Into the Gap

So, where does the 'gap' fit in? Why not just call the blog physis?

Good questions and let me explain.

During a TA (Transactional Analysis) workshop a few years ago our tutor drew the Script Matrix and left a small gap where the Parental inputs ended and our own Ego States began. Realising this gap didn't have a name I called it 'the physis gap'.

Translating this into non-TA language; the Big people, who are significant to us as we are developing, influence us. We are given messages about how to do things, how not to do things and what we should do to keep ourselves safe. However, we also tend to filter these messages. Our own sense of 'self' sometimes gets in the way of the messages and accepts, rejects or changes them.

In short, one way of looking at 'the physis gap' is that it is the tiny nano-sized gap between where the world stops and we begin.

Very small and (I think) crucially important.

Given that you can't see the gap, one way to know it's there is to look at adult siblings, who have grown up with the same Big people around them. They will often have been exposed to some of the same messages and it's likley that they will have interpreted them in slightly different ways. Check out your own family, or think about yourself. What do you notice?

The second gap, I would like to suggest, is more straightforward and equally as valid.

I think that there is also a gap between the amount of physis we have currently pulsing through our bodies and the amount we need to grow into the next stage.

When we look at the businesses around us that are having tough times, why is it that some are heading for destruction, whilst others in the same market are making changes that will see them through to future success? Perhaps organisationally the successful ones simply have more collective physis and therefore more force to change, grow and develop. This of course begs lots of questions...

...And there is a final gap, which I call the 'apricot pie gap'. This is the space I have already made in the pie in the fridge and in this case I will now depart, in order to widen the gap, and myself in the process.