'll crawl back into my cave now. -- KeithBraithwaite

By OriginalBlessing?, I meant no reference to a particular discipline. I meant that when I watched each of my children enter this world, and when I cut the umbilical cord that tied them to their life-support system, I Knew ... in a deep and very primal way ... that I was experiencing a miracle. There is something profoundly miraculous about watching color and life enter a newborn baby. I marvel that the intense pleasure and joy that I experienced at conception of each of these babies is so intimately connected to the miracle of their birth. I marvel that I, as crusty, old, and jaded as I am, was nevertheless able to experience such joy. In the same way that "crescendo" is meaningless in the absence of "dimuendo", so too is joy meaningless in the absence of grief. I therefore am grateful for the opportunity to live in a universe filled with such emotion, passion, and meaning. For me, the experience -- the "being" -- of this universe is a blessing. Anything that dulls my appreciation of it, that interferes with my ability to Know it, I describe as "sin". Your mileage may vary. -- TomStambaugh

If I wanted to be charitable to this statement, I'd read "I'm OK" as a statement of acceptance rather than judgment.

Keith, I like your opening statements, and the name of this page, as I feel I understand them perfectly. Anyone who deeply believes he is okay has "slip-slided away". I need a steady stream of mild irritants in my life to keep me suspecting of my senses, and you've done well to provide one here.

When you say "deal with it", you are suggesting a different level or species of okay-ness, though, aren't you? And doesn't the message slide away on that note? Or does "deal with it" really mean "engage it, but don't deal it away"? -- WaldenMathews

Nice point, Walden. Engage with but don't deal away seems like a very good maxim.

On some other page long ago I wrote that the mature palate appreciates bitterness, which is probably the best I can do to express what I mean here at the moment. -- Keith

"Life is suffering" -- Buddha

Thich Nhat Hahn writes in his book The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching... "When we read this [passages omitted], we may think that the Buddha is offering a theory - 'All things are suffering' - that we have to prove in our daily life. But in other parts of the same sutras, the Buddha says that he only wants us to recognize suffering when it is present and to recognize joy when suffering is absent. By the time the Buddha's discourses were written down, seeing all things as suffering must have been widely practiced, as the above quotation occurs more frequently than the teaching to identify suffering and the path to end suffering. ... [lengthy interpretation of how the Buddha meant for us to interpret suffering] ... I hope that scholars and practitioners will begin to accept the teaching that all things are marked by impermanence, nonself, and nirvana, and not make too great an effort to prove that everything is suffering."

I liked reading ImNotOkAndYoureNotOkEither The issue of how we tell ourselves what to feel or not to feel is always interesting. It is interesting to me that so many people are really screwed up in the head. Was it always like this and their just weren't labels for it.? Buddha said All life is suffering. That is certainly a not ok kind of position. All Problems boil down to craving and attachment. Wanting things we don't have and not letting go of the things we do have. We get attached to ways of thinking.

I am thinking that breaking down our interactions into Adult/Child segments in our own psyche is a useful model but nothing more. I have gotten to an attitude where everyone we know is everything we think they are, good and bad. -- MarianneBachman

To think something good or bad prevents you from experiencing it. Usually when we suffer we are connected to life because we do not question our emotions; we just experience them. This is life ! Therefore, "Life is in every unquestioned emotion" is a bit clearer.

Seeing all things as suffering is not seeing at all !

-- RodneyRyan?

CategoryPsychology