Anxiety or Racket? Break the Script System | MriyaRun

The modern world often feels like a storm, with anxiety levels going through the roof. The pandemic, the news, the uncertainty—all of this creates fertile ground for what we in Transactional Analysis call "script processes." Many have noticed: even when the real threat passes (like recovering from an illness), the anxiety lingers, turning into background noise or panic attacks. Why does this happen? Why does the chain break at the weakest link? The secret isn't just in external circumstances, but in how our psyche learned (or failed to learn) to process fear.

To understand the nature of your anxiety, we need to turn to the concept of Emotional Literacy. Claude Steiner and other TA classics teach us to distinguish between two types of feelings: authentic and racket feelings. Authentic fear is your friend. It is future-oriented, and its goal is to mobilize your resources so you can face danger and survive. This is a useful biological reaction. However, what we often call "chronic anxiety" is classified in TA as a psychological racket—a substitute emotion we "learned" in childhood to get attention or avoid punishment when expressing genuine feelings was unsafe.

Imagine your psyche is a system. If authentic fear is blocked or unconscious, it transforms into panic, helplessness, or that same background anxiety. You start "collecting stamps" (coupons)—accumulating small resentments and fears to later "cash them in" for a breakdown or illness. To break out of this loop, you need to learn to convert diffuse anxiety into specific fear, and fear into a conscious need. This is exactly why I created tools on the MriyaRun platform. Using the emotional intelligence diary allows you not just to note "I feel bad," but to track this substitution mechanism in real-time.

Let's try a technique that will help you decontaminate your emotions right now. Behind every anxiety lies an unmet relational need—for security, validation, impact, or acceptance .

Try this algorithm:

Anxiety is a signal from your body and unconscious. If you ignore it, you continue living in the Racket System, where instead of solving problems, you merely replay old pain. Emotional literacy is the path from "enduring" to "living." Be a caring friend to yourself, use self-reflection tools like the MriyaRun diaries, and you will see: behind the fog of anxiety, there is always a clear path to your true desires.