What if every conversation you have is really two conversations at once—and you've only ever been listening to one of them?

Beneath the polite surface of every exchange runs a faster, unspoken negotiation about status, safety, belonging, and power. In The Hidden Scripts, Mateo Salvas reveals the invisible games we play at home, at work, in friendships, online, and even inside our own heads—the patterns that quietly decide whether we feel connected or drained, seen or managed.

Drawing on the giants of psychology and social science—Berne, Goffman, Gottman, Karpman, Bowen, and many more—this book gives you the language to name what you've always sensed but could never quite explain. More than that, it shows you how to step out of the loops that keep hurting you and finally reach real, unscripted contact.



Inside, you'll discover:



- How to read the room in real time by decoding the gap between words, tone, and body language

- The three voices inside you—Parent, Adult, and Child—and how to choose which one speaks

- Why people repeat the patterns that hurt them, and the hidden payoff that keeps them stuck

- The Drama Triangle of Victim, Rescuer, and Persecutor—and how to stop rotating through its roles

- How digital life amplifies manipulation, performance, and compulsion in chats and feeds

- Practical moves to interrupt the loop and build connection that needs no script

Stop playing the game you never agreed to—and start seeing the world, and the people in it, as they truly are.



Mateo Salvas is a writer and consultant of Spanish-Argentine background who specializes in decoding the hidden rules by which organizations, markets, and human communities actually operate. He studied cultural anthropology and the behavioral sciences at a leading U.S. university and earned a doctorate in the sociology of organizations. For more than a decade he worked as a field researcher and consultant, observing from the inside how entrepreneurs, politicians, artists, negotiators, and executives operate across different countries—which rules they state out loud, and which ones they actually follow. From that experience came his central idea: in any human situation, two games are being played at once—the surface game named by the rulebook, and the deep game of real power, incentives, and unwritten rules. Today he runs a private practice for entrepreneurs and executives and writes books about how an adult comes to see the world as it actually is.



1. The Hidden Currency of Every Conversation

2. Three Voices Inside You: Parent, Adult, Child in Plain Language

3. Reading the Room: How to Spot a Transaction in Real Time

4. When Talk Goes Sideways: The Anatomy of a Crossed Exchange

5. The Payoff Principle: Why People Repeat What Hurts Them

6. Games at Home: Scripts Between Partners and Family

7. Games at Work: Office Maneuvers and Corporate Theater

8. Games in Friendship and Social Circles

9. Games in the Consulting Room: What Therapists See

10. The Victim, the Rescuer, the Persecutor: Rotating Roles

11. Digital Games: Manipulation in Chats, Feeds, and Comment Sections

12. Case Files: Six Real Stories Decoded Step by Step

13. Refusing to Play: Practical Moves That End the Loop

14. Beyond Games: Building Contact That Doesn't Need a Script



See what's really being negotiated beneath every word