Willie’s talking about his job, which he hates.  I ask if he’s thought about doing something else.

He scowls.

“I’m forty-six years old,” he mutters.  “I have a wife, two kids and a 30-year mortgage.  What the hell else am I doing to do?”

“I don’t know.  What would you like to do?”

This pushes a button.  Now he’s angry.

“Shit,” he says.  “I’m so tired of hearing You can be whatever you want to be.  I get sick to my stomach when I hear that.  It’s such bullshit.”

I say nothing.

“You disagree?” he says.

“Yes,” I say.  “I don’t think it’s bullshit.”

“Oh come on,” he says.  “You can’t believe anyone can be anything they want just because they want it.”

“No,” I said, “I don’t.  But I don’t think believing it is bullshit.”

“Why not?”

“It’s what’s called a necessary fiction,” I say.

“What’s that?”

“Ever read Monkeytraps?” I ask.

“Sometimes.”

“Good,” I say.  “Read it tomorrow.  I’ll answer there.”

.

* * *.

A necessary fiction is a story we tell ourselves to help us get through life.

It’s not a lie, exactly.  Nor is it entirely the truth.

It’s more like an aspiration — a way of reaching towards what we need or want.

It makes us feel good about ourselves, or life, or the future.  It makes pain and disappointment more bearable.   Gives us courage.  Gives us hope.  Helps us cope.

We all live by necessary fictions.  We all tell ourselves stories about who we are and what we’re doing and where it will all lead.

For example,

Everything will be okay.

We’ll live happily ever after.

I’ll never die.

The people I love will never die.

I’ll never get old and sick.

Money buys happiness.

Driving is perfectly safe.

If I vote for X, it will make a difference.

Tomorrow’s another day.

I can get control of how I feel.

That last one is my favorite, of course, since the idea of control is the necessary fiction Monkeytraps is all about.

Why do I call these fictions necessary?

Because of our big brains.

Like oversized computers run amuck, our big brains are dominated by the process Buddhists call monkey mind — an incessant stream of remembering and projecting, interpreting and analyzing, worrying and agonizing.

Ever stop to listen?  It’s a nuthouse in there.

Necessary fictions act as a sedative.  They appease monkey mind, quiet it down.

Imagine, for a moment, living without that sedative.

Imagine living day to day, hour to hour if you cannot forget that someday you must die.  I’ll never die fends off death anxiety.

Imagine getting in your car and running to the store for milk if you can’t forget that someone dies in a car accident every 13 minutes.  Driving is perfectly safe is the necessary antidote.     

But:

There’s a difference between relying on necessary fictions and being lived by them.

We must remember that our fictions are fictions.  To do that means being self-aware and self-supporting.

To forget that they’re fictions — that this is a story we believe, not a literal truth — is to lose touch with reality.

Religious bigots are a good example.  They’re convinced themselves the story they believe is The Truth.  It’s a short step from that conviction to seeing everyone who doesn’t share it as deluded, even evil.  (Even deserving extinction.  Read the papers.)

Control addicts are another example.  They’ve convinced themselves — despite all evidence to the contrary — that control is both possible and necessary.  So they spend their lives chasing it, like a hapless commuter ten steps behind a train he can never catch.

Which leads to lives of frustration and misery.  Control addicts make other people pretty miserable too.

In therapy I try to help them see control as a necessary fiction, a story they tell themselves about the way they want things to be.  It’s a very human story.   One that’s sometimes necessary, and sometimes necessary to give up.

Because when you can’t give it up, you’ve made a problem out of a solution.

*

* * *

.

Speaking of illusions:

Less necessary,

more fun.

~ From the video The chalk guy (2:15).

(For best effect,

watch it full screen.)

.

.

* * *

.

We wake up one day

at the age of forty

dreading going to work

because we were forced

to pick a career

before we could

legally buy a beer.

.

Why does this happen?

.

It’s because so many of us

in our younger years

think that a means goal

is really an end goal.

.

We confuse the two.

.

And these things are

really, really different.

.

.

..

From The three most important questions to ask yourself by Vishen Lakhiani (13:15), who writes,

8

Over the years I’ve come to stop believing in goal setting.

Why?

Because goal setting, or at least the way most of us are trained to do it, actually gets us to be obsessed about the how of attaining our goals, rather than the passion, the vision, and the beauty of the goal itself.

In short, we get obsessed with the “means,” rather than the “end.”

In this video, we are going to change the way you think about goal setting. We are going to present to you the 3 most important questions to ask yourself. If everyone asked themselves these questions at the age of 18, we believe the world would be a much happier place.

But no matter how old you are, it’s not too late.

This exercise will change the way you plan your life and see your goals. It’ll change the way you see your career, mission, and life purpose unfolding. The intro to the exercise takes no more than 5 minutes, and the exercise itself takes 7 minutes.

This could be one of the most important 12 minutes of your life.

.

* * *

Now playing

over at

Mental Health Talk:

“Monkeytraps 101 ~

Bert’s Crash Course

in Control,”

Lesson 2:

.

.

* * *

Being authentic means risking finding out

what we truly feel deep inside

— not just living out ideas and expectations

of who we are or who we should be — 

and even being willing to be surprised

by ourselves.

.

We need to be able to tolerate

the bodily experience of vulnerability

that arises when we risk being real…. 

.

We are not able to force others

or the world

to meet us with warmth and interest

when we show up in our genuine selves. 

And that is vulnerable.

. 

We need to be able to stay

with ourselves

to feel and deal with the discomfort

of that in our bodies,

if we are to live an authentic life.

.

~ From Authenticity

by Dr. Sandra Parker

.

.

(Bert speaking:)

Came across this old post recently, which Steve and I wrote together more than a year ago.  I was surprised how true it remains for me/us today.  So I’m running it again, with some tweaks.

* * *

Lately Steve’s seeing more and more couples.

Not sure why.  He never trained as a couples therapist, and he doesn’t advertise himself as one.

But couples apparently like his approach, because they keep sending him new couples to work with.

Which at one time would have pissed me off.

Because I hated couples work.

It scared me.

It scared me for two reasons.  First, there was too damned much going on in the room.

Steve, explain.

Well, couples work means paying attention to many levels and variables at once.  Like,

~ what the partners say, and what they don’t say;

~ which feelings they express, and which they hide;

~ which of their motives they’re aware of, and which are unconscious; and

~ what’s happening between them here and now, as opposed to whatever past experiences (often buried, usually painful) are getting triggered.

Right.  All that felt overwhelming.  It was just too much.

Too much for you to control, you mean.

Yes.  Forget about controlling it in the room.  I couldn’t control it inside my own head.  Couldn’t organize it mentally.

I also hated the tension.  Many couples were so frustrated or angry at each other that sessions with them felt like watching someone juggle live hand grenades.  I kept waiting for some KABOOM that would blow the office into matchsticks.

So you couldn’t control the emotional situation either.

Right.  I couldn’t control either their feelings or my own feelings about not being able to control how they felt.

All of which explains why, for years, whenever someone called Steve to request couples counseling I’d immediately climb up onto his shoulder and whisper Just say no over and over and over.

I remember.

But you didn’t listen.

Well, we do have to make a living.

Yeah.  I didn’t care.  My priority was anxiety management.

Anyway, I’m glad he didn’t listen.   Because over time he learned something important about how to help couples.  And eventually I even began to feel safe.

Both happened after he created his Monkeyships Theory.

Steve, define monkeyship.

It’s any relationship that becomes dysfunctional because both partners are struggling for control.

And the theory.

That nearly all relationship problems are monkeyship problems, since eventually all relationships turn, well, monkeyish.

This theory helped me feel safer with couples in two ways.

First, focusing on the idea of control helped me to observe and organize what was happening in each session.  Sort of like an Etch-a-Sketch magnet rearranges iron filings.

Yes.  Noticing how people are trying to control each other does clarify how they got into trouble in the first place.

But more importantly, it gave Steve a way to help them get out of trouble.

Steve, explain that.

Well, I realized my job wasn’t so much to fix or change anything as to help the partners notice how they were trying to get control.  I did this by pointing out what I was seeing and hearing.

Once they could spot their own patterns, the next step was to teach them the three alternatives to control — surrender, responsibility and intimacy (see the end of What do you know about control?) 

And then get them to practice.

And this really works.

Better with some couples than others, frankly.  Its success depends mainly on how willing they are to stop playing blame tennis and look hard at themselves. 

And when they do, what do they see?

That control is the secret motive behind most of their behavior.  That they’ve been trying to transform their partner into the partner they want, instead of accepting the one they have.  

“Don’t be who you are.  Be who I need you to be.”

Yes.  That’s the theme song of any monkeyship.         

For partners who can move past that theme song, surrendering control offers a path out of monkeyship and towards mutuality.

Which is?

What relationship is meant to be: a place where both partners can be themselves with each other, and where they come to see that what’s good for their partner is — surprise — also good for them.

* * *

For more on control and relationships, check out The split-level relationship and Monkeytraps and how to spot them.

* * *

In a some families

— alcoholic, abusive or

otherwise dysfunctional —

kids aren’t

allowed to be

themselves.

.

They aren’t allowed

to listen to

their own feelings

or act in service of

their own needs.

.

Instead they get drafted

into unconscious roles

intended to meet the needs

of the family.

.

They get lost, and end up

believing stuff like:

.

“If I’m smart enough,

and good enough at sports,

I can save my family…”

.

“I just don’t want to cause

any more trouble

for my family.”

.

“If I make everything fun,

we don’t have to think

about our problems.”

.

“If you don’t care,

then I don’t care either.”

.

.

This dynamic is

far more common

than most people think.

.

~ Watch the rest of Common roles played in alcoholic families (2:09).

Ahem.

.

As of today,

Bert has expanded

into cinema.

..

So put down that banana

and hustle your monkeybutt

over to

Mental Health Talk

for the premiere of our

very first

slideshow:

.

.

.

There you’ll find

Lesson 1:

Sex!

Violence!

Thrills!

Political Intrigue!

.

“The Monkey” has none of these.

.

It’s just a brief (3:27) introduction

to a secret part of you

that you really should

get to know better.

.

(What?

You can’t spare 3:27?

Boy, do you need

this slideshow.)

.

“The Monkey” is

the first lesson of six

to be published weekly

by Mental Health Talks.

.

Coming next week,

Lesson 2:

The Addiction.

.

Comments on Monkeytraps 101

are welcome

(nay, eagerly awaited)

both here

and at Mental Health Talk.

.

And while you’re over there,

be sure to browse around

Mental Health Talk.

It’s an awesome resource

(subtitled “Our stories.  Our wisdom. 

Making a difference”) 

created and edited

by my new friend Trish,

whose introduction to MHT

you can read here.

.

See you soon.

love,

Bert

New client today.  His wife sent him.  She thinks he’s alcoholic.  He went to two therapists before me who agreed with her.  Plainly he’s looking for someone who doesn’t.

So he talks to me for forty minutes, explaining his family history and all the stresses in his life and why his use of alcohol is both justified and manageable.  Then he asks the question.

“Do you think I’m alcoholic?”

“I don’t know,” I answer.  “I don’t know you well enough yet.  But whether you are or not, I don’t think you’re ready for therapy.”

His eyes widen.  Not what he expected. 

“Why not?” he asks.

I tell him one of my favorite Zen stories.

A college professor visits a Zen master.  “I’ve come for your teaching,” he says.  He then proceeds to tell the master everything he knows — all the books he’s read, all the books he’s written, the lectures he’s delivered, the theories he’s developed over many years.  Finally he pauses for breath, and the master says, “Let’s have tea.”  He fills the professor’s cup, then keeps pouring so the tea runs over the brim and onto the table.  “Stop!” says the professor, “It’s already full!”  “So are you,” replies the master.  “And until you empty yourself you’re not ready for my teaching.” 

See, we spend much of our lives in pain.  And we spend a good deal of time explaining our pain to ourselves.

It’s inevitable that we do this. 

Why?  Because it gives us a sense of control over our emotional lives.

And, of course, there’s no shortage of explanations.  You’ll find them here and on a zillion other blogs and websites.  Then there’s books, and Oprah, and Dr. Phil, and pop culture, and cable news, and advertisers, and (god help us) politicians, and your bf, and Mom, and maybe your therapist.  All happy to offer their two cents.

And we can’t help but absorb much of it, and over time piece together a sort of explanatory patchwork that explains nothing but helps us feel like we know what the hell’s going on.

And we often cling to this patchwork, even after all evidence suggests that it’s inadequate and the pain it’s meant to manage persists. 

Hey, we’re human beings.  We’re the monkeys that control.  And we’d rather trust lies than feel helpless.

My new client left looking puzzled.  Don’t know if he’ll be back. 

I’m glad I met him, though, because he reminded me of the question we each need to ask and keep asking:

Would I rather be right, or healthy?  

.

* * *

If you do not

change direction,

you may end up

where you are heading.

~ From Lao Tzu Quotes  

a slideshow (2:04)

courtesy of quotecorner.com.

.

.

* * *

There is incredible pain,

and in some

profound way

all of our actions

henceforth are

an attempt to return

 [to a feeling of Oneness].

And we develop

a whole set

of techniques

that we say

make us

“feel good”…

~ From On attachment and addiction by Ram Dass (9:24).

.

.

.

* * *

One of Carl Jung’s longtime patients wrote to Jung describing the relationship between radical self-acceptance and self-knowledge:

.

By keeping quiet, repressing nothing, remaining attentive, and by accepting reality — taking things as they are, and not as I wanted them to be — by doing all this, unusual knowledge has come to me, and unusual powers as well, such as I could never have imagined before.

.

I always thought that when we accepted things, they overpowered us in some way or other.  This turns out not to be true at all, and it is only by accepting them that one can assume an attitude towards them.

.

So now I intend to play the game of life, being receptive to whatever comes to me, good and bad, sun and shadow forever alternating, and in this way, also accepting my own nature with its positive and negative sides.  Thus everything becomes more alive to me.
 .

What a fool I was!  How I tried to force everything to go according to the way I thought it ought to.

.

~ From The wisdom of yoga: A seeker’s guide to extraordinary living by Stephen Cope.

* * *

.

One day you finally knew

what you had to do,

and began,

though the voices

around you

kept shouting

their bad advice —

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop…

~ Watch the rest of The Journey by Mary Oliver, a video (2:37) by Glenda Miles, with music by Gandalf.

(Bert speaking:)

I’m an addict.

Technically I guess you’d call me a polyaddict, since I’ve had so many addictions in my time.

They came in two flavors: substances and behaviors.

The substances included food and tobacco.  Sugar’s been my drug of choice since I was a kid.  In grade school I made white-bread-and-white-sugar sandwiches.  I drank maple and (when I could get it) chocolate syrup.  Halloween and Easter, the only times mom bought candy, left me in a hyperglycemic stupor.

Even now sugar can still trigger me.  Wave a York Peppermint Patty under my nose, I’ll follow you anywhere.

For a while I was addicted to pasta.  I’d mix it with vegetables and convince myself I was eating healthily.  The more stressed I felt, the more pasta I ate.  I was approaching Orson Welles proportions before I learned to beware of simple carbs.  But for most of my adult life there’s been too much of me.  

I did escape cigarettes.  But in grad school I smoked a pipe until cumulus clouds formed in my office, and my tongue morphed into raw hamburger, and other students made rude remarks when I went by.  

My addictive behaviors include

~ Watching television.  TV was the alternate reality where I hid out between ages twelve and eighteen, the years dad was drinking and my parents were divorcing and I was evolving a depressed view of life.

~ Reading books.  The alternate reality I still find preferable much of the time.  Books are great.  You can skim forward to see what happens next, reread parts you forgot or don’t understand, and skip over whole chapters if they’re confusing or uncomfortable.  Life should be more bookish.   

~ Writing.  In my thirties and forties I carried a series of cheap spiral notebooks with me everywhere, compulsively filling pages whenever I felt stressed, bewildered or scared.  I must have felt that way often, since  there are thirty-one spirals now gathering dust on the bottom shelf of a bookcase in my office.  I save them the way a veteran might save his dogtags.  But I never reread them.  That would be like dangling my toes in a cesspool.           

~ Working.  My current addiction.  Unfortunately I can’t write intelligently about it yet, since I’m still in denial.

These are just some of the trails I blazed to what Steve likes to call the Garden of Numb.

Steve, explain.

Addicts are people who can’t handle feelings.

Usually it’s because they never learned to as kids.  Usually because their parents never taught them.  Usually because their parents never taught them.

This sort of ignorance is uncomfortable at best, painful at worst.  So early on the emotionally undereducated kid seeks ways to make feelings go away.  To escape a jungle of unwanted, disagreeable feelings by entering the Garden of Numb.

Drugs and alcohol are popular paths to the garden, but anything that alters your mood temporarily can be turned into an addiction.

I believe everyone’s addicted to something.

And I believe, in the end, all addictions are the same.  Because they all share the same goal: to give the addict some control over emotional life.

That’s why when someone asks me, “What does control have to do with addiction?” I reply, “Everything.”

Because every addiction is an addiction to control.

But I love the Garden of Numb.  Such a great place to visit.

Yes.  The world can be painful and scary, and living a human life is no picnic.  We all need occasional vacations.

The problem comes when you find you can’t live outside the garden.

Right.  Which is what happened to me with each of my addictions.

My eating and smoking and tv-watching and reading and scribbling took on lives of their own. 

Each stopped being something I was doing and became something that was doing me.

In other words, I lost control of my need for control.

At which point I had to revisit my relationship with feelings.

Make friends with them, you mean.

Well, no.  Not sure I’ve done that yet.  But I did have to stop being scared of them.

That meant learning (and then relearning) the function of feelings, which is to help us perceive and interpret experience — provide feedback about what’s happening inside. 

And then to learn (and relearn) healthier ways of processing or digesting that feedback — mainly by identifying and expressing what I felt to other people — instead of trying to make the feelings go away.

I’m still working on all this.

So are you, I hope.

Because it’s something we each have to learn.  Because we’re all control addicts.  If you’re human and you’re breathing there’s no avoiding it.

Recovery from any addiction requires courage and work.  It means facing scary feelings, overcoming the habit of self-constipation, and learning alternatives to control.   

But the work’s worth it.

Because the alternative is worse.

Since living in Numb really isn’t living at all.

.

* * *

The problem is, like addiction, codependency is characterized by denial.

.

This means you may not even be aware that you’re codependent and are unwittingly teaching it to your children, despite your best intentions.

.

The most preventative steps you can take are to improve your self-esteem and communication.

.

Some of the main symptoms of codependency are:

• Being overly focused on someone or something

• Low self-esteem

• Nonassertive communication

• Denying or devaluing needs, feelings, and wants

• Poor boundaries

• A need for control

~ From Codependent children — What can parents do? by Darlene Lancer at BreakingTheCycles.com.