There are basically three ego states:
Child: It is a collection of recordings in the brain of an individual of behaviors, attitudes, and impulses which come to her naturally from her own understanding as a child. The characteristics of this ego are to be spontaneous, intense, unconfident, reliant, probing, anxious, etc. Verbal clues that a person is operating from its child state are the use of words like “I guess”, “I suppose”, etc. and non verbal clues like, giggling, coyness, silent, attention seeking, etc.
Parent: It is a collection of recordings in the brain of an individual of behaviors, attitudes, and impulses imposed on her in her childhood from various sources such as, social, parents, friends, etc. The characteristics of this ego are to be overprotective, isolated, rigid, bossy, etc. Verbal clues that a person is operating from its parent states are the use of words like, always, should, never, etc and non-verbal clues such as, raising eyebrows, pointing an accusing finger at somebody, etc.
Adult: It is a collection of reality testing, rational behavior, decision-making, etc. A person in this ego state verifies, updates the data which she has received from the other two states. It is a shift from the taught and felt concepts to tested concepts.
All of us evoke behavior from one ego state which is responded to by the other person from any of these three states.
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