The Critical Parent is a coherent, learned set of critical and controlling points of view which are often, but not always, heard as an internal, parental voice. The Critical Parent's role in relation to strokes is to enforce the rules of the Stroke Economy. The Stroke Economy is a set of rules that regulates the exchange of human affection. Don't accept a stroke you want. Don't give yourself strokes When most people follow some or all of these rules, the eventual outcome is that there will be a dramatic decrease in the strokes exchanged between people .
Any stroke is better than no strokes at all.
People who are stroke starved become willing or even eager to accept negative, toxic strokes. Opening The Heart Opening the Heart is an Exercise for the Free Exchange of Strokes. We begin Emotional Literacy Training here because the heart is the gateway to our emotions and it is here that we can begin to explore feelings in relative safety. Overcoming Critical Parent prohibitions against asking for strokes. When asking for strokes, depending of the risk we want to take, we can ask for a specific verbal or physical stroke from a specific person or for any kind of a stroke from any person.