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My last cartoon carried this caption:

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To need control is to go to war with reality

 — with people, places and things as they are, 

and with yourself, your own thoughts, 

feelings and behavior.

The war’s endless.  And guess what usually wins?

Better to find a way to stop fighting.

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To which my reader Julie replied, “The big question is, ‘How to stop fighting?'”

That’s the question, all right.

How do you stop fighting reality?

How accept life on life’s terms? 

Is it even possible?

Yes, I think so.

I’ve found three ways.

They’re not new.  They’re not complicated.  They’re not mysterious, either.  We all know them.

We just don’t practice them much.

Surrender

Surrender means giving up control over what you can’t control anyway.

For me that usually means finding a way to accept some smelly lump of reality that life has dropped in my lap.

Some lumps are easier to accept than others.  Bad weather, I’m okay with that.   I can handle slow drivers too.  Also long bank lines.  Also crabgrass.  Even the occasional indoor gift left by Loki.

Other stuff’s harder.  Like the rising poll numbers of politicians whose guts I despise. And reality tv.  And Rush Limbaugh.  And Cialis commercials.

Not to mention whether you’ll like what I’m writing.

Then there’s stuff  I really want to control, stuff that feels essential to my peace of mind or happiness.  Like my income.  Or my weight.  Or my wife’s mood.  Or how other people see me.  That last one especially.

This stuff forces me to practice surrender almost constantly.

Practice how?

I  imagine three boxes.  (See above.)  I sort the realities I’m facing into them.  Then I work on moving items from right to left.

Item by item.  Slowly and patiently.  Over and over.

Responsibility

Responsibility means being able to respond — that is, answer reality — appropriately and effectively.

For me that usually means listening to my feelings and making choices based on what I hear.

I’ve been trained not to do this.  Like you, I learned early to ignore such internal cues and focus on external ones instead — rules, conventions, the expectations of others.  I also learned that ignoring external cues gets you punished.

Called socialization, this process begins with toilet training and continues right through grad school.

What am I saying?  It starts at birth, and continues forever.

So it takes courage to detach from externals, risk disapproval or rejection, and listen to myself anyway.

Responding is hard, too, because a lifetime of ignoring feelings leaves them hard to hear.   I buried mine so deep I lost touch with them for decades.   When anyone asked me “How are you feeling?” I’d answer with what I thought.  Years of this left me so confused and depressed that I had to go into therapy and excavate the parts of me I’d buried.

So living an emotionally responsible life, one based on listening to oneself…

Well, look around.  How many people do you see doing that?

Intimacy

Intimacy is both the scariest way of not-fighting and the most rewarding.

It means being yourself with another person, and letting them do the same with you.

It’s hard because it combines responsibility and surrender — showing who you are and letting go of how someone else will react to it.

It’s scary, because we need love and acceptance so desperately.

On the other hand, avoiding intimacy — or worse, being incapable of it — is the hardest and scariest fate of all.

Because being stuck in hiding is the ultimate disconnection, the worst loneliness.

And because, paradoxically, control addiction leads to feeling utterly out of control.

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* * *

(Bert speaking:)

Last time I mentioned that Steve created me to get control of his emotional life.

I tried to do that by controlling everything and everyone around me. 

I call this my Plan A.

It included hiding his feelings, wearing masks to impress other people, and reading their  minds – i.e., guessing what they liked or wanted and trying to give it to them. 

It also included sending him to social work school.

Social work didn’t interest me.  I wanted Steve to be a therapist, and that seemed the fastest way.

Why did I want him to be a therapist?

Selfish reasons.

Therapists know stuff civilians don’t.  I saw them as special, something like priests,  possessed of secret knowledge and understanding.  I liked that idea.  I wanted in on that.  

I also thought a therapist’s position allowed him to get really close to other people without exposing too much of himself.  Since people scared me, I liked that idea too.  I liked it a lot.

Finally, I figured if anyone’s in control of their emotional lives and their relationships, it must be therapists. 

What did I know?  I’m a monkey.

So I sent Steve off to social work school.

And he graduated.

And got hired as a therapist.

And began to work.

And discovered (surprise) that he couldn’t follow Plan A and do his job.

At least, not competently.

Steve, explain why.

Because good therapy is all about healthy relationship.  And you can’t create that and seek control at the same time.

You can’t, for example, seek control and have real communication.  Real communication means surrendering control, being honest and real and, yes, vulnerable.  Therapists have to do all that within professional boundaries, of course.  But editing out all realness and  vulnerability leaves a relationship cold, unreal, and sterile.  Which solves nothing and helps nobody.

Nor, I found, can a therapist overcontrol his own feelings and do good work.  It’s feelings that connect us,  allow us to understand other people. When I overcontrolled mine I lost touch with my clients.  When I lost touch, I did bad therapy.

It quickly became apparent that what therapy demanded from Steve was essentially the reverse of our Plan A.  Instead of guarding against feelings, he had to trust them.  Instead of handling people, he had to connect with them instead.

This was disturbing.  I began to think I’d made a terrible mistake. 

Then around this time Steve, suddenly and unexpectedly, burped up a poem.

Steve, describe that.

It came out of nowhere.  I was lying in bed one night and heard the thing writing itself. 

It began, “The truth is like a bear in the house.”  

And it went on to describe how, if you’re trapped in a house with a bear, you have only two choices: run away and wait for the bear to find you, or turn around and hunt the bear.  

At first I had no clue what this was about.

It took weeks to realize that my personal bear is the idea of control.

And so you set out to hunt it.

Right.  I figured the poem was like a telegram from my unconscious.  Part of me sending a message to another part. 

And when I brought bear-hunting to my work, I got another surprise.

I discovered that control isn’t just my bear. 

It’s everyone’s.

I saw that controlling is addictive, its patterns predictable and universal, and that they cause nearly all of the problems people bring to a therapist.

I saw that anxiety, depression, addictions, bad relationships and lousy parenting all stem from someone trying to control something they can’t or shouldn’t control.

And eventually I learned that a day comes — if we’re lucky — when we realize that controlling simply doesn’t work as a life strategy.

That’s the day we shift to Plan B.

Describe that shift. 

We start to notice our own controlling, catch ourselves in the act, learn and practice healthy alternatives.  We stop trying to control life and find ways to accept and cooperate with it.

And a great relief follows. 

That feeling is hard to describe.  It’s like you suddenly find yourself  sanding with the grain, instead of against. 

Or like giving yourself permission to stop swimming against the tide of feelings and events, and letting it carry you along instead.

Friends, consider this an invitation:

Come join the hunt.

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* * *

“Love is how we ask for peace” 

I’m stuck.

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How so?

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I don’t like myself.  I really want to change.

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therapist 2

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But as hard as I try, I can’t seem to.

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Change yourself?

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Right.  Any advice on that?

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Yes.  But you won’t like it.

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How do you know?

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Nobody likes it.  Nobody listens.

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Why not?

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It’s counterintuitive.  Contradicts what they want to believe. 

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Well, I’m desperate.   Try me.

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If you insist.

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Bert 8

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The way to change yourself is:

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Bert 9

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Stop trying.

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Stop trying what?

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Stop trying to change.  That’s how you change.

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You’re confusing me.

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It’s called the Paradoxical Theory of Change.  “The more you try to change yourself,” it says, “the more stuck you become.”

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Bert 12

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“But the moment you accept yourself as you are, change happens by itself.”

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That makes no sense.

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Didn’t you just say that pushing yourself to change has gotten you nowhere?  

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Yeah.

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There’s a reason for that. 

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bert

Force yourself to change, and another part of you rises up in resistance.  An internal war starts.  Neither part wins.  You end up still stuck, just more tired.

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That does sound familiar.

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On the other hand, accepting yourself frees up all sorts of energy.  You feel stronger. Braver.  Hopeful.  Creative.  Growth follows.

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That makes sense, I guess.

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therapist

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But I like believing in will power.

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therapist.

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I like thinking I can chart my own course.

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That I’m the master of my fate.

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therapist

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That I’m the captain of my…

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See? Nobody listens.

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………………. * * *

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

Steve and Bert wrote this one together:)

Steve:  Our last post (How to spot monkeytraps) explained where we got this blog’s title:

In the East they trap monkeys by placing fruit in a weighted jar or bottle with a narrow neck. The monkey smells the fruit, reaches in to grab it, and traps himself by refusing to let go.

A psychological monkeytrap is any situation that triggers you into compulsive controlling — i.e., into holding on when you really should be letting go.

One reader replied,

Why didn’t the monkeys just break the jar or bottle? I get that it was weighted down, but monkeys use tools. Were there no rocks laying around?  

Bert:  Shit.  Why didn’t I think of that?

Steve:  Just the comment I’d expect from a control addict.

4. The illusion of control

Bert:  Why?  What’s wrong with what I said?

Steve:  You misread the problem.

Bert:  How?

Steve:  You think the jar is what traps the monkey.   

Bert:  Of course. 

Steve:  But he could escape that just by opening his paw.   

Bert:  Oh.  Yeah.

Steve:  But he won’t.  He wants the banana.  More than anything. 

Bert:  And that’s what traps him. 

Steve:  Exactly.  Just as control addicts get trapped by their need for control.

Bert:  Why’d I miss that?

Steve:  Because you’re addicted.  Control addicts usually respond to loss of control by thinking, But I want control.  I need control.  There must be some way to get it.  Their craving distorts their thinking.

Bert:  So instead of letting go we try breaking the jar.

Steve:  Right.  Breaking the jar is a metaphor for imagining life as something we can control if we try hard enough.  And that’s a dangerous illusion.

Bert:  Tell me again.  It’s an illusion because…

Steve:  Because there are some bananas we’re not meant to have.

Bert:  Such as?

Steve:  Well, immortality, for example.  Much as we want to live forever, we can’t.

Control of emotions is another.  As determined as we are to feel only happy, safe and contented, life forces us to feel sad, scared and needy.

And then, of course, relationships.  Relationships never go as planned. 

Bert:  I noticed.  Why is that?

Steve:  Because relationships involve people.  And people tend to be uncontrollable. 

Bert:  So there’s no breaking the jar.   

Steve:  Right.  Life is what it is.  Messy, and unpredictable, and painful, and inconvenient, and unless we want to suffer endlessly we have to find some way of making peace with all that.

Bert:  To accept life on life’s terms.

Steve:  And let go of the banana.

Bert:  Okay.  Fine.  I get it.   Actual control’s an illusion. 

Now what?

Steve:  What do you mean?

Bert:  At the start of this series you told that story about seniors and house plants, and said having a sense of control is essential to both mental and physical health.  Right?

Steve:  Right.

Bert:  Well, if actual control is an illusion, how do I get a sense of control?

Steve:  Feel okay inside, you mean.

Bert:  Exactly.

Steve:  There are three ways.  I’ll explain them next time.

Bert:  Explain them now.

Steve:  I can’t.  It would take too long. 

Bert:  But I want it now.  I need it now.  There must be some way to get it now.

Steve:  Very funny. 

Art by Brian Bartley, of bartsartny.com, the only artist Bert ever posed for.

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