Bert arrives
.
(Continued from The Red Thread, part 1.)
.
After the workshop I go back to doing
therapy with clinic clients.
.
Mine is a typical outpatient caseload,
filled with the sorts of problems every
therapist faces: anxiety, depression,
addictions, bad relationships, parenting
problems.
.
But something’s different now.
.
Have you ever bought a new car —
say, a Honda — and take it out on the
road, and wherever you drive you
see other Hondas? Suddenly the
world is filled with Hondas you
never noticed before.
.
This is happening to me. Suddenly
my caseload is filled with control addicts.
.
The clients haven’t changed, I have.
.
It’s like I put on new eyeglasses. My
vision has refocused or sharpened
or something, and now I can’t help
seeing how relentlessly, compulsively
and self-destructively controlling
they all are.
.
They? I mean We.
.
Everyone.
.
Controlling, I find, is the universal
addiction. It’s everywhere I look.
Not just in my codependent clients,
but every client.
.
Not just in clients, but in colleagues,
and friends, and family, and on the
nightly news, and in whatever I read
or watch on tv or in the movies.
.
And, of course, in myself. (I’ve discovered
Bert.)
.
Like a red thread in a carpet, the idea of
control snakes through every problem,
every motive, every personality, every life.
.
Why is this?
.
Originally I’d assumed that dysfunctional
families create codependency. But now I
find the red thread running everywhere,
which must mean either that (a) all families
are dysfunctional (which is arguable) or
(b) the urge to control is hardwired into
us, rooted in some deep part of our brain
that can’t help rejecting what life hands
us and trying to replace it with what
we prefer.
.
Or (c) both. Or (d) something else entirely.
.
I don’t know.
*
I spend the next fifteen years studying
the idea of control.
.
I hunt for books on control (there aren’t
many), then for books on related ideas
like desire and addiction and power.
.
I buy lots of books.
.
I start reading everything with a highlighter
in my hand, scribbling big yellow Cs
alongside the parts that relate to control.
.
Half my books start to look pee-stained.
.
I buy more books. I start typing out control-
related passages I like and collect them
in a computer file which as of today runs
to more than 200 pages.
.
I become interested in Buddhism, which
turns out to be all about control addiction.
(Buddhists call it attachment.)
.
I try meditating. I hate it. Well, not hate it
exactly, but I resist it like hell, to the
point I’m unable to sustain a regular practice.
(Thanks, Bert.)
.
I buy books on discipline. Also more
highlighters.
.
I reshape my approach to therapy
around the idea of control. I teach
my clients to notice when they’re
monkeytrapped and how to escape.
.
I write articles for them about
control addiction and ways to recover
from it. (We teach what we want
to learn.)
.
The therapy seems to work, for some
at least. I am struck by how many
clients tell me, as they become less
controlling, “It’s so much easier.”
.
I decide to write a book.
*
Immediately I get blocked. My
own control addiction prevents
me from writing about addiction
to control. (Thanks again, Bert.)
.
The block lasts for months, then years.
.
I buy books about writing and the
creative process, which turns out to
have lots to do with (surprise)
surrendering control. Some of
the books are wonderful. I learn
a lot.
.
The block persists.
.
But I am able to use what I’m
learning to help my clients,
parent my kids, manage my
marriage, cope with a monkey-
driven culture, and understand
myself a bit better.
.
I’m not always thrilled with
what I learn, or what it shows
me about myself.
.
Still. Better to know
than not know, I figure.
.
I still project and worry, but now the
worrier in me has an Off switch which
actually works, oh, maybe half the time.
.
Unfortunately that half is not the time
I spend writing.
.
I finally start a blog in hopes that daily
writing and feedback from readers will
jump-start the book.
.
I call the blog Monkeytraps.
.
And I ask Bert to help write it.
*
He agrees.
.
So some of my early posts are from Bert’s point of view.
And I find that letting him write changes the writing.
.
Hiding Bert had kept me ashamed of him.
.
It was the shame that was blocking me.
.
Letting him speak was like what happens in
AA meetings when members introduce
themselves by saying, “Hi, my name is X,
and I’m an alcoholic.”
.
Letting Bert speak was my first step
into recovery.
.
Coming soon: Bert Life
How I discovered control addiction
So I’m giving this talk, and suddenly
realize I don’t know what I’m talking about.
.
I’m a new social worker, six months out
of grad school, working for a clinic attached
to a rehab. My new boss has decided I’m
the best one to run the weekly Family
Education Series, basically a crash course
in alcoholism and how it screws up families.
.
And tonight’s topic is codependency.
.
I know the topic well enough. I’ve worked
as an alcoholism counselor, treated hundreds
of codependents, can diagnose one after
five minutes of conversation.
.
But when I went to prepare this talk I found
I couldn’t define the word.
.
At work we talked about codependency
without ever stopping to explain what
we meant. And when I looked into my
half-dozen books on the subject I found
each defining it in a different way.
.
One was:
A specific condition characterized by
preoccupation and extreme dependence
on another person, activity, group,
idea, or substance. [1]
.
Another:
An emotional, psychological, and
behavioral condition that develops
as a result of an individual’s prolonged
exposure to, and practice of, a set
of oppressive rules. [2]
.
A third:
A multidimensional (physical, mental,
emotional and spiritual) condition
manifested by any suffering and
dysfunction that is associated with
or due to focusing on the needs
and behavior of others. [3]
.
A fourth:
A recognizable pattern of personality
traits, predictably found within most
members of chemically dependent
families, which are capable of creating
sufficient dysfunction to warrant the
diagnosis of Mixed Personality Disorder
as outlined in DSM-III [4],
.
which sent me off to yet another book
to learn what the hell that meant.
.
Finally I came to codependency maven
Melody Beattie, who explained that a
codependent is simply
.
a person who has let another person’s
behavior affect him or her, and who is
obsessed with controlling that person’s
behavior. [5]
.
A fine definition. Until I noticed it
describes just about everyone.
.
Having no idea which definition
would be best to offer my workshop, I
cleverly decided to present them all.
.
So here I am, having just done that.
I’ve distributed a handout with the
five definitions on it, and read them
aloud, and am now looking at a
roomful of confused faces.
.
A man in a brown corduroy jacket
raises his hand. I nod back.
.
“So what the hell is codependency?”
he asks.
.
Everyone laughs.
.
I laugh too. (Inside I’m thinking
Shoot me now.)
.
Then I shrug and hear myself say,
“Addiction to control.”
.
I am surprised at myself. I’ve never
thought of it this way before.
.
*
But Corduroy starts asking questions,
and answers are coming to me, and
it’s all making a new sort of sense.
.
I explain that I see codependents as
traumatized people convinced their
survival depends on controlling the
effects of “their” alcoholic’s illness.
So they do things like hide booze and
avoid dad at certain times of the day
and lie to his boss about why he missed
work or to the neighbors about why he
fell asleep in the driveway. From all
these experiences they come to depend
on control as a way of coping generally,
and set about applying it to everything
and everyone in their lives, to the point
where it makes them sick.
.
“Sick how?” Corduroy frowns.
.
Mainly anxious and depressed, I say.
But also worried, and tense, and irritable,
and unable to relax or have fun, or identify
and express feelings, or trust anyone, or
like themselves. And self-medicating with
food or work or helping other people or
whatever else they can think of.
.
And now Corduroy is nodding thoughtfully,
and so are others in the room, and I know
I’m onto something.
.
(To be continued.)
___________________
[1] Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse,
ChoiceMaking: For co-dependents,
adult children and spirituality s
eekers (Health Communications, 1985).
[2] Robert Subby, Lost in the shuffle:
The co-dependent reality, quoted in
Whitfield (see below).
[3] Charles Whitfield, Co-dependence:
Healing the human condition (Health
Communications, 1991).
[4] Timmen Cermak, Diagnosing
and treating co-dependence (Johnson
Institute, 1986).
[5] Melody Beattie, Codependent
no more (Harper/Hazelden, 1987).
.
Last night I replayed a conversation
for the eleventh time.
.
I was trying to get it right.
.
Not the conversation itself; that
was over and done with.
.
But how I felt about it.
.
I did not feel good.
.
So I reviewed
(a) what I said,
(b) what I should have said,
(c) what I shouldn’t have said,
(d) what the other person said,
(e) what they really meant,
(f) what they might be thinking now.
.
Each pass gave me a flicker of relief.
A sense that I was getting closer
to something.
.
But the longer I stayed with it,
the crappier I felt.
.
Which told me I was monkeytrapped.
.
By now you’re probably familiar with
this analogy:
A banana is placed inside a jar with a
neck just wide enough for the monkey’s
paw to slip inside. The monkey grabs
the fruit, then finds its clenched fist is
too large to pull back out. It could free
itself easily; it just has to let go. But it
really really wants that banana. So it
hangs on. And it’s still hanging on when
the trappers come to collect it.
.
That’s a literal monkeytrap.
I write about the psychological version:
any situation which tempts us to hang
on when we really should let go.
Any discomfort which pulls us to try
and control what can’t or shouldn’t
be controlled.
.
Last night I was hooked by the promise
that if I just thought a bit longer,
analyzed more carefully, revisited
the conversation one more time, I’d
finally feel better — less tense, or
uncertain, or uneasy, or guilty, or
whatever the hell it was that I
was feeling.
.
Relief seemed just one more attempt away.
.
And then I noticed something new:
I’d been trapped by the smell of the
banana.
.
It was the irresistable smell of relief
that kept me obsessing over that
conversation, long after I should
have realized that its promise of
relief was a lie.
.
And lately this is something I’ve
come to see more and more clearly
in my work with clients:
.
Monkeytraps trap us because they work.
.
Just for a moment, they work. There’s
this tiny flicker of relief that comes
from replaying, analyzing, obsessing,
rechecking feelings, trying to think
our way into certainty.
.
Just enough relief to answer the inner
voice whispering You need to fix this.
.
So we set about trying to fix, and it
feels like we’re doing something,
clarifying something, moving toward
some kind of answer.
.
That moment is the hook. Because
the flicker of relief is real.
.
Then it fades. And we have to grab
for it again.
.
And again.
.
Psychologists call this negative
reinforcement. Negative refers to
removing something unpleasant,
reinforcement to encouraging the
behavior that removed it.
.
Translation: Controlling behavior
relieves just enough discomfort to
lead us into more controlling behavior.
.
It’s what makes controlling an addiction.
.
So it’s the smell of the bait that leads
us to review the conversation one more
time, or read another person’s mind,
or ask others what they think, or
doubt our perceptions, or beat
ourselves up for mistakes, or …
.
You know.
.
Over time, this becomes less of a choice
and more of a reflex. The moment
something feels off we move automatically
into managing it, or trying to.
.
Anyway. Last night all this flashed through
my mind pretty quickly, like a sudden
mental ZIP download.
.
Followed by one of my favorite aphorisms:
Where you put you attention is what grows.
.
So I took a deep breath, and suspended
the replay
.
I felt around in my body.
Found a small tightness in my chest.
.
It was the discomfort I had been
trying to fix.
.
Now I just looked at it.
Just looked.
.
I imagined it as a rubber band around
my heart.
.
I took another breath.
.
I kept looking.
.
There was no dramatic shift, no
immediate relief or resolution.
.
But the rubber band began to loosen.
Not all at once, and not completely.
.
But I felt better.
.
Not because I had figured anything
out.
.
Because I’d stopped trying to.
.
.
Bert and I recently began
publishing on Substack.
Come follow us.
https://substack.com/@stevehauptman
.
.
.
.
.
.
I recently began publishing on Substack,
and this is the Welcome I posted there.
Come follow me.
https://substack.com/@stevehauptman
.
Welcome to Monkeytraps
.
My name is Steve, and there’s someone else
you should meet before we go any further.
.
His name is Bert.
.
Bert is my inner monkey — the part of me
that worries constantly, avoids feelings, replays
conversations at 2 am, and is absolutely convinced
that if he just thinks hard enough, plans carefully
enough, and controls enough of what happens
around him, everything will finally be okay.
.
He’s been with me for seventy years. I only
started noticing him about ten years ago.
.
He did not appreciate that.
.
He prefers to remain unnoticed.
x
If you’re in therapy, or in recovery, or just
quietly exhausted by the effort it takes to
manage everything, then you probably
have a Bert too.
.
Maybe yours is louder. Maybe quieter.
.
Maybe yours shows up as people-pleasing,
or rage, or a to-do list that never ends, or
a glass of wine at the end of every day
because that’s the only thing that makes
the noise stop.
.
Whatever form it takes, I’d guess you
recognize the feeling underneath it:
.
I need to get this under control.
.
That feeling is what Monkeytraps is about.
.
I’m a therapist who spent thirty-plus
years sitting with people in pain,
and who slowly came to believe
that nearly everything they bring
into therapy — anxiety, depression,
frustrating relationships, broken
communication, addiction,
the chronic low-grade sense that
something is wrong with us —
has a common root:
.
We are addicted to control.
.
I’m not talking metaphorically here.
We’re addicted in the same way
someone is addicted to alcohol or
drugs or food or work: we chase it
compulsively, automatically,
mostly unconsciously, and with
the absolute conviction that we
can’t survive without it.
.
I wrote a book about this called
Monkeytraps.
.
Here I plan to continue
thinking out loud about what I found,
and keep finding, in my clients,
in myself, and in the ordinary disasters
of being human.
.
What you’ll find here
.
Essays — longer pieces that follow an
idea somewhere uncomfortable. Personal,
clinical, occasionally funny.
.
Bert’s Therapy — a serialized comic strip
following Bert’s reluctant, resistant progress
through psychotherapy. He arrives weekly,
grumpy and skeptical, slowly beginning to
understand himself. Despite his best efforts.
.
In the Dark — sequential image pieces that
enact the experience of monkeymind in real time.
These appear twice a month on Saturdays.
.
Bert’s Life — single images containing one
idea, fully rendered. These show up in your
Notes feed, along with brief daily thoughts
on control, recovery, and what it means
to be human.
.
Everything here is free. All I ask is that if
something lands, you share it with someone
who might need it.
.
And if you want to know whether this is
the right place for you, try this:
.
Think of something you’ve been trying to
fix — about yourself, about someone you
love, about a situation that won’t resolve.
.
Notice how long you’ve been trying.
Notice how much energy it takes. Notice
whether it’s working.
.
If something in you just got a little uncomfortable
— welcome.
.
You’re in the right place.
Subscribe below, and I’ll show up in
your inbox. Bert will try to talk me
out of it. It’s a thing he does.
What’s with the hat?
I felt like wearing it lately.
“Holes”? What’s that mean?
It’s how I’m feeling. Like
something in me is missing.
Something in you?
Yes.
What brought this on?
Remembering my childhood.
What about it?
Dad’s drinking. Mom’s depression.
How they fought. How they weren’t
really there.
Ah. And the holes that left in you.
Right.
Got it. See that box by your foot?
Yes.
Open it. It’s yours.
Uh, thanks. Not sure this fits me.
Just listen for a moment.
We all have holes. All of us.
Because we all get hurt or
disappointed or damaged in childhood.
But you’re nobody’s kid now.
Your parents are gone.
And you can wear any hat you want to.
So you can walk around wearing your
Holes hat forever…
or you can get to work on making
yourself Whole.
Can I really?
You really can.
I’m not sure about that. This hat
still feels too large.
You’ll grow into it.
What’s with the hat?
I was pretending it’s New Year’s.
Why?
Because I made a resolution.
What resolution?
Well, since you convinced me
I’m a control addict, I decided
to stop controlling.
Stop controlling what?
Everything.
Oh. How did that work out?
It didn’t.
I couldn’t go two minutes
without wanting to control
something.
Of course you couldn’t. We
can’t live without control.
But I don’t want to be addicted.
Okay, let’s be clear. Control is
not an inherently bad thing.
It isn’t?
Of course not. Sometimes
it’s essential.
When I drive my car I don’t
want to give up control.
If my kid gets sick I’m not
going to just surrender
and hope for the best.
Control only becomes a
problem when we try to use it
on stuff we can’t or shouldn’t
control.
Like other people.
Yes, that, and
overcontrolling feelings and
becoming constipated…
or trying to control the future
by projecting into it.
Which is what I did with my
resolution.
Exactly. The empty future makes
us anxious, so we fill it up with
resolutions and goals and
planning and promises.
Doesn’t work, right?
Usually not. So what do I
do now?
Learn your lesson. That’s
what relapses are for, to
teach you something.
What did you learn?
That I can’t avoid relapses.
Good. that’s an important one.
And?
That relapses are lessons, so
I shouldn’t beat myself up
over them.
Good. And one more thing.
This is important too.
What?
Lose the damn hat.
I remember my panic attack on
the first day of kindergarten.
I remember the bully who made
me eat ants on the playground.
I remember Dad getting drunk
and fighting my uncle on
our front lawn.
I remember running away from
summer camp because I was
so homesick.
I remember telling a girl I loved
her and her saying “Thanks.”
What the hell are you doing?
Remembering.
Why?
Bad memories just come up
when I feel stressed.
Well, stop chewing on them.
Why?
It’s bad mental hygiene. Like
looking for lunch in a garbage can.
I call it dumpster diving.
There’s nothing nourishing there,
and you just stink up your present.
But I’m just…thinking.
Not really. Most of what we call
thinking isn’t thinking at all.
What is it then?
Random mental activity.
Automatic, aimless, illogical.
Remembering, projecting, ruminating…
obsessing, fantasizing, worrying…
waste of time, mostly. And some
of it actually does harm.
How?
By triggering bad feelings that
have nothing to do with your
current reality.
Oh. Yeah.
It’s the main reason we’re
such neurotic monkeys.
Can I do anything about it?
You can. For starters, practice
catching yourself doing it.
Okay.
Then change channels. Intentionally
put your attention on something else.
Like something or someone you love.
Okay.
You can also train your mind.
That’s what meditation for.
Also resonant breathing and
yoga nidra.
But remember two things.
What two things?
First: Your mind has a mind of its
own. If you don’t manage it, it
will manage you.
And?
Second: Where you put your
attention is what grows.
So chew gum if you want.
But not garbage.
