(If you’re new to Monkeytraps, Steve is a therapist who specializes in control issues, and Bert is Steve’s control-addicted inner monkey.  That’s Bert at the left, looking addicted.

Steve speaking:)

In our last post, “Bert meets the First Paradox,”  Bert introduced the curious idea that

The more control you need, the less control you have.

Which is to say that needing control has a sort of boomerang effect.  When you try to get more of it you end up feeling controlled.  You feel controlled by — surprise — your need for control.

And this happens with weird regularity.

Still, it’s easy to overlook if you’re not looking for it.  So I thought some stories might help illustrate this stubbornly reliable principle.

The actors in each of these (except the last) are heavily disguised, but the events are  based in fact.

*

Annie’s depressed, in part because she’s overweight.  So she eats cookies to make the depression go away.  Which makes her more overweight.  Which makes her more depressed.  Which makes her eat more cookies.   The more control you need, the less you have.

*   

Barry’s wife drinks.  This panics Barry, so he does everything he can think of to stop her.  He reasons, begs, nags, yells, makes nasty comments, threatens divorce, hides her wine or pours it down the toilet.  His wife, stressed by Barry’s reaction, drinks more.   The more control you need, the less you have.

*

Carol’s daughter fails a Math test and lies about it.  This infuriates Carol, who can’t stand to be lied to.  So she confiscates her daughter’s cell phone and warns her of worse punishments if she lies again.  This scares her daughter, who starts keeping more secrets and lying about more stuff.   Which leads to more punishments.  Which lead to more fear and more lies.  The more control you need, the less you have.

*

Dennis is an anxious man whose last wife cheated on him.  Now he worries that his new wife might do the same.  So he carefully monitors her comings and goings, and makes sure he knows where she is and who she’s with.  Then he listens in on her phone calls.  Then he intercepts and examines her cell phone records.  Then he starts following her on errands.  All this yields two results: Dennis’s anxiety rises to panic-attack levels, and his wife finds a boyfriend with whom she can relax.  The more control you need, the less you have.

*

Eve’s boyfriend is abusive.  He doesn’t hit her, but yells and criticizes and threatens her constantly.  Friends beg Eve to dump him, but she’s afraid that will make him angrier.  So she does her best to pacify and appease him.  Since the boyfriend likes this result, he continues to yell, criticize and threaten.  Then one day he hits her.  The more control you need, the less you have.

*

Fred and Ginger are married.  It’s the second marriage for each, and each brings to it a history of disappointed relationships.  Both want the marriage to work and are scared that it won’t, which makes them hypersensitive to any and all relationship problems.  They monitor each other closely for signs of dissatisfaction or anger.  They repeatedly seek reassurance that their partner still loves them.  They discuss their problems constantly.  All this leaves them chronically uneasy in each other’s presence.  The distance between them grows, which increases their uneasiness.   They begin to bicker, then to fight.  When they finally come to me for couples counseling the marriage is, in Fred’s words, “Circling the drain.”   The more control you need, the less you have.

*

Steve’s dog, a pit bull named Loki, runs away from home.  Steve chases him across front lawns and through backyards, up and down streets.  Panting and bracing himself for his first heart attack, Steve suddenly remembers the First Paradox.  He stops running.  He sits down in the street.  Loki glances back at him over his shoulder.  Steve flops over sideways.  Closes his eyes.  Waits.  Hears nails clicking on pavement.   Feels a long tongue flick his nose.  Reaches out and grab’s the dog’s collar.  

The more control…

Oh, you know.

Want more?

Read the Tao te Ching, if you haven’t.  (If you have, read it again). 

“Do you want to improve the world?” asks Lao-tzu in that wise little book.  “I don’t think it can be done.”  How, then, does the enlightened human being respond to the First Paradox?   “The Master sees things as they are / without trying to control them. / She lets them go their own way / and resides at the center of the circle.”

(Tao te Ching, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Perennial Classics, 1988.)

(If you’re new to Monkeytraps, Steve is a therapist, and Bert is Steve’s control-addicted inner monkey. That’s Bert at the left, looking puzzled.

Bert speaking:)

Once upon a time Steve had a client who made him very very nervous.

Actually, no.  Steve’s a trained professional.  He never gets very very nervous.

(Believe that, and I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might like to bid on.)

No, this client made me very very nervous.

She did it by being very very nervous herself.

Her name (let’s say) was Adele. And Adele was nervous about, well, everything. She was nervous about money, and her job, and her health, and her kids, and her marriage. And her hair.  You name it.

And by the end of an hour with Adele I was usually a nervous wreck myself.

Why? Two reasons. Steve, explain the first one.

Anxiety can be contagious. Spend much time with highly nervous people and it’s hard not to start feeling nervous yourself. Like a bad cold, their sense of unsafety infects you. Like an overdose of cheap perfume, their uneasiness comes to saturate your senses.

True. But the other reason Adele made me anxious had more to do with me than with her.

I really wanted to fix her anxiety.

Not for her sake.  (Steve’s the therapist, not me.)  It made me uncomfortable, so I wanted to make it go away. So I pushed Steve to say helpful things and give good advice and communicate acceptance (soothing voice, solid eye contact, all that), all in hopes of calming her down.

So I could calm down.

It didn’t work. Adele stayed anxious.

And I began to feel helpless. 

And I began to hate Adele a little.

But Adele was actually doing me a favor.  Because she was teaching me about the First Paradox of Control.

For the record: Wikipedia defines paradox as “a seemingly true statement or group of statements that lead to a contradiction or a situation which seems to defy logic or intuition.”

Right.  And the First Paradox of Control goes like this:

The more control you need,

the less control you have.

Or in this case, the more I needed to control Adele’s anxiety, the more out-of-control I felt.

Which I didn’t get, really, until one day when I finally got sick and tired of feeling helpless and hating her, and simply gave up trying to fix her anxiety.

Guess what happened.

I felt better immediately.  I found I could watch Adele’s nervousness without taking it personally, without experiencing it as a threat or a challenge. I found I could relax, and just let her be her anxious self. 

And — surprise — not trying to control her it left me feeling, well, in control.

Confusing, no?

Yes, confusing.

But in part this comes from a confusion of language.

We use the same word to describe two very different things. “Control Adele’s anxiety” means the ability to change another person’s feelings, while “feeling in control” describes an emotional state of  security or self-possession. Apples and oranges.

But — and here’s the interesting part — the confusion leads us naturally into assuming that we need to control something Out There before we can feel calmer In Here.

It’s not true.  In fact, the opposite is more often true: we need to give up controlling Out There in order to feel calmer In Here.

Weird.

And yet, when I think about it, not so weird.

Because I notice that those situations and people that make me most anxious are the very ones over which I’d like more control.

They’re also the ones over which I try to get more control — if not overtly, then covertly. If not in my behavior, then in my head.  The ones I fantasize (even obsess) about changing.

Finally, they’re the situations and people I suddenly feel better about when I shift from trying to control them to just letting them be. From fighting to surrendering, you might say.  Like I surrendered to Adele’s anxiety.

At the very least, surrendering’s a whole lot less work.

You said it.

Hey, reader:

Any experiences with the First Paradox?  Where you stopped controlling and ended up feeling more in control? 

If so, care to share?  We’d love to hear about it.

Want more?

Read the post my new friend Lori Landau just published, titled Can You Really Help Someone You Love Develop Healthy Habits?, on her blog Calm and Sense for Healthy Digestion.  PS: It’s not about digestion.  It’s about calming yourself in the face of another person’s pain.

(If you’re new to Monkeytraps, Steve is a therapist who specializes in control issues, and Bert is Steve’s control-addicted inner monkey. 

Continued from Bert’s Plan A.   Bert speaking:)

So Steve created me to get control of his emotional life.  And I set out to do that by trying to control everything and everyone around me. 

I did this mainly by teaching him to hide his feelings, create a mask that would impress other people, and to read other people’s minds — that is, guess what they wanted from him and provide it. 

I also convinced Steve to go to social work school.

I said last time I convinced him to become a social worker.  That’s inaccurate.  What I really did was convince him to become a psychotherapist.  Social work school just seemed the fastest way to do that.

Why did I want him to be a therapist?  Because I imagined therapists know stuff the rest of us don’t.  I saw them as something like priests, connected to some source of secret knowledge and understanding.  I liked that idea. 

I also saw them (hey, what did I know?  I’m a monkey) as being in control of both their emotional lives and their relationships.  Their special knowledge seemed to permit them to get close to other people while not exposing too much of themselves.  I liked that idea, too.  I liked it a lot.

So Steve went to social work school. 

He graduated. 

He got hired. 

He began to work as a therapist. 

And he discovered — surprise — that he couldn’t follow our Plan A and do this job.  

At least, not do it competently. 

Why?  Because, it turns out, being a good therapist is all about creating healthy relationships.  And apparently you can’t have control and healthy relationships at the same time.

You can’t, for example, have control and real communication, because real communication requires surrendering control, being honest, emotionally real, even vulnerable.  Therapists have to do all that within professional boundaries, of course.  But it you edit it out completely (like I wanted Steve to) the relationship feels dead, unreal, sterile.  And that solves nothing and helps nobody.

Nor can a therapist overcontrol feelings and do therapy well.  It seems feelings are what connect us to and enable us to understand other people.  When Steve overcontrolled his, he lost touch with his clients.  When he lost touch, he did bad therapy.

We began to realize that what therapy demanded from Steve was essentially the inverse of our Plan A.  Instead of seeing feelings as dangerous, he had to learn to trust them.  Instead of handling people, he had to find ways to communicate and connect with them instead.

This was, well, disturbing.  To both of us.

It was around this time that Steve, suddenly and unexpectedly, produced a poem.

Steve, please describe that.

It came out of nowhere.   I was lying in bed one night and heard the thing writing itself in my head.  I’m no poet, so I’ll spare you the poem itself.  But the first line was “The truth is like a bear in the house,” and the gist was that, when you’re trapped in a house with a bear, you have only two choices: run away and wait for the bear to eat its way through the walls to you, or stop running, turn around and hunt the damned bear.  

I didn’t know what it was about at first. 

Only later did I realize that the bear in my life was control. 

So we decided to hunt it. 

Right. 

Doing therapy had taught me that control isn’t just my Plan A, it’s everyone’s.  That controlling is addictive, that its patterns are universal and predictable, and that they cause most of the problems people bring to a therapist.  That anxiety, and depression, and addictions, and bad parenting, and lousy relationships all stem from someone trying to control something they either cannot or should not control. 

And that — if we’re lucky — a day comes when we realize that  controlling doesn’t work as a life strategy.  It’s on that day that we shift into Plan B.  We begin to watch our own controlling, try to catch ourselves in the act, try to practice healthy alternatives.  We stop trying to control life, and start cooperating with it. 

We invite you, dear friends and readers, to join the hunt.

* * *

Want more?

For a nice example of Plan B thinking, read Leo Barbauta’s recent Zen Life post “38 Life Lessons I Learned in 38 Years.”

Feeling control-deprived?

Check out our friend The Subservient Chicken.  And no, playing with him does not count as a relapse.

And,

don’t forget to add your two cents (or more, if you feel generous) to The Bert Poll.  We need you to educate us.

(If you’re new to Monkeytraps, Steve is a therapist who specializes in control issues, and Bert is Steve’s control-addicted inner monkey. That’s Bert at left, looking trapped.

Bert speaking:)

Recently someone asked Steve, “Exactly how does a person get addicted to control?”

“We’re born that way,” he answered.  “We’re born with this big brain that keeps us scared and worried and trying to control everything and everybody.  Sort of like a paranoid computer run amuck.”

He was referring to the idea of monkey mind, which I wrote about recently.  (See “Bert is nuts.”)

But that’s only half an explanation.  Because some people are obviously more controlling than others.  Why is that so, if we’re all dominated by monkey mind?

The other half of the answer has to do with Plan A.

Steve has this little speech he gives to new clients about the real reason people enter therapy.  Steve, summarize. 

It goes something like this.  In the end there’s only one reason anyone goes to therapy: Plan A has broken down. 

Plan A is my label for everything we learn as kids about life and how to cope with it.

We each have a Plan A.  We learn it mainly as kids, mainly from our parents, and mainly unconsciously.  I mean, nobody sits us down at the kitchen table and says, Now listen up, kid.  Here’s how you do Life.  They just do Life themselves, and we watch and listen and soak it all up like little sponges.  That’s why our Plan A tends to look so much like others in our family.

And it works pretty well for a while.  Especially while we’re living in the family.  It’s like we’re all following the same invisible rule book. 

But Plan A always breaks down.  Because eventually we move beyond the family into the larger world, filled with new people and new problems, and we discover that what worked at home doesn’t always work so well out there.

At which point we have a choice, at least in theory.  We can decide, “Oh, I guess I need a Plan B.”  Or we can keep trying to make Plan A fit every situation.

Guess which we choose?

Right.  Plan A.  Always Plan A.

Why?  First of all, we may not even know there’s such a thing as Plan B.  Childhood conditions us to see our Plan A as simply normal.  (Why would anyone want to do Life in any other way?) 

Second, even when we realize there are other options, we cling to Plan A because…it’s familiar.  We know how to do it.  And change is scary.  So we keep following Plan A even after we suspect it no longer works.

And that’s when we begin to develop symptoms — anxiety, depression, addictions, communication problems, lousy relationships.

And those symptoms are what drive us into therapy.

Seeking a Plan B.

Bert again:

In our case — Steve’s and mine — Plan A was shaped by growing up in an alcoholic family. 

Steve’s dad was alcoholic, and his mom was depressed.  Together they taught him two important lessons he’s spent his adult life trying to unlearn.

The first lesson was, “Feelings are at best inconvenient, and at worst dangerous.”  The implication of this lesson?  So you’d damned well better keep them to yourself.

The second lesson was, “You’re responsible for other people’s feelings.”  The implication:  So you damned well better be careful about what you say and do around other people.

These two lessons were the foundation stones, so to speak, of our Plan A. 

They’re also what called me, Bert, his inner monkey, into being. 

Steve created me to take control of what was a pretty chaotic emotional life.  I set out to do that by doing things like burying his feelings, developing an impressive image (see “Bert’s mask”) and becoming exquisitely oversensitive to the feelings, perceptions and opinions of others. 

I also convinced him to become a social worker.  Which seemed a natural fit to our original Plan.

(To be continued.) 

* * *

Check out my first guest post,

titled “Seven Kinds of Power”  and just published on Breaking the Cycles — Changing the Conversation, a web site devoted to “using 21st century brain and addiction-related research to change how we talk about, treat and/or prevent alcohol and drug abuse, underage drinking, alcoholism, drug addiction, dual diagnosis, DUIs and secondhand drinking/drugging (SHDD)”  (breakingthecycles.com).

* * *

And:

Don’t forget to answer the new Bert Poll question.

We need you to educate us.  🙂   

Steve:  A reader recently responded to “Bert’s dog” with questions that left me thinking about my control addiction (not that I ever forget it). 

So today I’ve asked Bert, my inner monkey…

Bert:  Hey. Recovering  inner monkey.

Steve:  Beg pardon.  My recovering inner monkey…to write about that. 

Bert:

I’ve been addicted to control for as long as I can remember. 

That is, for as long as I can remember I been trying to force reality — people, places, things, even myself, my own thoughts and feelings and behavior —  to match the pictures in my head of how I want reality to be.

I do this almost constantly. 

I also do it mostly unconsciously, which is to say, I usually don’t know I’m doing it.   

I also do it compulsively.  Which means I get anxious when I can’t get enough control.

I expect to stay an addict until I die. 

I mean sure, I’m in recovery and all.  But that just means I’m less controlled by my need for control than I used to be, just as recovering alcoholics are less controlled by their need to drink.  But they’ll always be alcoholics, and I’ll always be a control addict. 

I’ll always feel this urge to control stuff.  Even when I know it’s crazy to try.

It’s crazy, I’ve learned, because control is largely an illusion.

Of course it’s not always an illusion.  I know if I pour sugar into my coffee that makes my coffee sweeter.  If I pull my steering wheel to the right, my car will reliably turn right. 

But the world is larger than sugar and steering wheels.  And the truth is that, beyond these concrete ways of changing my immediate circumstances, much of my controlling operates more on the level of wishful thinking.

Why?  Because most of my controlling is an attempt to control feelings and relationships.  And feelings have no steering wheel.  And in relationships sugar doesn’t always work.

Let me explain.

Let’s say I have a feeling I don’t want.  Say I feel inadequate.  But it’s uncomfortable to feel that, and I also worry that if you see how I feel you may agree with me, which would make me feel worse.  So I hide my self-doubt, from you and from myself.   I work hard at presenting myself as adequate, even superior. (For an example, see “Bert’s mask.”)  And let’s say it works: I convince you I’m superior.  I’ve successfully controlled your perception of me. 

Do I feel better?

Not so much. 

At least, not for long.  Why?  Because I know it’s a performance.   I’ve basically fooled you about me, and I can’t forget that.  So whatever approval I get from you is essentially meaningless.  And I end up feeling both inadequate and phony. 

See how that works?

Another example: 

Say I’m mad at you, but scared to show it.   Scared you might get mad at me, which would make me unhappy. 

So I hide my anger from you.  I bury it. 

But overcontrolling feelings tends to be bad for me.  Recovery has taught me that feelings are meant to be expressed, not contained. Released, not stored up.  So burying my anger makes me feel, well,  constipated.  Pressured.  Uneasy.  Anxious.  And when I do it long and habitually enough, I get depressed.  I.e., chronically unhappy.

How’s that for irony?

Why doesn’t control work better in the realms of feeling and relationships?

Because at the heart of this addiction lies a paradox:

The more control I need, the less control I seem to have.  

Happy Easter, if you’re Easterish.  Happy Sunday, if you’re not.

* * *

If you haven’t already,

take a look at the two short movies that Bert recommends: “Here’s to the crazy ones” (narrated by Richard Dreyfus) and Ernest Cline’s  funny/sad/thought-provoking “Dance, monkeys, dance.”

(If you’re new to Monkeytraps, Steve is a therapist who specializes in control issues, and Bert is Steve’s control-addicted inner monkey.  

Bert speaking:)

I’d like to introduce you to my dog.

Please look down.  You’ll find him attached to my ankle.

That’s where he lives, more or less.  Sometimes he draws blood.  But mostly he just hangs on, drooling and chewing occasionally, slowing my progress through life from a stroll to a worried limp.

Of course this is a metaphorical dog I’m describing (the attractive photograph above notwithstanding). 

It represents a part of the human personality we each carry inside us, an internal voice named variously by different psychologies.  Freudians described it as the punitive superego.  Others call  it the Inner Critic.  

Gestalt therapists call it the Top Dog.

Steve wants to add something.

I first read about this guy many years ago, in Fritz Perls’  Gestalt Therapy Verbatim.  “The topdog usually is righteous and authoritarian: he knows best,” Perls wrote.  “He is sometimes right, but always righteous.  The topdog is a bully, and works with ‘You should’ and ‘You should not.’  The topdog manipulates with demands ands threats of catastrophe, such as, ‘ If you don’t, then — you won’t be loved, you won’t get to heaven, you will die,’ and so on.” 

I remember reading that and wondering how Fritz had managed to overhear my darkest thoughts.

As Steve’s inner monkey and a recovering controller, I’ve spent many hours (years, actually) listening to this voice.  I’ve come to know Dog pretty well. 

Here’s what I’ve learned:

Dog means well.  He really thinks he’s protecting me by pointing out my flaws, reminding me of my failures, and anticipating all the awful judgments others might render.  Expect the worst, that’s his motto.  But his warnings don’t make me feel safer.  What they do is keep me scared poopless.    

Dog’s scared to death.  That’s why he scares me.  Dog himself operates out of pure fear.  (Can you imagine scarier words to live by than expect the worst?)  So every word out of him comes from that defensive position.  Which explains why the more I listen to him, the scareder I get. 

Dog’s unpleaseable.  No matter how hard I try, he’s never satisfied.  In fact trying harder seems to only make him stronger.  It took me years to realize that he thrives on attention.  So trying to please Dog is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.  

Dog lies.   He sounds reasonable, since there’s usually some  truth in what he says.  But listening to Dog is like looking at myself in a fun house mirror.  By focusing on weakness and failures only he presents a terribly distorted view of me.  And if I mistake it for an accurate one, I’m sunk, basically.  

Dog refuses to die.  This is the real reason I can’t satisfy him.  Dog exists to worry and warn.  That’s his reason for being.  Were he ever to concede, say, that I’m adequate, or loveable, or that everything will probably work out fine, he’d be putting himself out of a job.

So.  What to do with a dog like this?

Well, it helps me a lot to remember what I’ve learned about him.  That Dog isn’t me, just the scared worried part.  That he’s unappeasable, and that he lies, and that he’ll say or do anything to survive.  

All this gives me some distance from his voice.  It means when he starts growling I can say “Oh, you again.  Shut up,”  instead of taking him too seriously.

And you?  Why should you care about any of this?

Well, check out your own ankle.  

Want more?

Fritz Perls’ description of top dog dynamics can be found in Gestalt Therapy Verbatim (Real People Press, 1969), a collection of theoretical talks and therapy demonstrations.

Susan David offers tips on “How to manage your inner critic” at the Harvard Business review web site (so nice to know that even Harvard people have topdogs)at http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/01/how_to_quiet_your_inner_critic.html

And take a look at Hal and Sidra Stone’s useful  book about Dog-training, titled Embracing Your Inner Critic: Turning Self-criticism into a Creative Asset (Harper San Francisco, 1993).

(If you’re new to Monkeytraps, Steve is a therapist who specializes in control issues, and Bert is Steve’s control-addicted inner monkey.

Bert speaking:)

Steve’s been mad at me for the past day or so.

Can’t say I blame him.

Here’s why:

A month ago, just before he resumed publishing Monkeytraps, he made a point of asking his two kids (both twenty-something) to read it and tell him what they thought.

He likes and admires his kids, and he respects their opinion.  So this seemed a natural enough request.

But they hadn’t read the first version of the blog a year ago.  And though he didn’t blame them for that (even he didn’t think the old Monkeytraps was that great), he was a little scared it might happen again.

But he asked.  And they promised.

And then it happened again. 

They still didn’t read it.

Disappointed and puzzled, he came to me. 

“What the hell?” he asked. 

Of course this had already gotten my attention, since I’m in charge of the Controlling How Everyone Feels About Us department.

“I have a theory,” I admitted.

“What’s your theory?”

“You won’t like it.”

“Tell me.”

“They’re scared of you.” 

“Scared?”

“Uh huh,” I said, embarrassed.

“But why?”

“It’s my fault.”

“How?”

“I think I convinced them that I was you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

I took a breath.

“Do you remember,” I asked, “what Fritz Perls said about having character?”

“Yes.  No.  Maybe.  Remind me,” he said impatiently.

“He said we think of having character as a good thing, mainly because it makes us predictable, and other people like knowing what to expect from us.  But it’s actually a sign of rigidity.  It means we’ve developed a fixed way of responding, and lost our ability to cope flexibly and creatively and authentically.  Stopped growing, in effect.”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember now, ” he said.  “So?” 

But I could tell he knew, now, where I was heading.

 “I think the character we’ve developed over the years scared the kids out of giving you feedback on the blog.”

He was silent.

“You mean the I-know-everything character?”  he said finally.

“Yes.”

“The argue-like-a-lawyer character?”

“Yes,” I said unhappily. 

“The guess-how-many-books-I’ve-read character?”

“That’s the one.”   

“Shit.”

He fell silent again.

Finally he said,

“I was afraid it was something like that.”

“Sorry,” I said meekly.

“Hey, it’s my fault too.  Seemed like a good defense at the time.   I didn’t want anyone seeing how I really felt about myself.”

“I know.  But it got away from us.”

“Yeah.  It’s like what I tell clients about defenses.  You put them on thinking they’re a suit of armour.   Then you wake up one day and realize you’re trapped inside them like tuna in a can.”     

What could I say?  It ‘s true.

 “So what now?” he asked me.

I’d been waiting for this question. I smiled.

“That’s easy,” I said.  “Leave the can.”

“How?”

“Go to the kids.  Tell them the truth.  Tell them what you need from them.”

He squinted at me. 

“It’s the only way,” I shrugged.

“I suppose,” he sighed.  But I could tell he wasn’t thrilled with either the problem or the solution.

Still, he did it.  He went to both kids, one at a time, and told them the truth.   That when he sent them a blog post he didn’t need them to critique the thing.  He didn’t need them to analyze the ideas or evaluate the writing.  He didn’t even need to know if they could relate to the psychology.  He just needed them…to like it.

“Just a pat on the head,” he said, feeling like a moron.  “Just a ‘good job, dad.’  That’s all.”

“Really?”his daughter asked.

“Really?” his son said. 

“Really.”

His daughter, the affectionate one, gave him a hug. 

“Of course, daddy.  That’s easy.”

His son, the serious one, pursed his lips. 

“I can do that,” he nodded.

And Steve felt better.

I think he’s forgiven me.  We haven’t talked again, but that’s how it feels.

Anyway, we learned something. 

Masks slip on easier than they slip off.   

(If you’re new to Monkeytraps, Steve is a therapist who specializes in control issues, and Bert is Steve’s control-addicted inner monkey. That’s Bert at left, taking a break.

Bert speaking:)

While writing that last post about monkey mind (“Bert is nuts,” which Steve retitled from “Bert’s nuts” after his wife said it sounded like testicles) I was reminded of Steve’s favorite Zen story:

A monk is fleeing through the jungle from a tiger.  He reaches a cliff, has no choice but to leap over the edge, and finds himself hanging in midair by a root.  Above him the tiger froths and rages.  Then he looks down and sees another tiger below him, jaws open, waiting for him to fall.  At that moment he notices a wild strawberry plant growing out of the cliff.  He picks a strawberry and pops it into his mouth.  “How delicious!”  he says.

End of story.

Stupid story, I always thought.

Who eats fruit on the verge of death?

Steve has tried explaining the symbolism.  The first tiger, he says, represents the past, while the tiger under the cliff is the future.  Because of monkey mind we’re almost always running away from one or towards the other.  But this monk was unusually sane: able to realize that the only real thing was the present moment (the root he was dangling from).  In that moment he was safe from both tigers.  He saw this so clearly that he was able to pause in his running, forget past and future, and taste the strawberry.

Uh huh.

Me, I’m not that sane. 

The tigers occupy most of my attention.

There’s always something I have to do, or forgot to do, or am afraid I’ll forget to do, or won’t do well enough.  Or screwed up ten or twenty years ago and still feel guilty over.

Always something to run from or run after.

Always.

And yet.

Yesterday, in the middle of the day, right in the middle of running-after and running-from, I suddenly felt tired.

I was home in my bedroom 

So I sat down on the edge of my bed.

It felt good to sit down, I noticed. 

This surprised me, actually.  I’d been so busy running (with my feet and in my mind) that I’d stopped feeling anything.

It felt nice to feel something…nice.

So I experimented.

I leaned sideways and lay down on the bed.  I lay there on my side with my eyes open, watching a square of sunlight through the bedroom window.

The room was quiet.  The sunlight was pretty.   

I felt my heart and my breathing slow down.

I stayed there for five minutes.  Then went back to work, feeling different.  Stronger, somehow.  More hopeful.

Remarkably so, in fact.

Steve wants to add something.

Most of us treat our bodies like their main purpose is to move our heads around from place to place.  But our bodies are where feelings live, and our feelings are a direct line to what we’re needing.  This has been called “the wisdom of the organism,” and when we listen to it we make different choices, often better ones.  Often I’m able to help clients in my office feel better, physically and emotionally, just by suggesting they put their feet up on my hassock, or rest their head on the back of my sofa.   We all need that sort of relief.  We all deserve it.

Go pick a strawberry.

Want more? 

Check out “Listening to Your Body” on the Natural Health Perspective web site.

(If you’re new to Monkeytraps, Steve is a therapist who specializes in control issues, and Bert is Steve’s control-addicted inner monkey. That’s Bert at left.

Bert speaking:)

So I entered Steve’s life early — probably well before that kindergarten story (“Bert’s born,” in the archive) I just told you. 

Probably before he could even talk.

My mission? 

To protect him.

From? 

Everything.

Scary situations.  Painful feelings.  Discomfort of every sort. 

Rejection.  Failure.  Disappointment.  Frustration.  Rejection.  Conflict.  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, 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 relationship tricks, like hiding his feelings, and obsessing over how others feel about him.  Even perceptual tricks, like selective memory and imagining I can guess the future or read other people’s minds

None of these works really well over time.  But they gave Steve comfort,, and 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 has 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 also kind of, well, stupid.

For example, some of you already know that the title of this blog 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 hold and refuse to let go.

I do this all the time, even when part of me knows it’s not working.

I’m trying not to.  I’m trying my damnedest to learn alternatives to control, like surrender and honesty and intimacy. 

But it’s not easy.   As Steve wrote in his first blog,

Control is like a mirage that vanishes when you walk up to it, or a train you chase but never catch.  Most of the time we don’t even know we’re chasing it.   “Ideas we have, but don’t know we have, have us,” James Hillman said.  Control is just such an idea.    

One last thing:

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

You have it as surely as you have  fears, and a monkey mind that whispers and worries and scares you.

You may not have noticed this secret tenant before.  But look anyway. 

I’d love to hear about him/her, if you care to share.

(Continued from last time:)

The next block Steve reached for was red.  He placed it on the floor in front of the blue one, sat down and put his feet up on it.  Feeling highly visible, even daring, he waited for the room to react.

The room ignored him.

“More,” I muttered.

He found a yellow block next, and put it beside the red one.  Then he found a green one and put it on the other side.

He made a line of blocks, a little wall.  Then sat nervously down to await developments. 

None developed. 

No one in the classroom noticed, or if they did, they didn’t let on.

He went on building.  He made a second tier of blocks, and then a third.  When he was done the little multicolored wall rose to his waist and enclosed a small triangular space that felt oddly safe and protected.  He sat back down and examined the wall happily.  It felt like some sort of achievement.

I think Steve wants to add something here.

Coming to mind is a passage from a Hemingway story.  It’s about a traumatized war veteran making camp in the Michigan woods.  “Nick was happy as he crawled inside the tent.  He had made his camp.  He was settled.  Nothing could touch him.  It was a good place to camp.  He was there, in the good place.  He was in his home where he had made it.”   

Yes.  It was that sort of achievement.  No small thing, creating safety for yourself in a dangerous world.

That’s about it for my story.  Nothing else interesting happened.  We stayed behind the wall until we went home.

So why did I tell you this?

Well, I’m introducing myself.   As I told you last week, I’m Steve’s inner monkey.  The part that seeks control.  The part that tries to protect him by changing reality, transforming it into something more like what he wants, or needs, or prefers.  You just saw me at work. 

 But I’m also introducing the subject of this blog, which is not a simple one.  Control is a slippery fish. 

I’ll let Steve have the last word on that:

For a long time after I began examining control I didn’t distinguish between the simple impulse to control and the addiction to controlling.  I saw it as a problem, not a solution.  A confused attempt to avoid discomfort or pain.  Trying to change realities beyond their control seemed to be the main way people made themselves (and others) sick, exhausted and miserable.

But it’s more complicated than that.  Controlling is defensive, sure.  But it’s adaptive too.  Building that block wall may have cut little Steve off from the class, but it also gave him a way to stay in the room.

So controlling can be both irrational and necessary, avoidant and creative.  A problem and a solution.

As Bert says, a slippery fish.

(If you’re new to Monkeytraps, Steve is a therapist who specializes in control issues, and Bert is Steve’s control-addicted inner monkey. That’s Bert at left, at an early age.

Bert speaking:)

Steve was born in 1950.

Me, I’ve no idea when I was born.  I do, however, remember my first public appearance.

It was on Steve’s first day of kindergarten. 

Actually no, it was Visiting Day, the spring before kindergarten started, when kids visited for half a day to get their first taste of public education.

Steve has vague memories of the classroom — bright banks of windows, colored plastic chairs, fingerpaintings on a corkboard, voices rattling off the walls — but no clear memory of how he felt.  Not hard to deduce, though, given what happened.  

He panicked.  

Walked in, froze up.  Stood rooted to the tile floor like a stump in a stream, while the other kids bustled and flowed around him. 

After a few moments the teacher called the kids over to her desk, and they clumped and moved obediently in that direction.  Except Steve, who stayed rooted.

He was shy kid, inexperienced, insecure, especially in new situations.  This was certainly one of those, and he found himself flooded with feelings he had not expected and could not begin to control.

At which point, Ta Da, I took over.

“Go to the corner,” I whispered.

He did.

Piled there beside the coat rack was a stack of oversized building blocks, hollow wooden cubes painted bright colors.

“Take down on the blue one,” I told him.

He did.

“Put it on the floor.”

He did.

“Sit on it,” I said.

He did.

“Now don’t move,” I said.

He did, staring blindly ahead.

The teacher came over.  Nice lady, print dress.  Soft voice.  Steve never saw her face because he was staring at her shoes, which were brown. 

She said something to him.  He shook his head.  She said something else.  He shook his head again.  She waited a moment, then walked away. 

We spent the rest of the morning together there in the corner.  First we sat perfectly still and tried to be invisible, convinced that if we moved or even breathed loudly someone would notice.   After thirty minutes it became clear the nice teacher was content to ignore us, and we began to relax.  The roaring in our ears died away.  Our hands warmed up.  We looked around at the room.   We watched the teacher playing with the kids.  We watched the kids playing with each other. 

After another hour this got boring. 

I noticed him eyeing a triangular block, off to one side.  It was yellow.

“If you put that behind you,” I whispered, “you could lean back on it.”

The idea of reaching for the block and becoming visible scared him all over again, so we argued about  it for a while. 

I can’t remember how I changed his mind.  But eventually he bent his upper body sideways, grabbed the yellow block and slipped it behind him.  Then he leaned back and waited for someone to notice.

Nobody did.

He found this interesting. 

Maybe this place was more tolerable than he thought.

Ten more minutes passed. 

“You could put your feet up,” I whispered.

He stood and reached for another block. 

(To be continued.)

Bert speaking:

It’s been, what, about eight months since we last tried this blog thing.

We stopped because it was wearing us out.   Also because we didn’t quite know what we were doing.

For those of you new to this blog, “we” means Steve and me.  Steve is a therapist on Long Island who specializes in (some say, obsesses over) the idea of control.  He has this whole elaborate theory worked out about it.

Control, he says, means the ability to dictate reality.

He believes everyone is addicted to control.  He says we spend our lives chasing it in all sorts of ways, most of them unconscious, and is convinced this addiction is what causes most of our emotional problems.

“Everyone,” of course, includes Steve himself.  As I can attest.

For I am Steve’s inner monkey.

At least that’s what he calls me.  He named me after monkey mind, that Eastern metaphor for the secret stream of chatter that dominates every human consciousness — unsettled, worried, restless, confused, fearful, constantly seeking control.  You know, that part of you that can’t stop replaying yesterday or fretting over tomorrow.  That paranoid whisper you hear when you can’t sleep at night.

The first version of this blog appeared fifteen times last summer and featured two voices.  Steve’s voice was that of the therapist and theorist, the one who thinks about all this control stuff and has it worked out intellectually and like to pretend he has it all together.  That’s sort of necessary in his job, I suppose.  Who wants to talk to someone as confused as you are?

But then occasionally you heard my voice.  (See July 9th, “A gazillion dandelions,” in the archive.)  I’m the part that doesn’t have it together.  I’m not even sure that’s possible, since having it together (like all my ducks in a row)  implies the sort of control over life that I rarely experience. 

Mine is the voice of the addict.  The part that never has enough control, and never will.

But it’s also the voice of the recovering addict.  The part that may not have all the answers, but who’s aware, at least some of the time, of his own craziness, and is working to get a handle on it.

As I said, last summer you heard from me, but only occasionally.  I think now that’s why Steve gave up on the blog.  It was just too hard for him, pretending to have all those answers.

Me, I’m less ambitious.

So I’ve decided to take over Monkeytraps.

I plan to keep these entires short and crisp, like potato chips.  I’m not into elaborate theoretical musings.  I’m trying to learn something here, something about living a human life without going too crazy.

 Steve will hang around as a consultant.  You’ll hear from him from time to time.  His voice will appear in italics.  Say something, Steve, so the readers know you’re there.

Something.

Thank you.

In conclusion, a parable to summarize the new Monkeytraps:

This guy’s walking down the street when he falls in a hole.  The walls are so steep he can’t get out.  A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, “Hey you.  Can you help me out?”  The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on.  Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, “Father, I’m down in this hole.  Can you help me out?”  The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on.  Then a friend walks by.  “Hey, Joe, it’s me, can you help me out?”  And the friend jumps in the hole.  Our guy says, “Are you stupid?  Now we’re both down here.”  The friend says, “Yeah, but I’ve been down here before and I know the way out.”

Who better to write about monkeytraps than a monkey? 

I’ll be back.

(This spring.)