Category Archives: pathologies of control
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Wobbly
I’m two days into vacation, and it’s not going well.
When I try to rest I feel guilty. I’m at home, and I look around and see all the shit that needs to be done.
Then I try doing some of it and end up feeling angry. I mean, I’m supposed to be on vacation.
All of which reminds me of the Zen proverb:
Sitting,
just sit.
Walking,
just walk.
Above all,
don’t wobble.
Now, I know this. I know that when you’re not paying full attention you feel fragmented. That when you’re not where you are, you’re nowhere.
But knowing doesn’t help. Because I’m also like most people. I spent my life detached from reality, dwelling not in the moment but in tomorrow (What do I have to do? And when?) or yesterday (What did I forget?).
Like most people, I spend my life wobbling.
So hard to get in touch with here/now. To stop doing and just be.
I just installed a mindfulness bell on my computer which rings periodically to remind me to visit here/now.
Every time I hear it I get annoyed. (Monkey mind hates to be told to shut up.)
But then I stop what I’m doing, close my eyes, breathe in and out three times.
And for just a moment I enter the room I’m already in. I feel my body, and the air around it, and hear the sounds in that air, and I settle down a little bit, and feel a little less fragmented.
For just a moment, I’m unwobbly.
Labels
In times of crisis she calls herself names.
“I’m so stupid,” she’ll say. Or “I’m crazy.”
But when I offer her a diagnosis – suggest she has an anxiety disorder, say – she rejects it:
“I don’t like labels.”
Puzzling. What are stupid and crazy if not labels?
It reminds me of something many addicts say when I suggest medication:
“I don’t want to need a pill to make me feel good.”
I hear this regularly from people already dependent on pot, street drugs or alcohol.
How explain this inconsistency?
To some people, accepting a diagnosis or medication feels like a loss of control.
I sympathize. Nobody likes to feel defined or directed by somebody else.
But resisting diagnosis and treatment usually leaves such people feeling neither freer nor stronger.
Just crappier.
Not more in control, but more helpless.
Another reminder of what I call the First Paradox.
The greater your need to feel in control, the less in control you’re likely to feel.
Practicing intimacy: Intimate communication
Ninth in the series
Notes on recovery
Intimacy depends on the quality of communication.
And the first step to raising that quality is by not doing stuff we normally do.
Psychologist Thomas Gordon once famously identified twelve “roadblocks to communication” between parents and children. It’s a good list to memorize, since each item is essentially a controlling behavior able to destroy intimacy between anyone and anyone else:
1. Ordering or directing
2. Warning or threatening
3. Advising or suggesting
4. Arguing or persuading
5. Lecturing or moralizing
6. Criticizing, judging or blaming
7. Agreeing or praising*
8. Ridiculing or shaming
9. Analyzing or diagnosing
10. Reassuring or sympathizing*
11. Questioning or probing
12. Withdrawing, humoring or distracting
A client with whom I shared this list responded, “What’s left? Hand signals?”
I sympathize. We’re so used to these ways of unconsciously controlling each other that it’s hard to imagine doing without them.
But there are alternatives.
I-statements, for example. Ever notice how any sentence containing the word You tends to make the listener defensive? I-statements avoid this by focusing on me instead. I’m confused by what you’re saying, instead of You make no sense. I’m mad at you, instead of You suck. Like that. Which do you think leads to better communication?
Then there’s feedback, a skill I teach in therapy groups. Group requires a lot of emotional safety, so to forestall judgments or unsolicited advice members are asked to respond to what they hear by describing only what it made them think, feel or remember. (When you talk about your anger I remember all the times I lost my temper and how it felt.) These expanded I-statements not only make it safer for everyone to talk about sensitive issues, they help members get to know each other quickly, and to understand their own reactions and perceptions reactions on a deeper level.
Finally, monologuing is an exercise I teach couples who want to learn intimate communication. Each partner takes five minutes to list his/her resentments (I resent when you insult my mother) and appreciations (I appreciate when you make coffee so I don’t have to) while the other just listens. Then they switch roles. Monologuing’s not meant to settle disputes or solve problems; it’s used to keep the air clear, lines of communication open, and each partner in touch with where the other is emotionally. It also teaches them to make I-statements, identify feelings, listen without interrupting, and develop empathy. (I didn’t know you felt that way is a common reaction.) Couples who monologue regularly tell me it becomes a way they can talk safely about almost anything.
___________________
*Yes, items 7 and 10 tend to surprise people. See here for an explanation of why they inhibit parent/child communication.
Practicing responsibility
Seventh is the series
Notes on Recovery
.
I probably use the word responsible differently than you.
To me it means able to respond. “Respond” as is reply or answer.
I see responsible people as those who can answer a situation, challenge or problem in a healthy way – one that meets their needs, respects their feelings, acknowledges their preferences, promotes their growth, and leaves them more powerful.
I’m guessing responsibility means something else to you.
That may be because I’ve known so many clients who confuse it with following rules, meeting expectations and discharging obligations. These are people who regularly lose themselves. They sacrifice their needs, feelings, preferences and growth to other people, or jobs, or imposed codes of behavior, or impossible standards, or endless To Do lists. They do this less out of love or idealism than self-defense: they’re scared of what will happen if they don’t do it.
I call that irresponsible.
Truly responsible people, as I see it, as the ones who can (a) listen to themselves and (b) act in their own self-interest.
Listen to themselves mean focus inside, pay attention to feelings and the messages their bodies send telling them what their needs are.
Act in self-interest means respecting those emotional and bodily signals instead of ignoring or hiding them.
This sort of responsibility starts with simple stuff: eating when hungry, resting when tired, peeing when your bladder is full. It extends to venting when angry, crying when sad, reaching out to others when lonely or scared.
As I said, simple stuff. But if you suffer from control addiction I bet you don’t do any of it nearly enough.
So that’s what you need to practice in recovery. Call it responsibility, self-love, self-care, or (as I do) healthy selfishness.
“Selfish,” of course, is the dirtiest of words. Most people confuse it with behavior that harms or neglects others.
But who isn’t selfish? Preoccupation with ourselves is built into our nature and neurology. We can’t help that. Our only choice is to admit or deny it. To be honestly selfish, or hide our true motives behind a mask of selflessness.
Thus in the end practicing responsibility means being able, willing and brave enough to take care of yourself.
Because if you don’t, who’s going to?
Next: Practicing intimacy
Refocusing
Fourth in the series
Notes on Recovery
Our need to refocus comes from realizing the real reason we try to control stuff:
We’re trying to control how we feel.
We’re especially trying to manage anxiety.
Think about it. What scares you most? Criticism? Failure? Rejection? Abandonment? Humiliation? Physical pain or discomfort?
That’s what you feel most compelled to control.
Compulsive means anxiety-driven. Whenever I act like a control addict – for example,
~ hide my real self from other people,
~ hide my true feelings from myself,
~ try to impress, coerce or manipulate others,
~ insist things be done my way,
~ caretake friends or family members,
~ worry endlessly about the future, or
~ try to make my environment just as I want it to be
– I’m being driven by some anxiety about what will happen if I don’t do these things.
Recovery means finding another way to manage this anxiety.
Which is where refocusing comes in.
When I refocus, I shift my attention from Out There to In Here. I redefine the problem from some external trigger (X looks mad) to my own reaction (I’m scared of X).
I step back from that reaction and realize that, to feel safe again, I really don’t need to control X. I just need to change my reaction. If I can do that, X’s anger stops being a problem.
Changing my reaction to stuff is what allows me to stop trying to control it.
Next: The three questions
* * *
Previous posts in this series:
(A sort of preface:) Tricky
1. Bottom
2. Power
3. Plan B
Harbor
Six women, crying.
All moms or grandmothers, and all worried about a kid.
One kid is gay and her parents are rejecting her. One’s being fed junk food and left alone all day with tv. One (a big one) is a germophobe whose marriage is in jeopardy. One (another big one) drinks too much. And the last flies into rages when he can’t get his way.
Anxiety, frustration, guilt and helplessness slowly fill the group room like a swimming pool.
And behind each story is one question: What can I do about this? And the same frightened answer: I can’t do anything.
“Okay,” I say finally. “Ready for some good news?”
They look at me.
“Not the answer you’re looking for, probably. And not where you’re looking for it. Not out there, among the people you love and want to rescue and the problems you hate and want to solve.”
I get up from my chair and go to a mobile hanging in one corner. It’s my Seafood Mobile, all fish, crabs and starfish. I flick a tuna with my finger. The whole mobile bounces.
“This is a family,” I say. “See what happens when one member’s in trouble? The trouble migrates throughout the system. Affects everyone. Got that?”
They nod.
“Now watch.” I hold the tuna between my thumb and forefinger. The mobile calms down. “This is what happens when one member stabilizes or heals. That healing migrates throughout the system too.”
I sit down again.
“You’ve no control over these problems. But you also have more power than you know. You can be the calm fish. You can help stabilize the system.
“Remember when you were kids? Remember the adults that helped you the most? They weren’t the anxious, angry or desperate ones. Not the ones who scolded or punished or rescued.
“They were the ones who reassured you, encouraged you, praised you, helped you feel good about yourselves. Who modeled calmness, acceptance, or faith. Who helped convince you – because they really believed it – that Everything Will Be Okay.”
“That’s what you can bring to your families.
“Your kids and grandkids are each in their own little rowboat. You can’t row it for them. Can’t stop the storm or calm the waters. You don’t have that kind of control.
“But if you learn how to calm yourselves without controlling, you can offer them a safe harbor. Model faith that Everything Will Be Okay. And provide an emotional space where they can pull in, drop oars, catch their breath, regain hope.
“Not a small thing.”
The big lie
In Mein Kampf (1925) Adolf Hitler explains the propaganda technique known as The Big Lie.
Most people, he writes, never think to fabricate “colossal untruths,” and so never expect others will have the gall to do so. This makes them gullible — so gullible that
Even though the facts [disproving the lie] may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.
Some families promulgate Big Lies, too.
I know this because there’s one lie with which therapists struggle every working day.
I wrote about it here not long ago (All my fault).
The lie is,
A family’s problems are
caused by the children.
This lie is usually told by parents, who may believe it themselves. (Often because their parents taught them to.)
Some deliver it directly. I wish you were never born. Or Why do I drink? You’re why I drink.
That’s rare, though. More often the lie is delivered indirectly. If I wasn’t pregnant, do you think I’d have married your father?
And sometimes it’s delivered nonverbally, with not words but behavior.
A sigh. A sniff. A look. Averted eyes. Angry or rejecting body language. Even comments meant to be overheard. That kid will be the death of me.
How can children defend against this?
They can’t.
Kids are like sponges. They absorb whatever poison they’re soaked in.
So if you’re a parent it’s worth taking time to examine how you explain, in the privacy of your mind, your own family’s pains and problems.
Because, accurate or cockeyed, your conclusions will probably become your kids’ conclusions.
And in some cases, the lie they end up living.
Knife
.
* * *
Since feeling out of control
is uncomfortable,
it makes me seek more control.
.
The more I seek control,
the more sensitive I become
to control issues.
.
The more sensitive I become
to control issues, the more often
I feel out of control.
.
Which makes me
uncomfortable.
.
Since feeling out of control
is uncomfortable, it makes me…
.
You know.
Leaf
11/13/12 (Tuesday).
I’m blowing leaves down the driveway when I notice Henry raking the leaves on his lawn.
I think that’s his name, Henry. We’ve exchanged maybe ten words since he moved in.
Four years ago.
So I’m surprised to find myself thinking of offering him my leaf blower.
Surprised, then annoyed. Since the impulse makes me uncomfortable.
I’m shy. I don’t do shit like that.
“Why even consider it?” I ask myself.
But I know why. It’s what Chris said to me the other night on the way to a family gathering. She knows family gatherings make me nervous.
“Get your Buddha on,” she told me.
I knew what she meant. Stop being scared of people. Stop avoiding them. Stop taking them personally. Detach. Relax. Breathe. Practice what you preach.
“Shut up,” I answered.
But now I sigh and switch off the blower and coil the endless orange cord around my forearm and walk it over to Henry, who is plainly startled to see me but covers it nicely.
We chat. While I’m talking with him I’m talking to myself.
“Practice,” I say. “This is practice.”
And, “You don’t practice enough.”
And, “You don’t practice what you preach.”
And, “But maybe you’ll start. Maybe this is you turning over a new leaf.”
Eventually Henry declines my offer, which is a relief (since now I don’t have to come back to collect the damned blower), and I walk home feeling both virtuous and silly.
There was nothing to be scared of here, and I knew that going in, and was scared anyway.
I’m sixty-two now. Scared for sixty-two years.
“Will I die this way?” I wonder.
Then a last thought comes as I walk back up my clean driveway and into my house.
“How to handle feelings isn’t just a human problem,” I think.
“It’s the human problem. And all the others come from that.”
* * *
To stop fighting
.
My last cartoon carried this caption:
.
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.
.
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.
.
* * *
Control addicts
.
* * *
.
.
Here are the three things you need to know about shame:
We all have it.
We’re all terrified to talk about it.
The less we talk about it the more we have it.
~ From Part 1 of a PBS interview of Dr. Brene Brown (4:56).
*
Q: You say that shame leads to disconection. So how do we reconnect?
A: You know, it’s funny.
One of the ironies is that shame fills us with this fear of disconnection.
But it is our imperfection that connects us to each other. It is the fact that our shared humanity is imperfect.
I think if we can find the courage to talk about our lives honestly, and our struggles, not only does that free us, it gives other people the freedom to be more authentic and real as well.
I don’t think connection is possible without authenticity.
~ From Part 2 of a PBS interview of Dr. Brene Brown (5:31).
Avoidance
.
.
* * *
.
Do you know that
most people don’t know
how feelings work?
.
The truth is,
if you don’t
understand how
your feelings work,
you really don’t
understand the world
around you.
.
The truth is,
the way you
see the world
is in large part
distorted by
the feelings
that you have not
expressed….
.
.
~ From Let them off the hook by David Viscott, M.D. (4:49).
The split-level relationship
There are two questions with which you must struggle if you want a healthy relationship:
How can I have you without losing me?
How can I have me without losing you?
You can’t really answer these questions, just struggle with them.
But it’s the struggling that matters.
Why?
Because they represent two essential needs each of us brings to any relationship:
Connection and freedom.
Acceptance by another person, and self-acceptance.
A real partner, and at the same time, a real self.
Most people I know are convinced you can’t have both at the same time.
Most came from families — alcoholic, abusive or otherwise dysfunctional — unable to teach them to balance connection with freedom.
What they learned instead was that having one meant losing the other. That winning love and approval from parents, for example, meant sacrificing important parts of themselves, like the freedom to express feelings or take care of their own needs.
The family that raised us is where each of us learned our own personal answer to the two questions. And the answer we learned grew into a crucial (though mostly unconscious) part of our basic view of life and relationships, what I call our Plan A.
Some of us decide, “Since I can’t have both, I’ll have me, and to hell with you.” Shrinks call this the narcissistic answer.
Others decide, “Since I can’t have both, I’ll have you, and to hell with me.” This is the infamous codependent answer.
So the narcissistic partner says “Me first,” and the codependent replies, “Yes, dear.”
And the two personality types end up together with stunning regularity. (Remember Archie and Edith Bunker?)
Watching such couples interact, one is struck by their predictability. In every situation the narcissist finds some way to say “Me first,” and the codependent to reply “Yes, dear.” It’s as if long ago they sat down and signed a contract.
Which in a way they did.
Their complementary answers to the two questions probably account, in large part, for why they felt attracted to each other.
In any case, the vast majority of couples I see for couples counseling follow this pattern — so many that I felt the need to give them their own name.
I call them split-level relationships.
Split-level relationships work for a while, but almost always break down. Eventually one or both partners realize they’re not getting what they need.
Codependents usually notice first. When that partner is female this can lead to the syndrome called the Walk-Away Wife.
But narcissists tend to be unhappy too. They often complain of loneliness, lack of connection to their codependent partner, or an absence of respect or affection. They may feel impatient, frustrated, irritated, resentful. Sometimes they drink, drug, overeat, rage or cheat, and then feel bad about that.
All this happens because split-level relationship is inherently unhealthy.
Familiar, sure. Comfortable, even, in the way the predictable may come to feel.
But not healthy. The unbalanced answers on which a split-level relationship is based simply cannot fill the emotional needs of two adults. So both partners end up feeling deprived, often without understanding why.
What does recovery for such a couple look like?
Put simply, a sort of role reversal.
Codependent partners must develop courage and practice standing up, asserting themselves. Narcissistic partners must develop empathy and practice stepping down, giving instead of grabbing.
Easy? No. Not easy for either of them.
Just necessary to life on the same level.
Steve & Bert
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