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My definition of anxiety is

the gap between the now

and the later.

Whenever you leave the

sure basis of the now and

become preoccupied with

the future you experience

anxiety.

And if the future represents

a performance, then the

anxiety is nothing but

stage fright.

~ Fritz Perls

.

.

It’s no coincidence that people

who had angry parents often

end up choosing angry partners,

that those with alcoholic parents

are frequently drawn to partners

who drink quite a bit, or that those

who had withdrawn or critical

parents find themselves married

to spouses who are withdrawn

or critical

Why do people do this to themselves?

Because the pull toward that feeling

of “home” makes what they want as

adults hard to disentangle from

what they experienced as children.

They have an uncanny attraction to

people who share the chacteristics of

parents who in some way hurt them….

It’s not that people want to get hurt again.

It’s that they want to master a situation

in which they felt helpless as children.

~ Lori Gottlieb

 x

x

Why are Americans so hungry

for the approval of others?

The adjusted American lacks

self-approval; that is to say,

he has not developed a self-image

that he can believe is both

accurate and acceptable.

To do so he would require successful

techniques for creating an accurate

and acceptable self-image through

honest introspection, candid association,

and meaningful action.

The patterns to which he has adjusted

do not includes such techniques…

Half certain of his own inadequacy,

he attempts to present himself to

others in an appealing way.

When (or if) he has won their approval

he hopes that they will be able to

convince him that he is a better man

than he thinks he is.

~ Snell & Gail Putney,

The Adjusted American (1964)

*

If you can see your path

laid out in front of you

step by step,you know

it’s not your path.

Your own path you make

with every step you take.

That’s why it’s your path.

~ Joseph Campbell

*

.

There is something in

every one of you that

waits and listens for the

sound of the genuine in

yourself.

It is the only true guide

you will ever have.

And if you cannot hear it,

you will all of your life

spend your days on the

ends of strings that

somebody else pulls.

~ Howard Thurman

.

*

“I must say a word about fear.

It is life’s only true opponent.

Only fear can defeat life.

It is a clever, treacherous adversary,

how well I know.

It has no decency, respects no law

or convention, shows no mercy.

It goes for your weakest spot,

which it finds with unnerving ease.

It begins in your mind, always …

so you must fight hard to express it.

You must fight hard to shine the

light of words upon it.

Because if you don’t, if your fear

becomes a wordless darkness that

you avoid, perhaps even manage

to forget, you open yourself to further

attacks of fear because you never truly

fought the opponent who defeated you.”

~ Yann Martel, Life of Pi 

*

*

Letting go involves being

aware of a feeling, letting

it come up, staying with it,

and letting it run its course

without wanting to make it

different or do anything

about it….

The first step is to allow

yourself to have the feeling

without resisting it, venting

it, fearing it, condemning it,

or moralizing about it.

It means to drop judgment

and to see that it is just

a feeling….

Let go of wanting to resist

the feeling.

It is resistance that keeps

the feeling going.

~ David R. Hawkins.

     Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender

     (Hay House, 2012)

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If you treat every

situation as a life

and death matter,

you’ll die

a lot of times.

~ Dean Smith

*

*

Anxious people (and we are

all anxious people) try to control

other people mainly by editing

themselves — hiding the parts

they think others won’t like.

Most importantly, they bury their

feelings instead of expressing them

That last sentence defines the heart

of anxiety.

That’s because feelings are — excuse

this analogy — like shit.

Like feces, feelings are supposed to

be expelled and expressed, not

hidden and buried.

When they’re buried, they don’t

go away; they collect.

The person then becomes

emotionally constipated,

lives in a constant state of

internal self-interruption,

pressure, and emotional pain.

Anxiety is the name we give

to this pain.

.

~ From “The anxious,” Chapter 24 of Monkeytraps: Why Everybody Tries to Control Everything and How We Can Stop (2015).

.

Neurotics are always trying to

change themselves by using

willpower, but this only serves

to make them more neurotic.

Emotional health can be gained

only through self-awareness and

self-acceptance.

Struggling to change one’s being

only enmeshes the person

more deeply in the fate

he is trying to avoid.

~ Alexander Lowen

.

.

In school, in the workplace,

in learning an art or sport,

we are taught to fear, hide,

or avoid mistakes.

But mistakes are of incalculable

value to us.

There is first the value of mistakes

as the raw material of learning.

If we don’t make mistakes,

we are unlikely to make

anything at all.

~ Stephen Nachmanovich

*

**

We students of control addiction quickly come to realize that a monkeytrap is not really a trap at all. 

It’s an invitation to trap yourself.

It succeeds because of a part of the human personality I call the inner monkey.

This is the part dominated by monkeymind, the addicted part, the compulsive part.

It’s the part that grabs on and won’t let go.

I once invited my own inner monkey — whom I call Bert — to introduce himself to my blog readers.

Bert wrote,

I entered Steve’s life early, probably well before kindergarten, probably before he could even talk.

My mission?

To protect him.

From?

Everything.

Scary situations. Painful feelings. Discomfort of every sort.

Uncertainty. Rejection. Failure. Disappointment. Frustration. Conflict. Rejection. Sadness.

(Just noticed I listed “rejection” twice. Sorry. I really really hate rejection.)

I did it mainly by searching relentlessly for ways to change things, edit things, things both outside and inside him, to somehow move them closer to what he wanted or needed or preferred.

I also taught him tricks.

Coping tricks, like avoiding emotional risks and surprises.

And relationship tricks, like hiding his feelings and obsessing over how others see him.

Even perceptual tricks, like selective memory and blaming and imagining that I can guess the future or read other people’s minds.

None of these works over time. But they gave him a kind of comfort.

We grew close quickly. I became his constant companion, trusted advisor, and — he thought — very best friend.

I meant well. And at times I’ve been useful, even helped him out of some bad spots.

But in the end ours have been an unhealthy relationship.

Why?

Because in the end my need for control set Steve at odds with reality instead of teaching him how to accept and coexist and cooperate with it.

It’s like that with us inner monkeys.

We mean well. We really do.

But we’re kind of, well, stupid.

For example, you may already know that the title Monkeytraps refers to a method used in the East to trap monkeys, where fruit is placed in a weighted jar or bottle and the monkey traps himself by grabbing the fruit and refusing to let go.

That’s my thing. That’s what I do.

I grab on and refuse to let go.

Like I said. Stupid.

One last word:

I’m betting you have one of my brothers or sisters inside you.

You have it as surely as you have fears and anxieties, and a monkeymind that whispers and worries and scares you.

You may not have noticed this secret tenant before.

But look anyway.

As I said, monkeytraps are just invitations. They work because of what we monkey-driven humans do.

We set traps, then reach inside them.

We build cages, then move in and set up housekeeping.

.

~ From “Me and my monkey,” Chapter 20 of Monkeytraps: Why Everybody Tries to Control Everything and How We Can Stop (2015)

.

(Continued from Part 2)

2. Monkeymind is all about control.

Acquiring control — editing the reality we have into the one we want — is monkeymind’s mission.

It pursues it by recalling old wounds and trying to heal them, anticipating new problems and trying to solve them.

Monkeymind is pain-driven and anxiety-driven, which is why the narrative it spins can feel like a bad horror movie.

It does this with the best of intentions.

It’s trying to heal us, protect us, make us happy.

Unfortunately the control it chases is an illusion.

So in the end what monkeymind mostly accomplishes is to make us confused, scared, angry, unhappy, and more than a little nuts.

.

~ From “Monkeymind,” Chapter 19 of Monkeytraps: Why Everybody Tries to Control Everything and How We Can Stop (2015)

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(Continued from Part 1.)  fro

*0m

1. Monkeymind is, arguably, insane.

That’s if we define sanity as being in touch with reality.

Monkeymind is anything but.

Preoccupied with memories of the past and projections of the future, it spins a narrative saturated with fantasy and only minimal awareness of what’s actually happening right here, right now.

Anyone who’s tried to meditate knows this narrative all too well.

Never have? Try now:

Sit still.

Close your eyes.

Take a deep breath.

Stop thinking.

Put all your attention on your breathing instead.

Count your breaths.

(Authorial pause while reader counts.)

How far did you get before your counting was interrupted by a thought?

That chatter you heard?

That’s monkeymind.

(Concluded tomorrow.)

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