Why do I feel like a child when I’m criticised?

Why does being corrected make me feel so small?

Because the correction does not land on what you said. It lands on where you stand. Somebody uses a tone that places them a little above you, and the drop happens before you have had a thought about it. Your chest tightens, your face gets warm, and the sensible sentence you were holding stays where it is. What comes out instead is either smaller than you are or sharper than you meant.

Transactional analysis gives these positions names that are easy to recognise once you have heard them. A parent voice instructs, corrects, reassures and takes charge. A child voice complies, placates, sulks or pushes back. An adult voice stays level with the other person: it can say what it wants and still take in what was said to it. None of the three is a stage of life you grow out of. All three are available to you in every conversation, and some of them answer faster than you can choose.

Why do I end up sounding like my mother or my father?

The parent voice was learned by ear, years before you had any say in what went into it. You absorbed phrasing, timing and tone from whoever had authority around you, and it sits ready. It tends to arrive when you feel unheard and have run out of patience, because it is the quickest way to get a response from someone who is not responding.

People are often more ashamed of this than of anything else they bring me. It helps to know that the voice is not a verdict on your character. It is a borrowed instrument, and you reach for it under pressure. What matters is whether you can hear it, because a voice you can hear is a voice you can put down.

Why does this happen fastest with the people closest to me?

Because every parental sentence leaves one chair free, and at home you sit down in it without looking. The exchange is quick enough that neither of you can say afterwards who started it.

• The offer. One of you says something with a correction inside it, often about something small, and often while genuinely trying to help.
• The acceptance. The other hears the rank before the content, and answers from underneath it, with an excuse, a silence or a shrug.
• The swap. A few exchanges later the positions reverse, and the one who was corrected is now the one laying down the law about something else entirely.

Familiarity is what makes it fast. The people who know you best know the tone that works on you, usually without meaning to use it, and you know theirs. That is also why the same two minutes can replay for years with different subject matter.

What does an adult answer actually sound like?

Less impressive than people hope. It is not the calm one, not the clever one and not the one that wins. It says what is true for you, in your own tone, without instructing the other person and without apologising for having a view. “I don’t like how that sounded. Say it to me straight and I’ll answer you.” That is all it is, and it is harder than it reads, because it asks you to stay in feeling without taking rank.

These three positions are not only a way of talking about conversations. They are also something therapy can work on directly, and that work has been examined: across 41 trials of transactional analysis treatment, measured change in how a person uses these positions was among the moderate to large effects reported, though the trials varied in design and the authors describe their own analysis as explorative.¹ My own reading of it is modest and useful. Something that feels like temperament turns out to be a set of moves, and moves can be learned differently.

Does this land differently in Denmark?

The packaging changes. The position does not. Many of the international clients I see in Copenhagen describe a correction delivered flat, quiet and without any obvious heat, and they leave the conversation feeling like a pupil without being able to point to a single sharp word. If you grew up where authority announced itself, a level tone can read as neutral right up to the moment you notice how small you feel.

It runs the other way too. Warmth, volume and advice offered freely can be meant as care and received as a parent taking over. Neither style is the problem. The problem is that you are each reading the other through the manners you grew up with, and reading rank where none was intended, or missing it where it was.

What can I do when it starts, and when is that not enough?

You cannot stop the drop, but you can stop answering from it. That gap is where the work lives, and it widens with practice rather than with insight.

• Notice the body first. The tightening arrives before the thought does, and it is the only early warning you get.
• Answer the content, leave the rank. Reply to what was asked and let the tone go unanswered, which is different from pretending you did not hear it.
• Say the want, not the verdict. “I want you to ask me rather than tell me” gives the other person something to do. “You always talk down to me” gives them something to defend.
• Come back to it later. A conversation about how you speak to each other goes better when it is not held inside the exchange it is about.

There are situations where this is the wrong frame. If the corrections come with threats, with monitoring, or with consequences you are managing around, then the difficulty is not which voice answered, and balancing your tone will not touch it. If the drop happens everywhere, including with people who are not correcting you, the pattern is probably older than whoever you are living with now. And if you find you cannot locate the adult voice at all, not just in the heat of it, that is worth exploring with someone rather than drilling alone.

Questions people ask

Will therapy help if the other person never comes?

Yes, because the exchange needs two positions filled and you can only be asked to leave your own. Plenty of people do this work alone, and what changes at home is usually noticed before it is talked about.

Do I need to learn the model for this to help?

No, and learning it is not what makes the difference. The language is only useful because it lets us point at a moment quickly; the change comes from catching the moment, not from naming it well.

What happens in a session if this is my pattern?

I slow one real exchange right down with you until you can feel the point where your voice changed. It is much more about what your body did than about which label fits.

Should we come together, or should I come on my own?

Come together if you both want the way you speak to each other to change, and alone if you want to understand your own part of it first. Either is a reasonable place to start, and one often leads to the other.

Is this just having a short temper?

Not quite, because temper describes how hot it gets and this describes who each of you becomes. People who flare and people who go quiet are often doing the same thing from opposite chairs.

If you keep arriving in the same two positions with the same person, I can help you hear how it starts in psychotherapy in Copenhagen.

Sources

1. The effectiveness of transactional analysis treatments and their predictors: a systematic literature review and explorative meta-analysis, Journal of Humanistic Psychology

How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.