January 29, 2024 • 56 mins
What do feelings and emotions have to do with anti-oppression work?
Join me as I welcome longtime VISIONS consultant and counselor Felipe Garcia, who specializes in Transactional Analysis, the liberatory psychology framework at the core of our model. Felipe is the author of several articles, including one you may have read if you’ve been part of a longer VISIONS training called "The Role of Feelings in the Workplace."
This year, 2024, is the 40th year of VISIONS existence, and this is another in our ongoing series of stories from elders in our community. VISION was founded in 1984 by a group of psychologists and others who brought their clinical skills to bear on the problem of racism and other forms of oppression, including the role that emotion and feeling plays in anti-oppression work. Not only has Felipe has not only done extensive work in this area–he still actively teaches what he calls The Responsive Process.
In addition to Felipe sharing about his background and journey, we talk about what transactional analysis is and why it is so useful in anti-oppression work, and, of course, what the role of feelings in the workplace is!
Read more of Felipe's work at https://www.winningtogether.org/
See what's coming up at VISIONS!
About us
Into Liberation: A podcast about transformative change, equity, and liberation is a production of VISIONS, Inc, a non-profit that offers effective tools that help individuals and organizations communicate and forge connections across differences that drive collective success.
Since 1984, we’ve offered research-based, time-tested approaches to cross-cultural learning that invite participants to engage in equity and inclusion work, starting at the personal and interpersonal levels and expanding to include changes toward institutional and cultural levels.
VISIONS offers actionable approaches that empower people to identify actions, explore their motivations, and effectively move through complex situations with respect and humanity for others and their differences.
Any opinions and views expressed by the speakers are their own and do not reflect the positions of VISIONS, Inc.
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Music credit: Tim Hall @tv_hall
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (00:01):
Hello, you're listening to Into Liberation, a
podcast about transformativechange, equity and working
against oppression.
I'm Leena Akhtar, Director ofPrograms with VISIONS Inc.
Welcome.
Today I'm excited to welcomeFelipe Garcia, a longtime
Visions consultant and counselor, who specializes in
(00:22):
Transactional Analysis, which isa social psychology framework
that is at the core of theVisions model.
Felipe is the author of severalarticles, including one that
you may have read if you've beenpart of a longer Visions
training, called "the Role ofFeelings in the Workplace.
This year, 2024, is the 40thyear of Visions existence, and
this is another in our ongoingseries of stories from elders in
(00:44):
our community.
Visions was founded in 1984 by agroup of psychologists, among
others, who brought theirclinical skills to bear on the
problem of racism and otherforms of oppression, and this,
in my opinion, is our secretsauce.
One of the things that drew meto the Visions model was its
adeptness around the role thatemotion and feeling played in
anti-oppression work.
(01:05):
Not only has Felipe doneextensive work in this area, he
still actively teaches what hecalls the responsive process.
In our conversation, inaddition to Felipe sharing about
his background and journey, wetalk about what transactional
analysis is and why it's souseful in anti-oppression work
and, of course, what the role offeelings in the workplace
actually is, and we're recording.
(01:26):
Hi everybody, I'm really excitedtoday to be talking to Felipe
Garcia.
Felipe is an elder in theVisions community, a longtime
clinician and one of myinstructors in the Libertory
Psychology Frameworktransactional analysis, which,
as Visions consultants, we allwent into training around.
I haven't talked to Felipe inan extended way before, and so
(01:48):
I've been really excited aboutthis conversation.
Felipe, before we begin, wouldyou introduce yourself briefly
to everyone listening?
Felipe Garcia (01:55):
Well, I'm Felipe Garcia and I'm a master's in
marriage and family therapy andlicensed professional counselor
Actually, I just let go of mylicense in Texas marriage and
family and professionaltransactional analyst.
Well, that one wasn't a licensein Texas, that's through the TA
Association.
I've been.
I was in practice in SanAntonio for about 50 years in
(02:20):
marriage and family and I did alot of group therapy and a lot
of transactional analysistraining.
I had training groups here andin Mexico City and in Monterrey
and in the Rio Grande Valley formany years in the 80s and 90s
and into the 2000s, and then Iclosed my office about three
years ago.
Before that I was a teacher oftheater and drama and speech for
(02:45):
eight years and then beforethat I was a school counselor
and then after that I was aconsultant at a regional service
center for counselors for twoor three years and then I went
into private practice in 1975.
So that's a little bit about myprofessional life, my home life
(03:07):
.
I grew up in South Texas, alittle town called Bend Volts,
south of Alice, and it was asmall city and a small high
school.
There were 100 people in thewhole school.
There were 22 in my graduatingclass and most of the people in
the community were my cousins,either on my father or on my
mother's side.
There were two communities, onewas called Bend Volts and one
(03:30):
was called Palito Blanco, and mymother came from Palito Blanco
and so it was a large family.
My mother had like 11 siblings,and my father did too, and so I
had a lot of first cousins andso I grew up in this kind of
like protected environment and Ididn't know at the time but we
were like probably upper middleclass because we had businesses.
(03:53):
My father and his brothers hadbusinesses, ranching and general
merchandise store, cotton, ginand some fields where they grew
vegetables and corn and cotton.
So then I went to St Mary'sUniversity as an undergraduate
and then to the University ofTexas as a graduate in theater
and then back to the universityand I got my master's in
(04:15):
counseling there.
So anything of that thatcatches your interest.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (04:21):
So much of it.
I had no idea that you had abackground in theater and in
teaching before you went intocounseling.
So for people who may not know,because this podcast it goes
out to people who are basicallyin the vision's community kind
of in a very wide sense so forpeople who might not know what
transactional analysis is, howwould you summarize it?
Felipe Garcia (04:42):
Transactional analysis analyzes transactions
Transactions meaning we normallycall interactions, or when we
communicate with each other andwe analyze them from the point
of view of the ego states andthe premise in transaction.
I'm going to say TA for now on,and that means transactional
analysis.
The premise in TA is thatpeople operate from one of
(05:06):
either three ego states.
There are five behaviors in theego states, and the ego states
are child, adult and parent.
And the child ego state is whowe were as children, as all the
way from infants to 11 or soyears old, and it's still
recorded and so we can access it.
(05:27):
The child ego state, that's ouroriginal self, our natural,
real self, and then our adaptivechild, which learned how to
socialize and live in the world,of what to do legally and
culturally in our world, and sothat's the adaptive child.
And then there's the adult egostate, which is the other ego
(05:48):
state, and that's that's beginsto develop as we begin to have
language and think and problemsolve.
The adult ego state is like ourcomputer.
It asks and answers questionslike what, where, when, that you
know are answerable with facts.
So it's a separation betweenfeelings and facts in terms of
adult and child.
(06:09):
And the parent ego state iswhat we took in from the people
that were racing us either ourparents or whoever was racing us
and also the environment,teachers and other people around
us when we were children and sowe kind of took it in.
Some people don't take it inbecause it's harsh and that
leads to problems, but wenormally take in our parent and
(06:30):
then we find ourselves behavingand sounding like our parent,
pointing the finger, using you alot, and the parent ego state
is controlling, but it also canbe nurturing.
The parent ego state also isnurturing, particularly if you
had nurturing parents.
Unfortunately, if you didn'thave anybody who was nurturing
in your youth growing up, youmay not have too much nurturing
(06:53):
parent in your parent ego stateand you have to use your adult
to develop it in the here andnow.
So those are the three egostates.
So we analyze you say hello andI say hello.
That's a complimentarytransaction, that just seems
nice.
But if you say hello and I sayshut up, that's a different
kinds of transaction.
(07:14):
We call block train or crosstransaction and we want to
analyze what was that about?
Where did that come from?
So that's transaction analysis.
There are two other conceptsthat are important to
transactional analysis, and oneis script, which we call the
script, the live plan thatchildren decide on when they're
very young in terms of what'sgoing on in their environment.
(07:37):
So they'll make decisions likeI'll never be happy, or I'll
never be loved, or I'll neverlove anybody, or I'll never let
myself do this or that, andthose are early decisions that
we make that may still beimpacting our lives, and so we
analyze script through games,and games is what we do over and
over, out of awareness, toreinforce those decisions that
(08:00):
we made early on as children.
And so we analyze what you'rereinforcing life positions,
because transactional analysisbelieves and operates out of the
assumption that people are okay, you are okay, and that means
you have value and worth anddeserve dignity and respect, and
so do I and so do all others,including individuals or groups.
(08:23):
And so if something ishappening that is not reflective
of that okay, okay relationship, we analyze it, because it may
be that the persons areoperating from either an I'm not
okay, you are positioned, orI'm okay, you're not positioned,
or I'm not okay and you're notokay, position, which is very
(08:45):
depressing.
So, analyzing those positionsthat the person might still be
reinforcing, we move intohelping and trying to point that
out to them and inviting theminto change.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (08:59):
Thank you.
Thank you for that wonderfullysuccinct summary of the big
concepts in TA.
Felipe Garcia (09:06):
So it is big and it's easy to describe a quick
level like that.
But I've been analyzingtransactions for over 50 well,
50 years and it's still very,it's still a learning curve.
I'm still learning about itbecause what it does is analyze
(09:26):
humans, and humans are complexand unique.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (09:30):
Absolutely.
Felipe Garcia (09:31):
So as.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (09:31):
Visions consultants, we take workshop
called TA101, which is a two-dayoverview of the major concepts,
and I was reminded when I satin on a PACE2 workshop this past
fall how deep and intricate andrich this framework is.
Now you just gave us ahigh-level overview and, for
people who are listening, couldyou tie it to why this is so
(09:56):
profoundly applicable, which itis?
It's a really powerful andgenerative framework for
anti-racist and anti-oppressionwork.
Felipe Garcia (10:03):
Well, there's a concept in transactional
analysis called contamination,and if you see the three ego
states that I described as threecircles sitting on each other
on top of each other at the topone is the parent, one in the
middle is the adult and the onein the bottom is a child
Contamination is when either thechild and or the parent ego
(10:25):
state overlaps the adult andconfuses opinions and feelings
for facts, and so it's veryimportant in the work of
anti-racism and anti-sexism work, and all the anti-work is to
help people get in touch withtheir own prejudices, both about
(10:46):
themselves and about othersbecause of the environments they
grew up in, and learn thoseprejudices and their call
contamination, and that's a veryeffective way to help lead
people into understanding theirout-of-awareness behaviors that
may be impacting othersnegatively or themselves
negatively because ofinternalized depression.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (11:07):
Is that exactly, or?
Yeah, thank you so much for that.
It struck me as I deepened mylearning and deepened my
training just how much thevisions model, the whole thing,
everything that we do, thelearnings, the exercises, and
especially the deepintrospective exercises that we
do in the PACE trainings, arerooted in this framework of
(11:29):
transactional analysis, and ittook me a couple of years before
I was able to see the directlinks.
Now, philippe, you've done a lotof work on affect and emotion
specifically, and I think wehave this long list of questions
and I'm really enjoying nerdingout about this with you, so I
hope you'll indulge me.
One of my favorite settings inwhich to do visions work, and
(11:51):
especially the affective work,are places like academic
institutions and STEMinstitutions, places where
there's this longstanding kindof deeply rooted hostility and
distrust of affect and emotions,and introducing them to the
visions model and giving them aframework for how important and
useful and valuable and reallyvital to this work getting some
(12:15):
adeptness with emotions is.
So, whatever, you want to speakto that, especially in light of
the workshop that you gaverecently and its connection to
anti-racism work.
I'd love to hear about that.
Felipe Garcia (12:27):
Well, the first thought that came to my mind as
you were describing academicsettings and a lot of clinical
and professional settings wherefeelings are considered not
germane is very sad, becausefeelings lead the way and
they're at the bottom ofeverything.
I had a trainer once intransactional analysis that used
(12:47):
to say that when he had aclient that he was talking to,
he always saw the child of theclient sitting on his lap, and
so that's a way of gettinghelping, staying in touch with
the fact that you're reallydealing with a child in many
ways, regardless of theirbehavior.
So it's unfortunate that inmany settings feelings are
(13:08):
considered not useful andactually are tried to avoid them
.
My work has been from veryearly on, both when I was in
education as well as when I wasin doing clinical transactional
analysis work, of the importanceof feelings.
Envision the work dealing withfeelings is called feelings as
(13:31):
messengers, and that is that thefeelings send important
messages about needs.
The ones that we're used to arelike having to go to the
bathroom or being hungry orbeing tired and sleepy.
We automatically respond tothose, although some people
didn't discount them.
They don't even pay attentionto those very well, and we get
(13:53):
into trouble when we're notpaying attention to our bodies
messaging us through ourfeelings.
I call it the responsiveprocess because we respond to it
both in ourselves and in otherswhen they address us about
their feelings or when we wantto address them about their
feelings or ours.
I call it the responsiveprocess and I have written
(14:17):
several articles about that,three in particular.
And then, like you said, I justdid a workshop on that.
So there's the feelings and thenthere's thinking about the
feelings in order to decode thefeeling and identify what it is
that our body is needing.
For instance, if we're angrybecause we're being treated
unfairly, discriminated againstor with prejudice, there is a
(14:43):
feeling reaction to that and howto deal with it.
So thinking about that feelingand then figuring out how to
deal with that feeling in termsof the person that's doing it,
and what's effective and noteffective and what might be
useful and what might not, isimportant.
So that thinking is about whatis this about?
And then how can I?
What can I do?
(15:04):
And then the third part to thefeeling response is to act, to
do something, and it may be thatyou do something yourself,
directly with the person, or itmay be that you do something
with hopefully a support groupof same, like people For
instance, if it's people ofcolor or women or GLBT people to
(15:26):
get support from them to impactthe system rather than try to
impact at the personal level,because very often that's
doesn't go anywhere.
So we have to analyze itthrough this thinking step.
So thinking about feelings andtaking feelings into account is
very important in the work ofanti-racism work.
(15:50):
Thank you.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (15:52):
I have to say I watched the workshop before
this recording session and Ireally appreciated just the
elegant simplicity of theresponsive process and it
actually got me thinking about acouple of things that were
happening in my own life in adifferent way, because I
realized in the triangle thatyou had up there I was going
like a pinball between feelingand thinking.
(16:14):
I was like wait, there's a thirdstep, I could act.
So, and even being thatmethodical about it, like okay,
here is this feeling, like whatis it telling me, etc.
And then what can I do about it?
Even that is more, by leaps andbounds, more emotional literacy
than I certainly grew up with.
So thank you for that and thankyou for.
Wonderful.
(16:36):
So I love that and I would bevery happy to link to your
articles in the show notes.
So if you send them to me, Ican make sure that anybody who's
listening can just look at theshow notes and click on them.
Felipe Garcia (16:45):
The articles are on a website that is called
winningtogetherorg.
Under the tab publications, thearticles in particular about
this topic are called reactivityand another one called
responsivity, and then there'sone called the role of feelings
in the workplace.
So those three articles whichare at that website explain into
(17:08):
more detail this feeling andthe messengers.
Fantastic, so glad that youbrought up your example, because
that's what I was hoping for indoing that, that workshop.
I use it all the time by myselfwith myself, like, for instance
, when I was getting ready totalk to you today.
I thought you know, I don'thave much to say about this, and
at the same time, either withthe workshop I was thinking
(17:31):
everybody already knows it orI'm trying to do too much, but
anyway I scare myself.
That's a very common feelingfor me.
In transactional analysis wecall it a racket feeling, which
is our favorite feeling, and wehave to be careful with it
because it's often present eventhough there's not a stimuli for
it.
I'm a worrier and so I worry,and then I look to see, find
(17:56):
something to worry about tomatch the feeling, because
there's not much going on thatworries me.
So when I was worrying aboutdoing the workshop and scaring
myself with that I didn't havemuch to say in terms of action
in response to the feeling.
Sometimes it just means thatattitude adjustment and it's not
(18:17):
always easy because we're soprone to feel that way in our
body that is sometimes hard tochange the feeling.
It may be scare, or it may besad, or it may be anger.
That is our favorite feelingthat we go to often in spite the
circumstance.
So how you want to check forthe accuracy of the feeling in
(18:38):
terms of responding is thatscare is a threat, either
imagined or real.
And my scare were imaginedbecause I've done this workshop
for many, many years and I'vetalked about this topic for many
years and I know it.
It just comes out naturally andso there's no seeking any kind
(19:02):
of help for the feeling.
I reached out and got somereassurance a couple of times.
When it's a real scare becauseyou hear a noise in your house
outside or something and youwant to carefully go, look to
see what's happening, that's anaction taking in terms of a real
scare.
You're walking across thestreet and the cars approaching
and you quickly get out of theway.
(19:23):
That's action in terms of thescare.
Sadness is about loss and sothat needs space to grieve and,
hopefully, support, and somepeople like support and some
people like to be on their ownby themselves, and anger is an
intrusion of some kind, either adenial or an intrusion.
(19:44):
And so it makes sense that youreestablish boundaries.
When somebody is either shovingyou or yelling at you or
treating you unkindly orunrespectfully, you want to re
in some way reestablish thatboundary to protect yourself.
And it's important to rememberthat sometimes we substitute the
(20:05):
feeling like.
Very often people will get madwhen they're sad, because men
are given messages not to feelsad or scared.
That's not manly, and so veryoften they'll feel angry instead
, when in reality there I findlots of my clients come in angry
when they're really scared.
And so it's important that youidentify the feeling in response
(20:28):
to the stimuli in order todecide how to take the action.
And sometimes the action isgoing to be in response to the
stimuli outside, if it's real,like the approaching car, or to
respond to the stimuliinternally, if it's not real,
like.
What I do is work at reassuringmyself and stopping myself from
(20:52):
feeling the scare, although itis a challenge, because life is
the challenge.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (20:57):
Right.
So the stimuli can be somethingthat happens externally,
something internal, like athought, or just the momentum,
as you said, of the dominantfeeling state reaching for
something to latch onto Right.
I appreciate that summary.
The article the role offeelings in the workplace.
That's one that we include alot in our pre-work or during
(21:18):
session work packets, in paceand other trainings.
And for people for whom thatidea is counter-intuitive, how
would you like playing on thetitle of your article what is
the role of feelings in theworkplace?
Felipe Garcia (21:31):
Well, I wrote that article because I was
working for visions, both in theUS and Japan and in England,
and we were working a lot withengineers and scientists who, as
you stated a while ago, neglector ignore the importance of
feelings in relating toin-building and managing people,
(21:56):
and so I wrote that article.
I already had reactivity andresponsivity, but it was more
clinically based, and so Iwanted to write an article that
was for organizational settings.
It was true in most companiesthat employees were invited to
leave their cultural selves atthe door and take over and
(22:21):
operate out of the corporateframe or culture which denied
feelings.
And the new, the change that wewere inviting them into making
and they did to a large extentbecause they were long-term
consults, they were years was toinvite them in to learn how to
respond to their own feelingsand learn how to respond to them
(22:43):
what role is being played, andhow to respond to the feelings
of people who they'resupervising or other people in
the work team.
So feelings are very importantin the workplace.
That was the reason I wrote thearticle was to write something
that kind of had examples andreflected more about its
(23:05):
application in an organizationalsetting.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (23:09):
I think it's a great article and I see
constantly in organizationsbring this up when we talk about
processing content.
If people aren't happy with theprocess, they'll make it known,
and if people can't speakopenly about their feelings
it'll come out in different ways.
So if people are scared, wemight see a phenomenon where
people are kind of picking aprocess, like being critical of
(23:33):
minor, minor points when it'sreally about something else.
So feelings have this way ofderailing processes if they're
not acknowledged Absolutely.
Felipe Garcia (23:43):
Including and absolutely in work settings as
well, absolutely in worksettings and I was a consultant
in education and I did a lot oftraining for parents, teachers
and counselors, educators ingeneral, and the first
consulting job that I got at theRegional Service Center here in
(24:03):
Texas, in San Antonio, wascalled Crime and Drug Addiction
Prevention.
It was in the late 70s andbecause I quit that at 75,
that's when I went into privatepractice, but even then I was
really emphasizing theimportance in preventing crime
(24:24):
and drug addiction is theimportance of teaching children
how to deal with their feelings,both as parents and as teachers
.
And at that workshop that youwere talking about, I talked
about the use of the responsiveprocess in helping children deal
with their feelings, theirsadness, their scares, their
(24:45):
angers.
Very often we're afraid oftheir feelings or we tell them
to stop feeling that because wedon't know how to deal with it
ourselves, and instead what isuseful is for us to say I hear
that you're feeling really mador scared or sad or whatever.
Would you like to tell mewhat's going on and what are
some options in terms ofresponding to it, so that we can
(25:08):
, from very early on, helpchildren learn how to address
their feelings and that they'revery important messengers and
very important stimuli for us torespond to in some effective
way.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (25:20):
Great.
So you started in education andin theater and then you moved
into counseling, and then tellme about your trajectory from
there and how you got connectedto visions and how you started
applying this work to theanti-oppression, anti-racist
work that visions does.
Felipe Garcia (25:37):
Well, my career and my life has been kind of
like directed by some otherenergy rather than me, because I
went to a small school wherethere was no guidance and
counseling and guidance to helppeople with their trajectory in
terms of their careers.
So I was interested in theaterbecause I love theater and I
(25:58):
love musicals and so on, and sothat's what I, and there was a
small theater department at StMary's where I went to
undergraduate school and speech.
Actually I was interested indesign and I didn't know how to
put that into my life at workand that was the closest that I
could find at St Mary's.
(26:19):
But then later I was teachingschool and then it came time to
get a master's in San Antonio,and the only master's that I
could get in San Antonio,because I had gone to the
University of Texas wheregraduate studies in theater was
either to become a principal ora counselor, and I didn't want
(26:40):
to be a principal, so I got mymaster's in counseling.
I started working with juniorhigh school children and it
became apparent to me that theproblems that the children were
having were often familyproblems.
So I started addressing, goingto home rooms in a junior high
school and inviting the studentsinto counseling to say
(27:03):
counseling is not when you're introuble, it's when you want
help.
And so it changed theenvironment of the counseling
process, just being a schedulingoffice and disciplinary office
to one which was office for helpand direction.
And I did a lot of my work interms of training educators was
in training them to help dealwith their feelings and the
(27:26):
feelings of their children.
So, oh, the question was thetrajectory.
So, and what got me interestedin this?
So I've always been interested,from very young, first of all
in people.
I'm just interested in peopleand differences.
What makes you difference?
In my community there weremostly Latinos, and the only
(27:47):
white people that were therewere either because they came
during the Dust Bowl and thegovernment had given them some
land, and or the child of thesuperintendent of the school.
And I remember asking the childof the superintendent of the
school who I played with, whatdid you all have for dinner?
And it was an attempt for me tofigure out how they were
(28:08):
different.
And so I had these twointerests One was about people
and how they were different, andwhat was the other one?
And the other one was why don'tpeople get along?
Why do people fight and why dopeople have wars and what would
prevent that?
So I wrote an article.
One of the first articles thatI wanted to write was the
(28:30):
article which is also in thatwebsite, called Winning Together
, and it was an article abouthow to work together to create
collaborative community andcollaborative team building.
And so one of the elements inthat article, in terms like the
elements, include vision,contract, cooperation.
(28:53):
Those are the elements inbuilding collaborative
communities and one of them iscommunication, and for
communication I wrote.
When I went to write an articleabout all of this, it just
seemed too overwhelming and big,so I thought well, I'll just
write the one aboutcommunication, which I call
reactivity, and the reason Icalled it reactivity is because
(29:13):
I was wanting to help peopleidentify and move away from
being passive.
Passive is doing nothingeffective about a problem.
That's when you're beingpassive is you have a pain and
you're not paying attention toit or doing anything about it,
or you are you lose your job andyou get depressed and don't do
(29:34):
anything about it.
But this one was about gettingalong with each other and
building teams.
So it was, I was doing thatwork and, like I said earlier
when I was introducing myself.
I had a lot of training groupsand then Val invited me.
Val and I were friends.
Val and Angela and I werefriends before vision, so when
vision was getting born.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (29:55):
So that's Dr Valerie Bats and Angela Bryant
who are two of the co-foundersof visions.
Felipe Garcia (30:00):
That's right.
So Valerie invited me to cometo New York to what was then
called Four Day and now it'scalled a PACE workshop, which is
a four day introduction to thevisions model.
And so I went and Val invitedme to do some teaching of
transactional analysis at thatgroup and then to be a
(30:21):
participant in the visions work.
And that was very exciting andinteresting to me and I learned
a lot.
Because I didn't know a lotabout racism.
I knew.
I knew that my family hadexperienced it in terms of being
Latino, but also my family hadproperty and it was easier for
(30:45):
them to address that than it wasfor poor people who are at the
mercy of employers.
So I learned a lot at thatfirst visions four day that we
did in New York and that got meinto learning vision, the
visions model, which was veryenriching for me.
And then Valerie kept invitingme to do more training for
(31:07):
visions at different settingsand that's how I got involved
with visions and that's how Igot involved in rent.
I racism work Fantastic.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (31:14):
So a lot of the people who are in the
visions orbit, like a lot of ourelders, have literally been
around, if not since itsinception, then certainly for
decades.
So what is it that led you tostay and what kept you coming
back?
Like what keeps you being partof the community?
What keeps you being part ofthe community?
Felipe Garcia (31:35):
Well, I came into visions.
Not knowing visions breaks outinto people of color or white
groups.
In order to address to supportgroups, to build support groups,
and I didn't know whichbreakout group to go to, because
I'm white but Latino people ofcolor, and so it was so I would
(31:57):
go to each.
Sometimes I'd go to one,sometimes I'd go to the other.
But now I realize that I reallywas a non-target, that I should
have gone to them, although Ireally can relate to both parts
of it, to both the target andtargets, a non-target side,
which I think most of us can,and so.
But in general I came as anon-target in terms of exposure
(32:21):
to the work.
So I learned a lot about thetarget group population and
their experiences and my my outof awareness, prejudices and
contaminations that I wastalking about earlier.
And the other thing that wasvery useful that I learned was
that I hadn't put a lot ofthought into was the levels of
(32:41):
oppression, which is personal,interpersonal, institutional and
cultural.
I had been paying attention tothe personal, interpersonal, a
lot more than institutional andcultural at that time, but
visions open up my eyes to thoseother levels of application and
impact.
So, in a kind of like indirectway, that's how I came to
(33:02):
visions.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (33:03):
Beautiful.
So you continue doing am Icorrect in thinking mostly your
clinical work, as well as doingsome consulting and training for
visions?
Do I have that right?
Felipe Garcia (33:15):
Yeah, I'm not doing very much anymore.
I don't take in clientsSometimes I'll see a client that
I've seen before and I'm notdoing training groups and I'm
not doing nothing much withvisions anymore.
I'm kind of retired andenjoying it.
And retired is a whole other.
And being old, it's just sointeresting.
(33:37):
It's another target group beingold and it's so interesting how
it plays out.
The most common one that Inoticed is that I belong to a
men's group, which I had a lotto do with starting it, because
I think men have a lot of workto do in terms of learning about
their own oppression from thesexism environments they grew up
in.
And I noticed that how oftenpeople will talk to each other
(34:02):
is, if I'm not there, assumingthat I'm too old to get involved
.
I don't know what theassumption is, but I noticed it
and, of course, in terms of youknow I will intervene with
making a comment or somethingand joining the conversation
rather than feeling bad about it, but it's very interesting to
me.
I noticed it somewhat in my ownfamily.
(34:24):
What I mean by my family isthat I'm very close to a lot of
nephews and nieces, so that'swhat comes to mind.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (34:30):
I'm also curious about from when you
joined visions.
Was it mostly that you weredoing your own clinical and
training work and thenconsulting work as well, or were
you heavily involved inconsulting?
That's just a curiosityquestion.
Felipe Garcia (34:46):
I was heavily involved in consulting myself in
my own practice and ValerieBatson invited me to do
consulting work with visions, sofor me it was like another
consulting job.
But, it was not like allconsulting jobs, because there
was a lot for me to learn fromthe visions model, my experience
(35:07):
there.
But both when I went to trainmy first TA 101 was with Tom
Harris who wrote I'm okay,you're okay.
And it was a week long workshopand at the end of the week they
had what they called a marathon, where you engaged in doing
your own personal work, because,like visions, transactional
analysis training requires a lotof doing your own personal work
(35:29):
which is one of the greatimportant values of
transactional.
I mean both transactionalanalysis and visions in their
application, because the visionsmodel so much emphasizes your
own personal work and both invisions and in transactional
analysis, I came to learn tohelp others.
(35:50):
I didn't come to learn to helpme, but it was through my
process of learning, learningtransactional analysis and the
visions model, that I get intouch with a lot of my own
issues and actually, the older Iget, the more I realize like I
was just talking to you about myworry ward part that I'm
addicted to worry.
I'm doing pretty well in termsof managing it, and one of the
(36:14):
ways that I manage it is not togive me stimuli that will make
me nervous.
That's really smart.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (36:21):
So that gets into my next question, which
would be would have been some ofyour biggest lessons as you've
done this work, eitherexternally, in terms of
interfacing with clients,whether that's organizations or
people, or internally.
Felipe Garcia (36:34):
Well, one of the biggest lessons was to learn and
continue to learn about theimpact and the intervention at
all four levels of work, and toalways think about that the
impact that the cultural andinstitutional levels are having
on our interpersonal andpersonal lives, and the need to
(36:55):
impact at the other levels.
But the other thing that I'velearned and continue to learn
about is the barriers to thework, the difficultness of the
work, because there I used tothink that my dream was to
create a world where people weregetting along and respecting
each other and cooperating.
(37:17):
And what I've learned andcontinue to learn is that
there's a lot of people whodon't believe in in I'm okay,
you're okay.
They believe either I win oryou lose and you lose, or you or
you win and I lose.
They operate from a competitiveframe of reference and I didn't
(37:37):
say this earlier, but I meantto, because it's very important
describing the responsiveprocess that we operate out of
the assumption that people areokay and deserve respect and
that the goal of our work is tocreate success and happiness for
people.
And so, in terms of creating theenvironment in which to work,
(38:01):
it's important that we teachpeople how to deal with their
feelings in ways that are goingto be respectful of themselves
and others.
So what I've learned is thatthere's a lot of people that
don't believe that happiness ispossible, that getting along
with people of difference isvaluable or useful.
(38:22):
So I think it's just arealization of there's a lot of
people that don't believe theway you do, and so the learning
is how to deal with that.
One of the things that I sayabout the responsive process is
that I practice it, even ifpeople don't believe in it or
practice it themselves.
I can practice it for myself,and I think the vision of work
(38:45):
is in the same way.
We can do the alternatives tothe modernism behaviors, whether
people are doing them or not.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (38:55):
Right.
I think that's a reallyimportant point, because we give
people the tools and resourcesto generate different outcomes,
either externally or internallyfor themselves.
I mean, obviously we do ourorganizational work and we also
give people supportive tools tomake outcomes happen differently
or at least feel different,even if they're applying things
(39:16):
just from one side.
Felipe Garcia (39:18):
Right, exactly Because the goal, actually one
of the goals I'm not saying thegoal, but one of the goals is to
live an okay life in spite ofliving in a competitive, racist
world.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (39:33):
So when you say competitive, Felipe, I think
that that might.
I think people, most people,will have a sense of what that
means.
And when we say it, we do meancertain specific assumptions
that are operating.
Would you give a quick overview?
Felipe Garcia (39:48):
Thank you for picking that up, because I did a
chart also when I was workingin England, for visions
differentiating healthy fromunhealthy competition and I
think it's on my website and Ithink it's in the winning
together article.
But visions, I think, has it asa handout and it's called I
think it's called livingcooperatively in a competitive
(40:09):
world but, it's a chart that haspositive and negative behavior.
Football games, for instance,are okay, being competitive
behavior although I wonder aboutthat, but anyway, because in
general they work in acooperative environment.
You notice, after they finishthe game they hug each other and
congratulate each other andwe're competing to do your best
(40:34):
to get an advancement in yourjob or to get a higher degree.
You work real hard and sopeople are often don't like to
think about Confrontingcompetition because that's what
got them to where they're at.
But that I'm talking.
The negative competition isinterpersonal competition.
Relational competition is whenI'm operating, you say something
(40:58):
and I say yes, but or you sharea feeling of what's going on
with you.
This happens very often is I'llsay I was feeling very tired
about that or very scared, andwe'll say a little bit about
that, and then the personresponding will say I was real
scared about something else andthey go on with their, their
(41:19):
story.
That's a the frame of reference.
That's a competitivetransaction, because it's not a
response to my feeling isintroducing another topic which
is their feeling.
So Competition, interpersonal,is the one that is negative.
That I'm talking about when youwant to win an argument or when
you want to put someone down.
(41:40):
So that's, that's a competition.
That is not useful.
And what I'm more interested in,I've always been more
interested in finding thesolution rather than spending a
lot of time and defining theproblem Once you define the
problem.
That's why I wrote winningtogether is what do we need?
How can we work better together?
And I wrote this article with Ithink it has about 10 or 11
(42:04):
elements to it and I think thatI'd like to rewrite it and cut
those down a bit.
But it was like we have to havea mutual vision and then we
have to have identify goals tomeet that vision.
And if people are workingtogether towards a mission, they
cooperatively, they will.
(42:25):
I have a chance of beingsuccessful better chance of
doing that in our governmenttoday.
It's so sad how infrequent wesee them identifying a problem
and working together at solvingit.
They start arguing aboutwhether there is a problem to
start with, or what is theproblem and then how to solve it
(42:45):
.
That's, that's unhealthycompetition.
Did that help?
Dr. Leena Akhtar (42:49):
explain it.
Yes, absolutely, thank you, andI appreciated something that
you said a couple of minutes agoabout it's very obvious and
this is not the first time I'veheard it and about oppressive
environments, oppressive systemsbeing inherently deeply
competitive in in the way thatwe define competitive.
I win, you lose, whether that'sat the interpersonal, personal
(43:11):
level, or at the group, systemiclevel.
Felipe Garcia (43:14):
So I'm right, you're wrong, I'm better, you're
worse, I'm smarter.
There's many ways in which andnone, like I said very often
that's done out of awareness,and so the work that visions
does, particularly since theyemphasize feelings, is to bring
that out of awareness behaviorinto awareness, in order to be
(43:34):
able to change it, not only inhow we treat others, but how we
treat ourselves.
Right I, I was a youngest offive, and one of the feelings
that I often deal with is, as ayoung is what do I have to say?
You know, it's.
The older people are the one toknow.
So that's an internalizeddepression that I have to
(43:55):
address in my own life.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (43:58):
It's amazing how impactful that is how those
old scripts can still runAbsolutely, and those out of
awareness behaviors.
So, just to be explicit, someof the things that we're
referring to are when weintroduce in the portion of our
trainings that we call modernoppression and internalized
oppression, slash survivalbehaviors.
(44:18):
So behaviors that are out ofawareness, that we were sort of
scripted into, caught and taughtthat we might be engaging in,
not realizing it.
And you're right, it's verypowerful how just even the
naming and the categorizing andthe sometimes, actually
frequently uncomfortable work ofidentifying those behaviors in
ourselves this is certainly truefor me Identifying those
(44:41):
behaviors in myself was a verypowerful step towards being able
to choose differently.
Felipe Garcia (44:46):
Right Good.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (44:48):
So you mentioned that you're retired
and enjoying it and you know, Ifeel very fortunate that I was
able to attend that TA 101 whereyou were training, and even
more fortunate that it'savailable on YouTube.
That was like quite a find andI'm curious as somebody who's
been doing this work in varioussettings and who's seen it
(45:09):
evolve and who's written on itwhat would you want to teach or
make sure people who are doingthis work or who are interested
in bringing about a better world?
What is it that you would wantthem to know?
Felipe Garcia (45:24):
Well, what comes to mind is what I've always
wanted to teach, which is one ofthe ways in which we can make
teams and organizations workcooperatively together, and how
to identify and changeoppressive behaviors.
And what I was thinking of asyou asked that question, was
that, to a large extent, I'vealways led my life in terms of
(45:46):
wanting to do what I call God'swork, whatever I'm here supposed
to be doing.
So, even though I'm retired andI'm not doing a lot of teaching
, opportunities come up, likethis opportunity.
You just ask me if you couldinterview me and I thought, well
, that's a way that maybe I canbe of help to somebody, and
daily there are ways in whichopportunities come up for me to
(46:10):
be of service in some way oranother.
So when I did the workshop thatyou attended or you viewed
recently, called the responsivepractice in the responsive
process, I thought, well, here'san opportunity for me to do
some teaching, and so I did that, and now this interview with
you.
So I'm trusting and I was tosay hoping, and I think I trust
(46:35):
that I will be shownopportunities to be useful and
helpful.
Either, I thought of maybedoing the supervision group,
practicing the responsiveprocess.
So I'm waiting to see what thenext steps are going to be for
me in terms of teaching andimpacting people, but in terms
of what I want to help peoplelearn is the importance three
(46:57):
things that I did in theworkshop.
One of them is the importanceof self focus, paying attention
to what's going on internallyfor me, whether I stimuli or
where my sadness, my scares, myloneliness or my ideas, my
judgments.
What's going on for meinternally is the very important
first step that I wish forpeople.
Secondly is to learn the powerof what I can do about what's
(47:21):
going on for me in terms of mepersonally doing it or and or
getting support to address it.
And the third is to behave in away that reflects the OK, this
in myself and in others, and toreinforce and to operate out of
a place of forgiveness and love.
So those should three behaviorsthat I see, that I'm hoping
(47:45):
that people, that I can helppeople, impact people with
change.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (47:50):
Beautiful, beautiful, thank you.
I love that.
So those are my formalquestions.
And, felipe, how's your energylevel Like?
Can I ask you a couple morethings?
Sure, yeah, so when weconnected last week, you were
talking about how you firstconnected to visions, and I'm
aware this may or may not makeit into the recorded podcast.
And I do want to just askbecause this is part of the
(48:14):
Elder Story Project.
As I mentioned, most of theconsultants in my cohort didn't
ever get a chance to meet or getto know Joe Lewis, and you
shared a couple of memories ofher.
I'd be curious if you'd bewilling to talk about her a
little bit.
Felipe Garcia (48:28):
Well, joe and I were friends and colleagues and
we used to get together, usuallywith two conferences a year in
transactional analysis, usuallyonce in San Francisco and
another one in the wintertime inwarm places like here in San
Antonio.
We had a couple of times, yes,and then we were training
(48:50):
together and Joe and Markdeveloped what they call the
cooperative process and they hadtraining groups that they
called the cooperative.
What did?
They had a center forcooperative, for cooperative I
forget what it was called, butit had cooperative in the title.
(49:10):
And I was doing the same work,except I had my own process of
addressing it and they havetheirs.
And when we got together atvisions it was just so obvious
that all of us Valerie bats andthe reason I mentioned Valerie
and not Angela is becauseValerie was also a transactional
(49:31):
analyst and so was Joe Lewis,and so was myself.
So, was I, and so we just couldwork together so easily because
we had the same frame ofreference.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (49:43):
And from my understanding, the answer to me
is obviously yes, andcooperative process.
That's directly out oftransactional analysis, right?
Felipe Garcia (49:52):
Well, I'm not.
I'm not sure, because theoriginators of transactional
analysis were quite competitivethemselves.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (50:02):
Interesting.
Felipe Garcia (50:03):
Well, they were humanistic, they were a man.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (50:05):
Sure, yeah, yeah.
Felipe Garcia (50:07):
A medical model, yeah, but we're really wanting
to learn to be morecollaborative.
And Claude Steiner was veryinfluenced by a woman named Hoge
Wycov.
They were creating a kind of akind of a cooperative commune
sort of thing.
They were very popular in the70s and so he was developing
(50:30):
tools to help build teamstogether.
And I'm assuming that Joe Lewiswas also impacted by Claude and
by Jackie Schiff I know she was, because she and I were Jackie
Schiff's training groupstogether.
So I just found it verycompatible working with Val, I
(50:50):
mean with Joe Lewis, and so alsowith Val Bats.
What else can I say about Joe?
She was a great clinician andshe was a great trainer and I
had the honor of working withher many times.
We were doing the keynotespeech at a conference at San
Francisco when she died.
We were, we had planned we weregoing to do a keynote on the
(51:15):
vision's model, applying it tothe group, and she passed away
and I had to end up doing it bymyself.
That was another time that Igot myself real nervous, but it
went out very well, yeah.
Yeah, she was a lovely woman,really powerful.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (51:31):
Thank you for sharing that.
I appreciate that and I alsoknow what an influence she has
had on this community and theorganization and the model, so
it's lovely to hear stories frompeople who knew her as well as
you did.
Yeah, is there anything that Ihaven't thought to ask, that is
top of mind, top of heart, thatyou want to share or talk about?
Felipe Garcia (51:53):
No, I think you covered it very well.
I'm very interested in askingyou the same question Is that
the only thing that's left tounlever?
Because I know that's aninteresting story?
But no, I think you covered the.
I think you asked someinteresting questions and it
made me think, and the onlything that I haven't said is
that I I thought this morningbefore we started, I thought I'm
(52:15):
assuming that Lena knows thatwhen she's dealing with elders,
it's not only the the memoriesthat they have, but also that
they made me feel that they maybe a little wobbly and
remembering and in their speech.
And I have Parkinson's thatI've been diagnosed for about
four years and fortunately ithas a minimal impact, but it has
(52:36):
an impact.
And.
I think, how I verbalize thingsand memory a little bit.
And in terms of energy, I think, as you were asking earlier,
how's your energy?
In general, I'm fine.
I do everything during the day,but I have to rest and take
care of myself around that.
So, like I said earlier, beingan elder is quite a learning
(53:00):
stage.
Yeah, we never stop learning.
Yes, yeah, life is aboutlearning.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (53:07):
So that is on the list of questions.
Is there something that you'dstill like to learn?
Felipe Garcia (53:14):
How to deal with, how to continue to deal with
life in a way that I can feelgood, and good about myself and
good about others.
Beautiful, beautiful In thisworld, because this world has
it's gotten real scary.
We're living in a verydangerous time.
Yeah.
And so my hope is that weimpact people in a way that will
(53:38):
help them vote right, and forus to get people in Congress and
in the White House who, at theinstitutional and cultural
levels, deal with oppression andsexism and racism.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (53:51):
Yeah, yeah, sometimes when I'm talking to
people about what I do, one ofthe very potent things about the
vision's model to me is how itgives people the tools and
skills that they need in orderto show up is who they want to
be in the world, and that's workthat I'm very grateful to be
able to support people in doing.
Felipe Garcia (54:12):
Yeah, that's great.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (54:13):
Well, Felipe, thank you so much for taking the
time to talk to me.
This has been such a pleasure.
It's a pleasure to get to knowyou better and to hear about
your experiences and to hear youtalk about your work.
Felipe Garcia (54:27):
Well, thank you very much, Lena.
Thank you so much.
I really enjoyed talking to youand getting to think about
these things, and I hope it washelpful.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (54:37):
Wonderful.
Thank you very much, thank you.
Felipe Garcia (54:41):
And I look forward to meeting you in person
again.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (54:44):
Likewise, we have a few exciting things
coming up.
This year, which is our 40thanniversary, we want to flag for
you our 2024 Spring Summit,which is called In it for the
Long Hall Trauma informsstrategies for sustaining
laboratory work.
We have a wonderful lineup ofspeakers and workshop
facilitators, including Dr GaborMatei talking about compassion
(55:05):
fatigue, longtime visionconsultant Emily Schatzau and
her collaborator, traumatheorist and author of Trauma
and Recovery, dr Judith Herman,teaching about the importance of
community care.
Our 40th anniversarycelebration is going to happen
on September 27th, 2024 at theState Room in Boston.
Follow us to hear more.
Links are in the show notes.
Thank you so much for listening, until next time you.
Hello, you're listening to Into Liberation, a
podcast about transformativechange, equity and working
against oppression.
I'm Leena Akhtar, Director ofPrograms with VISIONS Inc.
Welcome.
Today I'm excited to welcomeFelipe Garcia, a longtime
Visions consultant and counselor, who specializes in
(00:22):
Transactional Analysis, which isa social psychology framework
that is at the core of theVisions model.
Felipe is the author of severalarticles, including one that
you may have read if you've beenpart of a longer Visions
training, called "the Role ofFeelings in the Workplace.
This year, 2024, is the 40thyear of Visions existence, and
this is another in our ongoingseries of stories from elders in
(00:44):
our community.
Visions was founded in 1984 by agroup of psychologists, among
others, who brought theirclinical skills to bear on the
problem of racism and otherforms of oppression, and this,
in my opinion, is our secretsauce.
One of the things that drew meto the Visions model was its
adeptness around the role thatemotion and feeling played in
anti-oppression work.
(01:05):
Not only has Felipe doneextensive work in this area, he
still actively teaches what hecalls the responsive process.
In our conversation, inaddition to Felipe sharing about
his background and journey, wetalk about what transactional
analysis is and why it's souseful in anti-oppression work
and, of course, what the role offeelings in the workplace
actually is, and we're recording.
(01:26):
Hi everybody, I'm really excitedtoday to be talking to Felipe
Garcia.
Felipe is an elder in theVisions community, a longtime
clinician and one of myinstructors in the Libertory
Psychology Frameworktransactional analysis, which,
as Visions consultants, we allwent into training around.
I haven't talked to Felipe inan extended way before, and so
(01:48):
I've been really excited aboutthis conversation.
Felipe, before we begin, wouldyou introduce yourself briefly
to everyone listening?
Felipe Garcia (01:55):
Well, I'm Felipe Garcia and I'm a master's in
marriage and family therapy andlicensed professional counselor
Actually, I just let go of mylicense in Texas marriage and
family and professionaltransactional analyst.
Well, that one wasn't a licensein Texas, that's through the TA
Association.
I've been.
I was in practice in SanAntonio for about 50 years in
(02:20):
marriage and family and I did alot of group therapy and a lot
of transactional analysistraining.
I had training groups here andin Mexico City and in Monterrey
and in the Rio Grande Valley formany years in the 80s and 90s
and into the 2000s, and then Iclosed my office about three
years ago.
Before that I was a teacher oftheater and drama and speech for
(02:45):
eight years and then beforethat I was a school counselor
and then after that I was aconsultant at a regional service
center for counselors for twoor three years and then I went
into private practice in 1975.
So that's a little bit about myprofessional life, my home life
(03:07):
.
I grew up in South Texas, alittle town called Bend Volts,
south of Alice, and it was asmall city and a small high
school.
There were 100 people in thewhole school.
There were 22 in my graduatingclass and most of the people in
the community were my cousins,either on my father or on my
mother's side.
There were two communities, onewas called Bend Volts and one
(03:30):
was called Palito Blanco, and mymother came from Palito Blanco
and so it was a large family.
My mother had like 11 siblings,and my father did too, and so I
had a lot of first cousins andso I grew up in this kind of
like protected environment and Ididn't know at the time but we
were like probably upper middleclass because we had businesses.
(03:53):
My father and his brothers hadbusinesses, ranching and general
merchandise store, cotton, ginand some fields where they grew
vegetables and corn and cotton.
So then I went to St Mary'sUniversity as an undergraduate
and then to the University ofTexas as a graduate in theater
and then back to the universityand I got my master's in
(04:15):
counseling there.
So anything of that thatcatches your interest.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (04:21):
So much of it.
I had no idea that you had abackground in theater and in
teaching before you went intocounseling.
So for people who may not know,because this podcast it goes
out to people who are basicallyin the vision's community kind
of in a very wide sense so forpeople who might not know what
transactional analysis is, howwould you summarize it?
Felipe Garcia (04:42):
Transactional analysis analyzes transactions
Transactions meaning we normallycall interactions, or when we
communicate with each other andwe analyze them from the point
of view of the ego states andthe premise in transaction.
I'm going to say TA for now on,and that means transactional
analysis.
The premise in TA is thatpeople operate from one of
(05:06):
either three ego states.
There are five behaviors in theego states, and the ego states
are child, adult and parent.
And the child ego state is whowe were as children, as all the
way from infants to 11 or soyears old, and it's still
recorded and so we can access it.
(05:27):
The child ego state, that's ouroriginal self, our natural,
real self, and then our adaptivechild, which learned how to
socialize and live in the world,of what to do legally and
culturally in our world, and sothat's the adaptive child.
And then there's the adult egostate, which is the other ego
(05:48):
state, and that's that's beginsto develop as we begin to have
language and think and problemsolve.
The adult ego state is like ourcomputer.
It asks and answers questionslike what, where, when, that you
know are answerable with facts.
So it's a separation betweenfeelings and facts in terms of
adult and child.
(06:09):
And the parent ego state iswhat we took in from the people
that were racing us either ourparents or whoever was racing us
and also the environment,teachers and other people around
us when we were children and sowe kind of took it in.
Some people don't take it inbecause it's harsh and that
leads to problems, but wenormally take in our parent and
(06:30):
then we find ourselves behavingand sounding like our parent,
pointing the finger, using you alot, and the parent ego state
is controlling, but it also canbe nurturing.
The parent ego state also isnurturing, particularly if you
had nurturing parents.
Unfortunately, if you didn'thave anybody who was nurturing
in your youth growing up, youmay not have too much nurturing
(06:53):
parent in your parent ego stateand you have to use your adult
to develop it in the here andnow.
So those are the three egostates.
So we analyze you say hello andI say hello.
That's a complimentarytransaction, that just seems
nice.
But if you say hello and I sayshut up, that's a different
kinds of transaction.
(07:14):
We call block train or crosstransaction and we want to
analyze what was that about?
Where did that come from?
So that's transaction analysis.
There are two other conceptsthat are important to
transactional analysis, and oneis script, which we call the
script, the live plan thatchildren decide on when they're
very young in terms of what'sgoing on in their environment.
(07:37):
So they'll make decisions likeI'll never be happy, or I'll
never be loved, or I'll neverlove anybody, or I'll never let
myself do this or that, andthose are early decisions that
we make that may still beimpacting our lives, and so we
analyze script through games,and games is what we do over and
over, out of awareness, toreinforce those decisions that
(08:00):
we made early on as children.
And so we analyze what you'rereinforcing life positions,
because transactional analysisbelieves and operates out of the
assumption that people are okay, you are okay, and that means
you have value and worth anddeserve dignity and respect, and
so do I and so do all others,including individuals or groups.
(08:23):
And so if something ishappening that is not reflective
of that okay, okay relationship, we analyze it, because it may
be that the persons areoperating from either an I'm not
okay, you are positioned, orI'm okay, you're not positioned,
or I'm not okay and you're notokay, position, which is very
(08:45):
depressing.
So, analyzing those positionsthat the person might still be
reinforcing, we move intohelping and trying to point that
out to them and inviting theminto change.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (08:59):
Thank you.
Thank you for that wonderfullysuccinct summary of the big
concepts in TA.
Felipe Garcia (09:06):
So it is big and it's easy to describe a quick
level like that.
But I've been analyzingtransactions for over 50 well,
50 years and it's still very,it's still a learning curve.
I'm still learning about itbecause what it does is analyze
(09:26):
humans, and humans are complexand unique.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (09:30):
Absolutely.
Felipe Garcia (09:31):
So as.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (09:31):
Visions consultants, we take workshop
called TA101, which is a two-dayoverview of the major concepts,
and I was reminded when I satin on a PACE2 workshop this past
fall how deep and intricate andrich this framework is.
Now you just gave us ahigh-level overview and, for
people who are listening, couldyou tie it to why this is so
(09:56):
profoundly applicable, which itis?
It's a really powerful andgenerative framework for
anti-racist and anti-oppressionwork.
Felipe Garcia (10:03):
Well, there's a concept in transactional
analysis called contamination,and if you see the three ego
states that I described as threecircles sitting on each other
on top of each other at the topone is the parent, one in the
middle is the adult and the onein the bottom is a child
Contamination is when either thechild and or the parent ego
(10:25):
state overlaps the adult andconfuses opinions and feelings
for facts, and so it's veryimportant in the work of
anti-racism and anti-sexism work, and all the anti-work is to
help people get in touch withtheir own prejudices, both about
(10:46):
themselves and about othersbecause of the environments they
grew up in, and learn thoseprejudices and their call
contamination, and that's a veryeffective way to help lead
people into understanding theirout-of-awareness behaviors that
may be impacting othersnegatively or themselves
negatively because ofinternalized depression.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (11:07):
Is that exactly, or?
Yeah, thank you so much for that.
It struck me as I deepened mylearning and deepened my
training just how much thevisions model, the whole thing,
everything that we do, thelearnings, the exercises, and
especially the deepintrospective exercises that we
do in the PACE trainings, arerooted in this framework of
(11:29):
transactional analysis, and ittook me a couple of years before
I was able to see the directlinks.
Now, philippe, you've done a lotof work on affect and emotion
specifically, and I think wehave this long list of questions
and I'm really enjoying nerdingout about this with you, so I
hope you'll indulge me.
One of my favorite settings inwhich to do visions work, and
(11:51):
especially the affective work,are places like academic
institutions and STEMinstitutions, places where
there's this longstanding kindof deeply rooted hostility and
distrust of affect and emotions,and introducing them to the
visions model and giving them aframework for how important and
useful and valuable and reallyvital to this work getting some
(12:15):
adeptness with emotions is.
So, whatever, you want to speakto that, especially in light of
the workshop that you gaverecently and its connection to
anti-racism work.
I'd love to hear about that.
Felipe Garcia (12:27):
Well, the first thought that came to my mind as
you were describing academicsettings and a lot of clinical
and professional settings wherefeelings are considered not
germane is very sad, becausefeelings lead the way and
they're at the bottom ofeverything.
I had a trainer once intransactional analysis that used
(12:47):
to say that when he had aclient that he was talking to,
he always saw the child of theclient sitting on his lap, and
so that's a way of gettinghelping, staying in touch with
the fact that you're reallydealing with a child in many
ways, regardless of theirbehavior.
So it's unfortunate that inmany settings feelings are
(13:08):
considered not useful andactually are tried to avoid them
.
My work has been from veryearly on, both when I was in
education as well as when I wasin doing clinical transactional
analysis work, of the importanceof feelings.
Envision the work dealing withfeelings is called feelings as
(13:31):
messengers, and that is that thefeelings send important
messages about needs.
The ones that we're used to arelike having to go to the
bathroom or being hungry orbeing tired and sleepy.
We automatically respond tothose, although some people
didn't discount them.
They don't even pay attentionto those very well, and we get
(13:53):
into trouble when we're notpaying attention to our bodies
messaging us through ourfeelings.
I call it the responsiveprocess because we respond to it
both in ourselves and in otherswhen they address us about
their feelings or when we wantto address them about their
feelings or ours.
I call it the responsiveprocess and I have written
(14:17):
several articles about that,three in particular.
And then, like you said, I justdid a workshop on that.
So there's the feelings and thenthere's thinking about the
feelings in order to decode thefeeling and identify what it is
that our body is needing.
For instance, if we're angrybecause we're being treated
unfairly, discriminated againstor with prejudice, there is a
(14:43):
feeling reaction to that and howto deal with it.
So thinking about that feelingand then figuring out how to
deal with that feeling in termsof the person that's doing it,
and what's effective and noteffective and what might be
useful and what might not, isimportant.
So that thinking is about whatis this about?
And then how can I?
What can I do?
(15:04):
And then the third part to thefeeling response is to act, to
do something, and it may be thatyou do something yourself,
directly with the person, or itmay be that you do something
with hopefully a support groupof same, like people For
instance, if it's people ofcolor or women or GLBT people to
(15:26):
get support from them to impactthe system rather than try to
impact at the personal level,because very often that's
doesn't go anywhere.
So we have to analyze itthrough this thinking step.
So thinking about feelings andtaking feelings into account is
very important in the work ofanti-racism work.
(15:50):
Thank you.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (15:52):
I have to say I watched the workshop before
this recording session and Ireally appreciated just the
elegant simplicity of theresponsive process and it
actually got me thinking about acouple of things that were
happening in my own life in adifferent way, because I
realized in the triangle thatyou had up there I was going
like a pinball between feelingand thinking.
(16:14):
I was like wait, there's a thirdstep, I could act.
So, and even being thatmethodical about it, like okay,
here is this feeling, like whatis it telling me, etc.
And then what can I do about it?
Even that is more, by leaps andbounds, more emotional literacy
than I certainly grew up with.
So thank you for that and thankyou for.
Wonderful.
(16:36):
So I love that and I would bevery happy to link to your
articles in the show notes.
So if you send them to me, Ican make sure that anybody who's
listening can just look at theshow notes and click on them.
Felipe Garcia (16:45):
The articles are on a website that is called
winningtogetherorg.
Under the tab publications, thearticles in particular about
this topic are called reactivityand another one called
responsivity, and then there'sone called the role of feelings
in the workplace.
So those three articles whichare at that website explain into
(17:08):
more detail this feeling andthe messengers.
Fantastic, so glad that youbrought up your example, because
that's what I was hoping for indoing that, that workshop.
I use it all the time by myselfwith myself, like, for instance
, when I was getting ready totalk to you today.
I thought you know, I don'thave much to say about this, and
at the same time, either withthe workshop I was thinking
(17:31):
everybody already knows it orI'm trying to do too much, but
anyway I scare myself.
That's a very common feelingfor me.
In transactional analysis wecall it a racket feeling, which
is our favorite feeling, and wehave to be careful with it
because it's often present eventhough there's not a stimuli for
it.
I'm a worrier and so I worry,and then I look to see, find
(17:56):
something to worry about tomatch the feeling, because
there's not much going on thatworries me.
So when I was worrying aboutdoing the workshop and scaring
myself with that I didn't havemuch to say in terms of action
in response to the feeling.
Sometimes it just means thatattitude adjustment and it's not
(18:17):
always easy because we're soprone to feel that way in our
body that is sometimes hard tochange the feeling.
It may be scare, or it may besad, or it may be anger.
That is our favorite feelingthat we go to often in spite the
circumstance.
So how you want to check forthe accuracy of the feeling in
(18:38):
terms of responding is thatscare is a threat, either
imagined or real.
And my scare were imaginedbecause I've done this workshop
for many, many years and I'vetalked about this topic for many
years and I know it.
It just comes out naturally andso there's no seeking any kind
(19:02):
of help for the feeling.
I reached out and got somereassurance a couple of times.
When it's a real scare becauseyou hear a noise in your house
outside or something and youwant to carefully go, look to
see what's happening, that's anaction taking in terms of a real
scare.
You're walking across thestreet and the cars approaching
and you quickly get out of theway.
(19:23):
That's action in terms of thescare.
Sadness is about loss and sothat needs space to grieve and,
hopefully, support, and somepeople like support and some
people like to be on their ownby themselves, and anger is an
intrusion of some kind, either adenial or an intrusion.
(19:44):
And so it makes sense that youreestablish boundaries.
When somebody is either shovingyou or yelling at you or
treating you unkindly orunrespectfully, you want to re
in some way reestablish thatboundary to protect yourself.
And it's important to rememberthat sometimes we substitute the
(20:05):
feeling like.
Very often people will get madwhen they're sad, because men
are given messages not to feelsad or scared.
That's not manly, and so veryoften they'll feel angry instead
, when in reality there I findlots of my clients come in angry
when they're really scared.
And so it's important that youidentify the feeling in response
(20:28):
to the stimuli in order todecide how to take the action.
And sometimes the action isgoing to be in response to the
stimuli outside, if it's real,like the approaching car, or to
respond to the stimuliinternally, if it's not real,
like.
What I do is work at reassuringmyself and stopping myself from
(20:52):
feeling the scare, although itis a challenge, because life is
the challenge.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (20:57):
Right.
So the stimuli can be somethingthat happens externally,
something internal, like athought, or just the momentum,
as you said, of the dominantfeeling state reaching for
something to latch onto Right.
I appreciate that summary.
The article the role offeelings in the workplace.
That's one that we include alot in our pre-work or during
(21:18):
session work packets, in paceand other trainings.
And for people for whom thatidea is counter-intuitive, how
would you like playing on thetitle of your article what is
the role of feelings in theworkplace?
Felipe Garcia (21:31):
Well, I wrote that article because I was
working for visions, both in theUS and Japan and in England,
and we were working a lot withengineers and scientists who, as
you stated a while ago, neglector ignore the importance of
feelings in relating toin-building and managing people,
(21:56):
and so I wrote that article.
I already had reactivity andresponsivity, but it was more
clinically based, and so Iwanted to write an article that
was for organizational settings.
It was true in most companiesthat employees were invited to
leave their cultural selves atthe door and take over and
(22:21):
operate out of the corporateframe or culture which denied
feelings.
And the new, the change that wewere inviting them into making
and they did to a large extentbecause they were long-term
consults, they were years was toinvite them in to learn how to
respond to their own feelingsand learn how to respond to them
(22:43):
what role is being played, andhow to respond to the feelings
of people who they'resupervising or other people in
the work team.
So feelings are very importantin the workplace.
That was the reason I wrote thearticle was to write something
that kind of had examples andreflected more about its
(23:05):
application in an organizationalsetting.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (23:09):
I think it's a great article and I see
constantly in organizationsbring this up when we talk about
processing content.
If people aren't happy with theprocess, they'll make it known,
and if people can't speakopenly about their feelings
it'll come out in different ways.
So if people are scared, wemight see a phenomenon where
people are kind of picking aprocess, like being critical of
(23:33):
minor, minor points when it'sreally about something else.
So feelings have this way ofderailing processes if they're
not acknowledged Absolutely.
Felipe Garcia (23:43):
Including and absolutely in work settings as
well, absolutely in worksettings and I was a consultant
in education and I did a lot oftraining for parents, teachers
and counselors, educators ingeneral, and the first
consulting job that I got at theRegional Service Center here in
(24:03):
Texas, in San Antonio, wascalled Crime and Drug Addiction
Prevention.
It was in the late 70s andbecause I quit that at 75,
that's when I went into privatepractice, but even then I was
really emphasizing theimportance in preventing crime
(24:24):
and drug addiction is theimportance of teaching children
how to deal with their feelings,both as parents and as teachers
.
And at that workshop that youwere talking about, I talked
about the use of the responsiveprocess in helping children deal
with their feelings, theirsadness, their scares, their
(24:45):
angers.
Very often we're afraid oftheir feelings or we tell them
to stop feeling that because wedon't know how to deal with it
ourselves, and instead what isuseful is for us to say I hear
that you're feeling really mador scared or sad or whatever.
Would you like to tell mewhat's going on and what are
some options in terms ofresponding to it, so that we can
(25:08):
, from very early on, helpchildren learn how to address
their feelings and that they'revery important messengers and
very important stimuli for us torespond to in some effective
way.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (25:20):
Great.
So you started in education andin theater and then you moved
into counseling, and then tellme about your trajectory from
there and how you got connectedto visions and how you started
applying this work to theanti-oppression, anti-racist
work that visions does.
Felipe Garcia (25:37):
Well, my career and my life has been kind of
like directed by some otherenergy rather than me, because I
went to a small school wherethere was no guidance and
counseling and guidance to helppeople with their trajectory in
terms of their careers.
So I was interested in theaterbecause I love theater and I
(25:58):
love musicals and so on, and sothat's what I, and there was a
small theater department at StMary's where I went to
undergraduate school and speech.
Actually I was interested indesign and I didn't know how to
put that into my life at workand that was the closest that I
could find at St Mary's.
(26:19):
But then later I was teachingschool and then it came time to
get a master's in San Antonio,and the only master's that I
could get in San Antonio,because I had gone to the
University of Texas wheregraduate studies in theater was
either to become a principal ora counselor, and I didn't want
(26:40):
to be a principal, so I got mymaster's in counseling.
I started working with juniorhigh school children and it
became apparent to me that theproblems that the children were
having were often familyproblems.
So I started addressing, goingto home rooms in a junior high
school and inviting the studentsinto counseling to say
(27:03):
counseling is not when you're introuble, it's when you want
help.
And so it changed theenvironment of the counseling
process, just being a schedulingoffice and disciplinary office
to one which was office for helpand direction.
And I did a lot of my work interms of training educators was
in training them to help dealwith their feelings and the
(27:26):
feelings of their children.
So, oh, the question was thetrajectory.
So, and what got me interestedin this?
So I've always been interested,from very young, first of all
in people.
I'm just interested in peopleand differences.
What makes you difference?
In my community there weremostly Latinos, and the only
(27:47):
white people that were therewere either because they came
during the Dust Bowl and thegovernment had given them some
land, and or the child of thesuperintendent of the school.
And I remember asking the childof the superintendent of the
school who I played with, whatdid you all have for dinner?
And it was an attempt for me tofigure out how they were
(28:08):
different.
And so I had these twointerests One was about people
and how they were different, andwhat was the other one?
And the other one was why don'tpeople get along?
Why do people fight and why dopeople have wars and what would
prevent that?
So I wrote an article.
One of the first articles thatI wanted to write was the
(28:30):
article which is also in thatwebsite, called Winning Together
, and it was an article abouthow to work together to create
collaborative community andcollaborative team building.
And so one of the elements inthat article, in terms like the
elements, include vision,contract, cooperation.
(28:53):
Those are the elements inbuilding collaborative
communities and one of them iscommunication, and for
communication I wrote.
When I went to write an articleabout all of this, it just
seemed too overwhelming and big,so I thought well, I'll just
write the one aboutcommunication, which I call
reactivity, and the reason Icalled it reactivity is because
(29:13):
I was wanting to help peopleidentify and move away from
being passive.
Passive is doing nothingeffective about a problem.
That's when you're beingpassive is you have a pain and
you're not paying attention toit or doing anything about it,
or you are you lose your job andyou get depressed and don't do
(29:34):
anything about it.
But this one was about gettingalong with each other and
building teams.
So it was, I was doing thatwork and, like I said earlier
when I was introducing myself.
I had a lot of training groupsand then Val invited me.
Val and I were friends.
Val and Angela and I werefriends before vision, so when
vision was getting born.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (29:55):
So that's Dr Valerie Bats and Angela Bryant
who are two of the co-foundersof visions.
Felipe Garcia (30:00):
That's right.
So Valerie invited me to cometo New York to what was then
called Four Day and now it'scalled a PACE workshop, which is
a four day introduction to thevisions model.
And so I went and Val invitedme to do some teaching of
transactional analysis at thatgroup and then to be a
(30:21):
participant in the visions work.
And that was very exciting andinteresting to me and I learned
a lot.
Because I didn't know a lotabout racism.
I knew.
I knew that my family hadexperienced it in terms of being
Latino, but also my family hadproperty and it was easier for
(30:45):
them to address that than it wasfor poor people who are at the
mercy of employers.
So I learned a lot at thatfirst visions four day that we
did in New York and that got meinto learning vision, the
visions model, which was veryenriching for me.
And then Valerie kept invitingme to do more training for
(31:07):
visions at different settingsand that's how I got involved
with visions and that's how Igot involved in rent.
I racism work Fantastic.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (31:14):
So a lot of the people who are in the
visions orbit, like a lot of ourelders, have literally been
around, if not since itsinception, then certainly for
decades.
So what is it that led you tostay and what kept you coming
back?
Like what keeps you being partof the community?
What keeps you being part ofthe community?
Felipe Garcia (31:35):
Well, I came into visions.
Not knowing visions breaks outinto people of color or white
groups.
In order to address to supportgroups, to build support groups,
and I didn't know whichbreakout group to go to, because
I'm white but Latino people ofcolor, and so it was so I would
(31:57):
go to each.
Sometimes I'd go to one,sometimes I'd go to the other.
But now I realize that I reallywas a non-target, that I should
have gone to them, although Ireally can relate to both parts
of it, to both the target andtargets, a non-target side,
which I think most of us can,and so.
But in general I came as anon-target in terms of exposure
(32:21):
to the work.
So I learned a lot about thetarget group population and
their experiences and my my outof awareness, prejudices and
contaminations that I wastalking about earlier.
And the other thing that wasvery useful that I learned was
that I hadn't put a lot ofthought into was the levels of
(32:41):
oppression, which is personal,interpersonal, institutional and
cultural.
I had been paying attention tothe personal, interpersonal, a
lot more than institutional andcultural at that time, but
visions open up my eyes to thoseother levels of application and
impact.
So, in a kind of like indirectway, that's how I came to
(33:02):
visions.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (33:03):
Beautiful.
So you continue doing am Icorrect in thinking mostly your
clinical work, as well as doingsome consulting and training for
visions?
Do I have that right?
Felipe Garcia (33:15):
Yeah, I'm not doing very much anymore.
I don't take in clientsSometimes I'll see a client that
I've seen before and I'm notdoing training groups and I'm
not doing nothing much withvisions anymore.
I'm kind of retired andenjoying it.
And retired is a whole other.
And being old, it's just sointeresting.
(33:37):
It's another target group beingold and it's so interesting how
it plays out.
The most common one that Inoticed is that I belong to a
men's group, which I had a lotto do with starting it, because
I think men have a lot of workto do in terms of learning about
their own oppression from thesexism environments they grew up
in.
And I noticed that how oftenpeople will talk to each other
(34:02):
is, if I'm not there, assumingthat I'm too old to get involved
.
I don't know what theassumption is, but I noticed it
and, of course, in terms of youknow I will intervene with
making a comment or somethingand joining the conversation
rather than feeling bad about it, but it's very interesting to
me.
I noticed it somewhat in my ownfamily.
(34:24):
What I mean by my family isthat I'm very close to a lot of
nephews and nieces, so that'swhat comes to mind.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (34:30):
I'm also curious about from when you
joined visions.
Was it mostly that you weredoing your own clinical and
training work and thenconsulting work as well, or were
you heavily involved inconsulting?
That's just a curiosityquestion.
Felipe Garcia (34:46):
I was heavily involved in consulting myself in
my own practice and ValerieBatson invited me to do
consulting work with visions, sofor me it was like another
consulting job.
But, it was not like allconsulting jobs, because there
was a lot for me to learn fromthe visions model, my experience
(35:07):
there.
But both when I went to trainmy first TA 101 was with Tom
Harris who wrote I'm okay,you're okay.
And it was a week long workshopand at the end of the week they
had what they called a marathon, where you engaged in doing
your own personal work, because,like visions, transactional
analysis training requires a lotof doing your own personal work
(35:29):
which is one of the greatimportant values of
transactional.
I mean both transactionalanalysis and visions in their
application, because the visionsmodel so much emphasizes your
own personal work and both invisions and in transactional
analysis, I came to learn tohelp others.
(35:50):
I didn't come to learn to helpme, but it was through my
process of learning, learningtransactional analysis and the
visions model, that I get intouch with a lot of my own
issues and actually, the older Iget, the more I realize like I
was just talking to you about myworry ward part that I'm
addicted to worry.
I'm doing pretty well in termsof managing it, and one of the
(36:14):
ways that I manage it is not togive me stimuli that will make
me nervous.
That's really smart.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (36:21):
So that gets into my next question, which
would be would have been some ofyour biggest lessons as you've
done this work, eitherexternally, in terms of
interfacing with clients,whether that's organizations or
people, or internally.
Felipe Garcia (36:34):
Well, one of the biggest lessons was to learn and
continue to learn about theimpact and the intervention at
all four levels of work, and toalways think about that the
impact that the cultural andinstitutional levels are having
on our interpersonal andpersonal lives, and the need to
(36:55):
impact at the other levels.
But the other thing that I'velearned and continue to learn
about is the barriers to thework, the difficultness of the
work, because there I used tothink that my dream was to
create a world where people weregetting along and respecting
each other and cooperating.
(37:17):
And what I've learned andcontinue to learn is that
there's a lot of people whodon't believe in in I'm okay,
you're okay.
They believe either I win oryou lose and you lose, or you or
you win and I lose.
They operate from a competitiveframe of reference and I didn't
(37:37):
say this earlier, but I meantto, because it's very important
describing the responsiveprocess that we operate out of
the assumption that people areokay and deserve respect and
that the goal of our work is tocreate success and happiness for
people.
And so, in terms of creating theenvironment in which to work,
(38:01):
it's important that we teachpeople how to deal with their
feelings in ways that are goingto be respectful of themselves
and others.
So what I've learned is thatthere's a lot of people that
don't believe that happiness ispossible, that getting along
with people of difference isvaluable or useful.
(38:22):
So I think it's just arealization of there's a lot of
people that don't believe theway you do, and so the learning
is how to deal with that.
One of the things that I sayabout the responsive process is
that I practice it, even ifpeople don't believe in it or
practice it themselves.
I can practice it for myself,and I think the vision of work
(38:45):
is in the same way.
We can do the alternatives tothe modernism behaviors, whether
people are doing them or not.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (38:55):
Right.
I think that's a reallyimportant point, because we give
people the tools and resourcesto generate different outcomes,
either externally or internallyfor themselves.
I mean, obviously we do ourorganizational work and we also
give people supportive tools tomake outcomes happen differently
or at least feel different,even if they're applying things
(39:16):
just from one side.
Felipe Garcia (39:18):
Right, exactly Because the goal, actually one
of the goals I'm not saying thegoal, but one of the goals is to
live an okay life in spite ofliving in a competitive, racist
world.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (39:33):
So when you say competitive, Felipe, I think
that that might.
I think people, most people,will have a sense of what that
means.
And when we say it, we do meancertain specific assumptions
that are operating.
Would you give a quick overview?
Felipe Garcia (39:48):
Thank you for picking that up, because I did a
chart also when I was workingin England, for visions
differentiating healthy fromunhealthy competition and I
think it's on my website and Ithink it's in the winning
together article.
But visions, I think, has it asa handout and it's called I
think it's called livingcooperatively in a competitive
(40:09):
world but, it's a chart that haspositive and negative behavior.
Football games, for instance,are okay, being competitive
behavior although I wonder aboutthat, but anyway, because in
general they work in acooperative environment.
You notice, after they finishthe game they hug each other and
congratulate each other andwe're competing to do your best
(40:34):
to get an advancement in yourjob or to get a higher degree.
You work real hard and sopeople are often don't like to
think about Confrontingcompetition because that's what
got them to where they're at.
But that I'm talking.
The negative competition isinterpersonal competition.
Relational competition is whenI'm operating, you say something
(40:58):
and I say yes, but or you sharea feeling of what's going on
with you.
This happens very often is I'llsay I was feeling very tired
about that or very scared, andwe'll say a little bit about
that, and then the personresponding will say I was real
scared about something else andthey go on with their, their
(41:19):
story.
That's a the frame of reference.
That's a competitivetransaction, because it's not a
response to my feeling isintroducing another topic which
is their feeling.
So Competition, interpersonal,is the one that is negative.
That I'm talking about when youwant to win an argument or when
you want to put someone down.
(41:40):
So that's, that's a competition.
That is not useful.
And what I'm more interested in,I've always been more
interested in finding thesolution rather than spending a
lot of time and defining theproblem Once you define the
problem.
That's why I wrote winningtogether is what do we need?
How can we work better together?
And I wrote this article with Ithink it has about 10 or 11
(42:04):
elements to it and I think thatI'd like to rewrite it and cut
those down a bit.
But it was like we have to havea mutual vision and then we
have to have identify goals tomeet that vision.
And if people are workingtogether towards a mission, they
cooperatively, they will.
(42:25):
I have a chance of beingsuccessful better chance of
doing that in our governmenttoday.
It's so sad how infrequent wesee them identifying a problem
and working together at solvingit.
They start arguing aboutwhether there is a problem to
start with, or what is theproblem and then how to solve it
(42:45):
.
That's, that's unhealthycompetition.
Did that help?
Dr. Leena Akhtar (42:49):
explain it.
Yes, absolutely, thank you, andI appreciated something that
you said a couple of minutes agoabout it's very obvious and
this is not the first time I'veheard it and about oppressive
environments, oppressive systemsbeing inherently deeply
competitive in in the way thatwe define competitive.
I win, you lose, whether that'sat the interpersonal, personal
(43:11):
level, or at the group, systemiclevel.
Felipe Garcia (43:14):
So I'm right, you're wrong, I'm better, you're
worse, I'm smarter.
There's many ways in which andnone, like I said very often
that's done out of awareness,and so the work that visions
does, particularly since theyemphasize feelings, is to bring
that out of awareness behaviorinto awareness, in order to be
(43:34):
able to change it, not only inhow we treat others, but how we
treat ourselves.
Right I, I was a youngest offive, and one of the feelings
that I often deal with is, as ayoung is what do I have to say?
You know, it's.
The older people are the one toknow.
So that's an internalizeddepression that I have to
(43:55):
address in my own life.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (43:58):
It's amazing how impactful that is how those
old scripts can still runAbsolutely, and those out of
awareness behaviors.
So, just to be explicit, someof the things that we're
referring to are when weintroduce in the portion of our
trainings that we call modernoppression and internalized
oppression, slash survivalbehaviors.
(44:18):
So behaviors that are out ofawareness, that we were sort of
scripted into, caught and taughtthat we might be engaging in,
not realizing it.
And you're right, it's verypowerful how just even the
naming and the categorizing andthe sometimes, actually
frequently uncomfortable work ofidentifying those behaviors in
ourselves this is certainly truefor me Identifying those
(44:41):
behaviors in myself was a verypowerful step towards being able
to choose differently.
Felipe Garcia (44:46):
Right Good.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (44:48):
So you mentioned that you're retired
and enjoying it and you know, Ifeel very fortunate that I was
able to attend that TA 101 whereyou were training, and even
more fortunate that it'savailable on YouTube.
That was like quite a find andI'm curious as somebody who's
been doing this work in varioussettings and who's seen it
(45:09):
evolve and who's written on itwhat would you want to teach or
make sure people who are doingthis work or who are interested
in bringing about a better world?
What is it that you would wantthem to know?
Felipe Garcia (45:24):
Well, what comes to mind is what I've always
wanted to teach, which is one ofthe ways in which we can make
teams and organizations workcooperatively together, and how
to identify and changeoppressive behaviors.
And what I was thinking of asyou asked that question, was
that, to a large extent, I'vealways led my life in terms of
(45:46):
wanting to do what I call God'swork, whatever I'm here supposed
to be doing.
So, even though I'm retired andI'm not doing a lot of teaching
, opportunities come up, likethis opportunity.
You just ask me if you couldinterview me and I thought, well
, that's a way that maybe I canbe of help to somebody, and
daily there are ways in whichopportunities come up for me to
(46:10):
be of service in some way oranother.
So when I did the workshop thatyou attended or you viewed
recently, called the responsivepractice in the responsive
process, I thought, well, here'san opportunity for me to do
some teaching, and so I did that, and now this interview with
you.
So I'm trusting and I was tosay hoping, and I think I trust
(46:35):
that I will be shownopportunities to be useful and
helpful.
Either, I thought of maybedoing the supervision group,
practicing the responsiveprocess.
So I'm waiting to see what thenext steps are going to be for
me in terms of teaching andimpacting people, but in terms
of what I want to help peoplelearn is the importance three
(46:57):
things that I did in theworkshop.
One of them is the importanceof self focus, paying attention
to what's going on internallyfor me, whether I stimuli or
where my sadness, my scares, myloneliness or my ideas, my
judgments.
What's going on for meinternally is the very important
first step that I wish forpeople.
Secondly is to learn the powerof what I can do about what's
(47:21):
going on for me in terms of mepersonally doing it or and or
getting support to address it.
And the third is to behave in away that reflects the OK, this
in myself and in others, and toreinforce and to operate out of
a place of forgiveness and love.
So those should three behaviorsthat I see, that I'm hoping
(47:45):
that people, that I can helppeople, impact people with
change.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (47:50):
Beautiful, beautiful, thank you.
I love that.
So those are my formalquestions.
And, felipe, how's your energylevel Like?
Can I ask you a couple morethings?
Sure, yeah, so when weconnected last week, you were
talking about how you firstconnected to visions, and I'm
aware this may or may not makeit into the recorded podcast.
And I do want to just askbecause this is part of the
(48:14):
Elder Story Project.
As I mentioned, most of theconsultants in my cohort didn't
ever get a chance to meet or getto know Joe Lewis, and you
shared a couple of memories ofher.
I'd be curious if you'd bewilling to talk about her a
little bit.
Felipe Garcia (48:28):
Well, joe and I were friends and colleagues and
we used to get together, usuallywith two conferences a year in
transactional analysis, usuallyonce in San Francisco and
another one in the wintertime inwarm places like here in San
Antonio.
We had a couple of times, yes,and then we were training
(48:50):
together and Joe and Markdeveloped what they call the
cooperative process and they hadtraining groups that they
called the cooperative.
What did?
They had a center forcooperative, for cooperative I
forget what it was called, butit had cooperative in the title.
(49:10):
And I was doing the same work,except I had my own process of
addressing it and they havetheirs.
And when we got together atvisions it was just so obvious
that all of us Valerie bats andthe reason I mentioned Valerie
and not Angela is becauseValerie was also a transactional
(49:31):
analyst and so was Joe Lewis,and so was myself.
So, was I, and so we just couldwork together so easily because
we had the same frame ofreference.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (49:43):
And from my understanding, the answer to me
is obviously yes, andcooperative process.
That's directly out oftransactional analysis, right?
Felipe Garcia (49:52):
Well, I'm not.
I'm not sure, because theoriginators of transactional
analysis were quite competitivethemselves.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (50:02):
Interesting.
Felipe Garcia (50:03):
Well, they were humanistic, they were a man.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (50:05):
Sure, yeah, yeah.
Felipe Garcia (50:07):
A medical model, yeah, but we're really wanting
to learn to be morecollaborative.
And Claude Steiner was veryinfluenced by a woman named Hoge
Wycov.
They were creating a kind of akind of a cooperative commune
sort of thing.
They were very popular in the70s and so he was developing
(50:30):
tools to help build teamstogether.
And I'm assuming that Joe Lewiswas also impacted by Claude and
by Jackie Schiff I know she was, because she and I were Jackie
Schiff's training groupstogether.
So I just found it verycompatible working with Val, I
(50:50):
mean with Joe Lewis, and so alsowith Val Bats.
What else can I say about Joe?
She was a great clinician andshe was a great trainer and I
had the honor of working withher many times.
We were doing the keynotespeech at a conference at San
Francisco when she died.
We were, we had planned we weregoing to do a keynote on the
(51:15):
vision's model, applying it tothe group, and she passed away
and I had to end up doing it bymyself.
That was another time that Igot myself real nervous, but it
went out very well, yeah.
Yeah, she was a lovely woman,really powerful.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (51:31):
Thank you for sharing that.
I appreciate that and I alsoknow what an influence she has
had on this community and theorganization and the model, so
it's lovely to hear stories frompeople who knew her as well as
you did.
Yeah, is there anything that Ihaven't thought to ask, that is
top of mind, top of heart, thatyou want to share or talk about?
Felipe Garcia (51:53):
No, I think you covered it very well.
I'm very interested in askingyou the same question Is that
the only thing that's left tounlever?
Because I know that's aninteresting story?
But no, I think you covered the.
I think you asked someinteresting questions and it
made me think, and the onlything that I haven't said is
that I I thought this morningbefore we started, I thought I'm
(52:15):
assuming that Lena knows thatwhen she's dealing with elders,
it's not only the the memoriesthat they have, but also that
they made me feel that they maybe a little wobbly and
remembering and in their speech.
And I have Parkinson's thatI've been diagnosed for about
four years and fortunately ithas a minimal impact, but it has
(52:36):
an impact.
And.
I think, how I verbalize thingsand memory a little bit.
And in terms of energy, I think, as you were asking earlier,
how's your energy?
In general, I'm fine.
I do everything during the day,but I have to rest and take
care of myself around that.
So, like I said earlier, beingan elder is quite a learning
(53:00):
stage.
Yeah, we never stop learning.
Yes, yeah, life is aboutlearning.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (53:07):
So that is on the list of questions.
Is there something that you'dstill like to learn?
Felipe Garcia (53:14):
How to deal with, how to continue to deal with
life in a way that I can feelgood, and good about myself and
good about others.
Beautiful, beautiful In thisworld, because this world has
it's gotten real scary.
We're living in a verydangerous time.
Yeah.
And so my hope is that weimpact people in a way that will
(53:38):
help them vote right, and forus to get people in Congress and
in the White House who, at theinstitutional and cultural
levels, deal with oppression andsexism and racism.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (53:51):
Yeah, yeah, sometimes when I'm talking to
people about what I do, one ofthe very potent things about the
vision's model to me is how itgives people the tools and
skills that they need in orderto show up is who they want to
be in the world, and that's workthat I'm very grateful to be
able to support people in doing.
Felipe Garcia (54:12):
Yeah, that's great.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (54:13):
Well, Felipe, thank you so much for taking the
time to talk to me.
This has been such a pleasure.
It's a pleasure to get to knowyou better and to hear about
your experiences and to hear youtalk about your work.
Felipe Garcia (54:27):
Well, thank you very much, Lena.
Thank you so much.
I really enjoyed talking to youand getting to think about
these things, and I hope it washelpful.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (54:37):
Wonderful.
Thank you very much, thank you.
Felipe Garcia (54:41):
And I look forward to meeting you in person
again.
Dr. Leena Akhtar (54:44):
Likewise, we have a few exciting things
coming up.
This year, which is our 40thanniversary, we want to flag for
you our 2024 Spring Summit,which is called In it for the
Long Hall Trauma informsstrategies for sustaining
laboratory work.
We have a wonderful lineup ofspeakers and workshop
facilitators, including Dr GaborMatei talking about compassion
(55:05):
fatigue, longtime visionconsultant Emily Schatzau and
her collaborator, traumatheorist and author of Trauma
and Recovery, dr Judith Herman,teaching about the importance of
community care.
Our 40th anniversarycelebration is going to happen
on September 27th, 2024 at theState Room in Boston.
Follow us to hear more.
Links are in the show notes.
Thank you so much for listening, until next time you.
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