Everyone I know is trying to get somewhere.

Reach some goal, finish some project, scratch some item off a list of stuff to do.

Or trying to feel something they’re not feeling – satisfied, safe, successful, loved, appreciated, or the big one, happy.

I know I’m in trouble whenever a new client tells me “I just want to be happy.”

It’s like they imagine happy as a house they can move into and inhabit forever.

You know, a house out There.

But there’s no There there.

There’s Here and Now.

And people unhappy Here and Now rarely feel much happier There and Then.

Because life is process, not product.

Journey, not destination.

And real happiness is wanting what you’ve got, not getting what you want.

Or, as the philosopher J. Taylor has observed,

“The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.”

Once I watched a hypnotist convince a man he was a chicken.

The man clucked, turned his head in jerky birdlike motions, scratched at the stage with his big toe.  It was hilarious.

Nowadays I realize how much we’re all like that man.

Hypnotized, I mean.

Victims of the socialization trance.

Carriers of beliefs, assumptions and prejudices imposed on us by the groups – family, school, community, culture  – to which we belong.

Absorbing such beliefs is the price of belonging.  So, often, is convincing ourselves that those beliefs are actually true, despite evidence to the contrary.

Therapy is meant to help people awaken from the trance, to revisit their assumptions and decide which ones they need to revise or replace.

I call this process outgrowing Plan A

But some people don’t want to. They cling to Plan A, even when it’s clearly stopped working or explaining things.  Even when it’s made a mess of their lives, or hurts them or people they love.

Several ways to explain this.  Ego.  Stubbornness.  Intolerance of ambiguity.  Fear of change.  Stupidity, sometimes.

But the main reason is a sort of emotional immaturity — a refusal to grow up, face harsh reality, accept the world as it is, and stand on their own in that world.

We all struggle with this.  Growing up is hard work.  It’s scary, and painful, and often lonely, and when we do it at all it’s usually because we’re either forced to or have realized that not growing up feels even worse.

Which is a long way of saying, we’re all chickens on this bus.

But we have a choice between between being sleepy chickens and chickens trying their damnedest to wake up.

Control addiction creates a sort of feedback loop between internals (feelings, especially) and externals (mainly other people).

For example, let’s say I try to control you (make you like me) by controlling my feelings (hiding my anger).

But at the same time I’m trying to control my feelings (feel connected, or like myself) by controlling you (make you like me).

So one feeds into the other.  Endlessly.

Thus I end up enmeshed with my environment, unable to tell where I end and everyone else begins.

And at any given moment it’s hard to tell what my real priority is.

Am I controlling my feelings as a way to control you?  Or am I controlling you as a way of controlling my feelings?

Hmm.

No wonder we control junkies tend to feel, well…

Loopy.