What Is an Injunction? The 12 Unconscious “Don’ts” That Hold You Back

The injunction is the most powerful script message in Transactional Analysis. It is an unconscious command — “Don’t…” — passed on in childhood from the parents’ anxious, wounded “inner Child,” not in words but through the atmosphere. Even if the parents did not intend it, the child takes it in as a rule for survival.

The Gouldings’ 12 injunctions

The psychotherapists Bob and Mary Goulding grouped the typical injunctions into twelve.

• Don’t exist — “If only you weren’t here…” The deepest wound.
• Don’t be you — I am not welcome as I am.
• Don’t be a child — the child who had to hold down fun and needs.
• Don’t grow up — it feels as if I will lose love if I become independent.
• Don’t succeed — I bring myself down at the decisive moment.
• Don’t be important — I must not step forward. I must not be noticed.
• Don’t belong — nowhere feels like “my place.”
• Don’t be close — intimacy is frightening.
• Don’t be well / Don’t be sane — I only got attention when I was sick.
• Don’t think — I doubt my power to judge for myself.
• Don’t feel — I shut feelings off.
• Don’t (do what you want) — whatever I do, I get anxious and hesitate.

How do injunctions show up in adult life?

For example, a person with the injunction “Don’t feel” lives in their head alone, without even recognizing sadness or anger. A person carrying “Don’t succeed” strangely spoils things at the very moment they are about to go well. This is not a problem of will or ability. The unconscious is keeping an old rule.

The first step out — redecision

An injunction is a decision that I “accepted” as a child in order to survive. If so, I, the adult I am now, can decide again. In Transactional Analysis this is called redecision. It starts with noticing “which injunction is at work inside me.”