Stroking is a term coined by Eric Berne as a unit of exchange of recognition. Strokes can be both positive and negative, they have the same weight in terms of emotionality. Confessions are important for a person, since each of us has a hunger for emotional strokes. And if we are not given positive strokes, we will still receive them in a negative way: being late, forgetting, not doing it. WHAT YOU STROKE IS WHAT YOU GET! We can receive stroking both from other people and learn to give it to ourselves. It often happens that we only know how to give ourselves negative strokes, like the experience we gained during the interaction between a child and a parent. And so an adult builds such a dialogue within himself between the inner parent and the inner parent. This is what happens when a child is born, they expect a lot from him: to walk faster, speak, and so on, and then the parents give strokes only for success, and so these expectations live in the head of a person who then “drives” himself forward, since there is a whip behind him who will beat you for failure. There are three categories of how strokes can be divided: Stimulus - bodily contact Recognition - about personality Structuring - time, rules and social norms In order to understand what strokes you give yourself and which ones are missing, you can offer to lead, you can write in writing what you say about yourself (internal dialogue) and about others, and divided into positive and negative. This daily practice allows you to track communication with yourself and others and where there are problems, which is not enough for the full functioning of the human psyche. We can pet ourselves anytime! It is a pleasant feeling that we have unlimited access to, which allows our inner child to be at peace, knowing that there is no shortage. Personal strokes include: Massage, yoga - this is working with the body, noticing your successes, even small ones - this is recognition of yourself as a person, the distribution of your time is the structure of life. When writing this article, I used the following list of references: Claude Steiner “Scenarios of People’s Lives”, Stewart Y., Joyce V. “Modern Transactional Analysis”. Sign up for a consultation using the link ➔ Sign up __________________________________________________________________Your psychologist, Larisa DegtyarPhone - +7(926) 782-13-57My telegram channel https://t.me/degtyar_psy