Unconscious contracts bind us to ways of behaving, thinking and feeling that are, mostly, outside our awareness. They are an inexplicit commitment to a duty, a way of thinking, a way of behaving. They challenge us particularly in times of change when we enter new relationships, have children or make major life decisions. The way they impact is to prevent us, sometimes, from making a truly authentic choice.

Unconscious contracts are often with our family of origin, and can even be carried down from previous generations.

The primary unconscious contracts are often with our parents. We can, as adults, continue to make important decisions with mother or father or both in mind. Even if the demand of the parent is overt, the contract can be unconscious as we blindly concede to their wishes. Take, for example, the case of a successful lawyer, an intelligent woman who was choosing her next career move. She told me that, although her first choice was to remain local, she was considering a move to a part of the country where her parents lived. When I asked why, she said, simply, that that was her mother’s choice. As I began to gently challenge, she “woke up” to the realisation that it would simply have never occurred to her not to go with her mother’s wishes. ….

Transactional Analysis (TA Today) has something useful to offer when it talks about injunctions. These are communicated by parents, mainly non-verbally, to their children and usually begin with the word “Don’t”. One of the injunctions is: Don’t Grow Up. This is often directed towards the youngest child but sometimes it can be part of an unconscious contract with all children to try and keep them from leaving home.

I also wonder whether another injunction, Don’t be Sane, is sometimes placed as a contract between mother / parent and child. If a child is not sane, if s/he has mental health issues, s/he may not easily be able to leave home, may always need that extra support only a parent / family can give ….

When a mother offers a child too-tight holding, “She has”, to quote Barbara Somers / Ian Gorden-Brown (Journey in Depth), “the child on an elastic cord, belly-button to belly-button – making it very difficult for the child to break away.”

For myself, I certainly know that a contract that has become conscious for me now is that my family of origin is a bit like that of the Corleones. The family is to be honoured and prioritised, not necessarily above my current family but almost on a par with. We have a sibling WhatsApp group and the bond between us is constantly strengthened by the communication that goes on there. When we meet up the connection is palpable, there is a passionate group energy that I would be very reluctant to give up. I know I have tried to recreate that with my own children, demanding a loyalty to each other and to myself and their father. Even whilst I am aware of this and enact a more “You are totally free to live your lives however and wherever you wish,” I know that the underlying message is, “ and, if you do that, I will be taken aback that you are not obeying my rules”! So, although it does help to become aware of the unconscious contracts, it is another matter altogether to tear up the paperwork.

The poet, Philip Larkin and his mother had an interesting relationship. There certainly seemed to be competition between his mother and his lovers for his loyalty. There is the cliche about the difficult relationship between a mother and her daughter-in-law. How difficult is it for a mother to fully release her son to his new partner, allowing the relationship between them to become his primary relationship?

Those of us who are therapists need to think about the unconscious contracts we have with our clients…. You will get better….. You will find this helpful…..I’ll support your process of change as long as it matches what I think might be useful for you?

And with ourselves …
Do we have an unconscious contract with our self-image as therapists? Do we identify more with our Love or Will energy in alignment with an unconscious contract we have made with ourselves in terms of how we want to be perceived by others / our clients? How easy is it for us to be contract-free in our work? In what ways do we collude with our clients’ unconscious contracts?

In the end, unconscious contracts are often layer upon layer. Think about what may be passed down through previous generations…. Will we continue to have the history of the last century impact on football matches between the UK and Germany? Do we have a greater need to beat the German football team than teams of other nationalities as a result? Do we owe our forefathers that as an unconscious contract?

refs:

James Booth, ed, Philip Larkin, Letters Home, 2018, Faber and Faber, London
Somers with Gordon Brown, Journey in Depth, 2002, Archive Publishing, Leicestershire
Stewart and Joines, TA Today, 1987, Lifespace, Nottingham