Angela has a stress-ridden adolescent son who throws up every morning before school.  She worries about his anxiety and perfectionism, but is afraid to stop pressuring him about grades because “he’ll think it’s okay to not set goals or try hard.”

Betty has an alcoholic husband who stays out late and lies to her.  She hates this, but resists my suggestion she visit Al-Anon or join a support group because “he might find out and get angry.”

Carl is married to a narcissistic woman who ignores his feelings and dismisses his preferences.  Unhappy for years, he refuses to stand up to her because he hates conflict, and “a leopard doesn’t change its spots, so why bother?”

Everyone knows someone like this.

Someone who, faced with a particular problem, hangs on to the status quo as if it were a life preserver.

Welcome to the famous Don’t Rock the Boat syndrome.

DRTB is rooted in several pernicious and often unconscious assumptions, like

~ the familiar is safe,

~ the unfamiliar is scary,

~ change is usually for the worst,

~ with attention comes problems,

and

~ giving up control is dangerous.

It’s common among anxious people, beset by imaginary bears. 

It’s also common among people who’ve learned to fear and avoid interpersonal conflict.

Then there are those for whom DRTB is a conscious tactical choice.  They decided it provides enough safety, or the illusion of same, to outweigh the emotional stuckness it invariably costs them.

Hey, if DRTB works for you, fine.  No problem.  Stop reading.

But if it doesn’t — if you’re one of the unhappy stuck ones, sick of complaining about (or suffering silently with) some chronic problem that never seems to change — four suggestions:

(1) Review those unconscious assumptions listed above, and identify which ones you use to justify your choices.

(2) Ask yourself if DRTB has really helped you become a less worried or less anxious person.

(3) Consider replacing Don’t rock the boat with another mantra — something more assertive, like If nothing changes, nothing changes.

(4) Seek out people who will encourage your courage, and support your attempt to risk boat rocking.  

Alice explains why she can’t stand up to her husband Joe.

“It’s a fear problem,” she says. “I’m terrified of his anger.”

“What’s Joe do when he gets angry?” I ask.

“He yells.”

“Ever hit you?”

“No.”

“Throw things?  Break things?”

“No.”

“Hurt the kids?  Leave you?  Threaten you in some other way?”

“No,” she frowns.  “Just yells.”

“Okay,” I say.  “Yelling’s unpleasant.  But why do you think you’re terrified of Joe’s yelling?”

“Oh, my dad yelled,” she says.  “All the time.  Dad hit us, too.”

“Then I’d say you don’t have a fear problem,” I say.  “It’s an anxiety problem.”

“Aren’t they the same thing?”

No, they’re not.

Yes, fear and anxiety feel like the same thing.  But one is a reaction to a real danger, and the other is a reaction to danger you imagine.

Say you walk into the woods and a bear rushes out at you.  What you feel is fear, because this is a real bear who can really make a meal of you.  But say you walk into the woods and see crowds of dark trees and think There could be bears here.  This is anxiety.

It’s an important distinction.  Because these two reactions reflect different problems which are solved in different ways.

Fear signals a problem out there in the environment, to which the correct response is some version of fight or flight —  shoot the bear, or run away from it.

But you can’t shoot imaginary bears, and they’re hard to run away from.

Instead you solve an anxiety problem by examining the reaction itself.

“So now that you think about it,” I say to Alice, “why does Joe’s anger terrify you?”

“It must remind me of dad.”

“Right.  And there wasn’t much you could do back then, was there?  Couldn’t yell back, hit back, run away?”

“No.”

“And now?”

“Now is different,” she says.  “I’m not helpless now.”

“Right.  Have you ever yelled back at Joe?”

“Once,” she nods.

“What happened?”

“He stopped yelling.”

“And what happened to your anxiety?”

“It went away,” she smiles.

“Because?”

She smiles. 

“I scared off the imaginary bear.”

Yesterday I came across a poster on FaceBook.

Your child’s mental health is more

important than their grades,

it said.

I love that poster.

Sounds like common sense, no?  

Yet the number of parents who don’t believe it is truly frightening.

I meet such parents all the time.  Especially in spring, as the school year grinds towards its exhausting conclusion, and they come to me panicked because Janey or Johnny are at risk of failing something.  

And I tell them,

Relax.

Grades are mostly bullshit.

They don’t measure real knowledge or intelligence or understanding or creativity or anything people really need to be successful.  

They don’t measure honesty or courage or kindness or compassion or self-awareness or whether a kid knows the difference between right and wrong or what’s important and what’s not.  

More often they measure memory (short-term at that), obedience, conformity, fear of failure, need for approval, or the results of parental coercion.  

Thus academic success is not the predictor of success in adult life everyone pretends it is.  Einstein, Edison, Newton, Churchill and Steven Speilberg were all lousy students.

So try not to stress over Janey’s D in Social Studies or Johnny’s F in Math.

Don’t get angry, and don’t get scared.

Give your kid a hug.  Make them feel loved and accepted just as they are, and that you have faith that they will grow just as they need to.

That’s what they need from you. 

Not lectures.  Not warnings.  Not dire predictions.

They’ll get plenty of those elsewhere.

From you they need a sense of how unique and valuable they are.

And that school is just school.

And that grades are mostly bullshit.

This is the second of two posts about covert controlling.  (You can read the first post here.)

.

3. It’s Just What I Do

Dennis keeps logging onto his wife’s  computer to view porn.  “And she keeps asking you not to,” I say.  “Right.”  “And she can always tell when you’ve done it.”  “Always.”   “And afterwards you two always have huge arguments.”  “Yes,” he says sadly.  “So why…”  “I don’t know,” he shrugs.  “I’m an idiot.  I don’t know why I do it.  It’s just what I do.”

Ellie just lunched with two friends, and she’s seething.  “I hate them.  They only talk to each other.  Me they totally ignore.  It’s like I’m not there.  If I try to break into the conversation they look at me like I’m some annoying little sister.  It’s always like this.  I get so upset I have to go to the bathroom to cry.”  This lunch, she adds, is a monthly ritual that’s  been going for years.   “Years?” I ask.  “Why keep going?  Why not  just avoid them?”  She shrugs helplessly.  “They’d be angry,” she says.  “But you don’t like them.”  “Not much,” she admits.  “But I can’t say no.  It’s just what I…”

Frank’s wife makes all decisions for the both of them.  “Everything from dinner to where to vacation to when to have sex,” he tells me.   “Don’t you guys ever discuss things?”  I ask.  “Not really,” he says.  “She tells me what she wants, then says, ‘Okay?'”  “And you agree.”  “Yeah.”  “Ever disagree?”  “Once or twice, when we were first married.”  “What happened?”  “She’s better at arguing than me.  She gets loud, and I get nervous.  So I give in.  It’s easier.”  “Is it really?”  He sighs.  “Maybe not,” he concedes.  “But we’re married eight years now.  Agreeing has become a habit.  It’s just….” 

Welcome to It’s Just What I Do.

This form of covert controlling shows up in my office every day.  And each time it does I’m reminded of what Fritz Perls said about therapy clients:

“Very few people go into therapy to be cured, but rather to improve their neurosis.”

Still, It’s Just What I Do used to puzzle the hell out of me.  Because I assumed that any repeated behavior must have some payoff attached to it.  And I couldn’t figure out what the payoff was here.

Then I began to study the idea of control.

And I realized the payoff is all about Plan A.

.

4. Plan A

I’ve written about Plan A here before.  It’s 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.  No one sits us down and says, “Now listen up.  Here’s how you do life.”  Instead we watch and listen to the grownups around us and absorb what they do like little sponges.

Plan A becomes our psychological default position, the place to which we revert under stress.  As a coping method it may not work all that well.  But it has one enormous advantage over any other plan:  it’s utterly familiar.

And therein lies the payoff:  the illusion of control.

Familiarity is enormously reassuring.  We don’t have to analyze anything, learn new behaviors, anticipate new outcomes.   Reverting to Plan A means knowing just what to do and just what will come of it.

The fact is, most of the time, most of us prefer a familiar pain to an unpredictable adventure.

Which explains why Dennis, terrified of losing his marriage, provokes the same fight again and again.  And why Ellie, afflicted with chronic low self-esteem, lunches with people she hates rather than risking their disapproval.  And why Frank, in treatment for crippling anxiety, tries to reduce his stress by agreeing with his wife about everything.

On some level each of them has decided they’re not ready for Plan B.  Not ready for the emotional stretch, the stress of learning, the shock of fresh feelings, the unpredictability of something new.

So they cling to the familiar.

We all do.  We’re anxious creatures, we humans.  And our anxiety makes us resist change.

So we cling to the familiar like a child clings to a teddy bear.  And chase control even what we chase is illusory.

“The most interesting thing about the control-mad people is that they always end up being controlled,” wrote Perls.  “So the control-mad person is the first one to lose his freedom.  Instead of being in control, he has to strain and push all the time.”

It’s just what we do.

Most controlling behavior is covert — hidden or disguised.

Why? 

The reason is obvious.

Nobody likes a controller.  So nobody wants to be seen as “controlling.”

At the same time, most of us can’t stop ourselves from controlling.

So as a result most controlling behavior is buried beneath a careful attempt to control other people’s reactions to the controller’s attempts to control stuff.

Got that?

Maybe some examples will help.

1. Silent Farting

“I just know when something’s up with him,” Ben’s wife tells me.  “It’s hard to say how.  I just know.  Something about the way he walks into a room, or turns the pages of his newspaper, or stirs his coffee.  He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look at me.  But I know a storm’s coming.  It’s like I can smell it.”

This is Silent Farting.

It’s  a way for people uncomfortable with expressing anger directly express it indirectly — under the radar, so to speak.  They just sort of exude it, like a bad smell.  The targets of their anger don’t always understand what’s happening, but like Ben’s wife, they can usually tell they’re been farted at.

Silent Farters tend to be people who in a previous life were punished for expressing anger out loud.  Or grew up with abusive or chronically angry parents, which scared them into deciding that angry was not something they ever want to be.

How is Silent Farting a controlling behavior?  In three senses.

The Farter overcontrols an unwanted feeling, instead of expressing it in an open and healthy way.

The Farter, by exuding anger instead of expressing it, also tries to control the reactions of others to that feeling.

Finally, Silent Farting can be a form of coercion, an attempt to intimidate by hinting at the storm that’s brewing inside.  Ben’s farting has made his wife hypersensitive to his moods, and I suspect Ben likes it that way.

2. Stuff/Stuff/Blow

Halfway through our session Jan suddenly blurts, “You know, I’m about ready to walk out of here.”

She is crying.  I’m surprised.  She seemed fine a moment ago.

“Why?”  I ask.

“You make me feel like shit.  You sit there and imply that my relationships are inadequate and then you pressure me to do something I don’t want to do.  I’ve had enough.”

Another surprise.  Two weeks ago I raised the subject of group therapy, and since then referred occasionally to ways in which a supportive group might be of help. 

I know the idea of group makes her uneasy, so I don’t really expect her to join.   But I did think she was curious.  Until now she’s responded to what I say with interested nods.

“How long have you been feeling this way?” I ask

“Since you first mentioned group,” she replies.

 “Why didn’t you say so sooner?”

“I didn’t want to be rude.  But now I’m fed up.”

This is Stuff/Stuff/Blow.

The Stuff/Stuff/Blower habitually conceals her anger from others, letting the pressure build until she can’t hide it anymore.  Then, baboom.

The explosion usually embarrasses her, so afterwards she resumes stuffing and stuffing until the next inevitable blow.

Like Farters, most Blowers concluded early in life that expressing anger openly was somehow unsafe or unattractive.  Now they bury theirs as long as they possibly can.

Unfortunately, anger is unavoidable for human beings.  So for the Blower periodic explosions become unavoidable too.

It is not unusual for these explosions to be preceded by silent farting.  But not all Farters are Blowers, and not all Blowers are Farters.

Personally, I’d rather work with a Blower than a Farter.  Farters who never explode tend to be more scared of anger — theirs and everyone else’s — and so take longer to learn that, like most feelings, anger expressed is much safer than anger than stored up.

(To be continued.)

There is a term some therapists like to use:

Ego strength.

It means the ability to say

This is who I am,

This is what I think,

This is what I feel,

and

This is what I want

without fear of judgment, punishment or rejection.

Essentially it refers to a person’s ability to feel and function like a self-supporting adult.

To the extent someone lacks this ability, he or she will tend to feel, inside, like a powerless child.

And to the extent either partner lacks this ability, relationships will tend to slip into what we call codependency.

Codependent relationships are characterized by anxiety, buried resentments, emotional disconnection, dishonest communication and compulsive controlling.

All common symptoms, unfortunately.

For which the only reliable cure is ego strength.

Every therapist develops a set of operating assumptions.

Held long enough, these assumptions become articles of faith.

They organize how we see things, what we value, how we define words like normal and healthy, and how we understand human beings.

Here are twelve of mine:

1. It is healthier to express feelings than to hide them.

2. Unexpressed feelings lie at the root of all emotional problems.

3. Secrets make us sick.

4. Problems in current relationships tend to echo problems in past relationships.

5. What we don’t get from our parents we will seek from our partners.

6. Being deprived in childhood of attention, acceptance, approval or affection leaves us chronically hungry for those things as adults.

7. When trying to understand some feeling or behavior, look for the underlying unmet need.

*

*

One reader writes,

Thirty years I worked in the business my dad left me, building it up for my son.  Now I want to retire and my son wants to do something else.  What the hell have I been working for?  He’s also engaged to a girl I don’t like.  Whatever happened to family values?

My reply:

I don’t know you or your son.  But I work with lots of families, and this sort of question comes up often.  So I’ll answer from that context and you can decide if my answer is helpful.

I think a healthy family is one in which all members can get their needs met — not always, probably, but most of the time.

I think any family that requires a member to sacrifice himself or herself to the needs of the family is unhealthy.

I also think some families — they’re called narcissistic families — are set up unconsciously to meet the needs of the parents, even at the expense of the children.  And if one comes from such a family, that arrangement seems normal.  Parents simply expect kids to put aside their feelings and needs for Mom or Dad’s sake.  To the parents this seems like love, or respect, or discipline, or “family values.”

Personally and professionally, I see it as something else.

So I suspect you, dad, need to decide if that’s the sort of family you came from and are trying to recreate now.

One question I like to ask parents struggling with this issue is, Do you want to raise a passenger, or a driver?  If you want to raise a passenger, keep giving orders.  If you want to raise a driver, at some point you have to let him or her take the wheel.

I should add that I think the parent’s job — like that of any good teacher, doctor or therapist — is to put himself out of a job.  To raise a kid strong and healthy enough to separate, take care of himself, and not stay indefinitely tied to the parent.

If you stayed tied to your father until he died, you may well see it differently.

But there’s a big difference between staying connected to your parent by choice and staying connected because the parent refuses to release you.

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you, 

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Tuesday morning she had her first panic attack.

Tuesday afternoon she came into session and we had this conversation:

It was awful.  I felt like I was going crazy.  

I know.

If you feel like you’re crazy, does that mean you are?  Or does it mean you’re not?

Depends on how you define “crazy.”  Some kinds of crazy have denial built into them.  Delusional people don’t know they’re delusional, for example.  And addicts are famous for not realizing they’re addicted.   But milder forms of crazy are different.  Neurotics often know they’re neurotic.

Which kind of crazy am I?   

Neurotic.  Which means normal. 

Neurotic is normal?

Yep.  Given how we’re socialized, neurotic is the healthiest anyone ever gets.

I don’t understand.

We’re trained to hide our feelings from each other, even from ourselves.  This splits us into two parts, public and private.  Therapists call this splitting “neurosis.”

Neurosis caused my panic attack?

Right.  That was the private part exploding.

I hated that.  I don’t want to be neurotic.

Nobody does.

What can I do about it?

Work your ass off in therapy.

What kind of work?

The uncomfortable kind.

It has to be uncomfortable?

Well, neurosis comes from avoiding discomfort.   So recovery means facing what you’re avoiding.    

Like what?

The stuff that scares you.  Coming out of hiding with other people.  Telling the truth.  Expressing feelings.  That sort of thing.

Like giving up control.

Exactly.  All the alternatives to control involve tolerating some new discomfort. 

Yeah, I’d rather skip that.

Sure.  Most people do.  Look around you.  Met many healthy people lately?

Not many.  Does the work get easier?

It does.  I’m not sure it ever gets easy.

But people do it because…

It’s better than the alternative.

And when does it end?

Recovery work?

Yes.

If you’re doing it right, never.  You just keep becoming more yourself until you die.

Never?  There’s no graduation, no Emerald City you reach?

Nope.  Just the yellow brick road.

Monkey A wanders into the clearing and spots the jar under the tree.  His nose wrinkles: banana.  He scampers to the jar where the smell is overpowering.  He sees yellow skin through the jar’s narrow neck.  He reaches in, grabs and pulls, but the fruit is too big.  Puzzled, he pulls harder.  The banana stays stuck.  He chirps in frustration, pulls with all his might.  The banana stays stuck.  His chirps becomes angry screeches.  His little body whips around the bottle like a flag in a windstorm.  He really really wants this banana.  He is still wanting and pulling and screeching when the trapper’s net drops over him.

Monkey B wanders into the same clearing and smells the same banana.  He reaches in, grabs, pulls.  The banana stays stuck.  He pulls harder.  The banana stays stuck.  Oh well, he shrugs.  Can’t be helped.  And goes his way, free.

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

For this post,  Steve interviewed Bert.)

Steve:  So I’ve been writing about peace of mind and how control addiction makes it impossible, and how practicing alternatives to control make it easier to find.  And I wanted to ask you about surrender.

Bert:  What about surrender?

Steve:  How you practice it, mainly.

Bert:  Oh.  Sure this is a good idea?

Steve:  Why not?

Bert:   People will know how lousy I am at it.

Steve:  That’s okay.  They know it isn’t easy.

Bert:  I never use that word, by the way.

Steve:  No?

Bert:  No, that’s one of your writer’s words.

Steve:  You don’t like it.

Bert:  Not really.  Sounds too much like helplessness.

Steve:  That’s not what it means.  It….

Bert:  I know, I know.  Surrender means winning, not losing.  Letting go of what you can’t control represents the victory of awareness over denial, growth over habit, and faith over fear.  Right?

Steve:  Something like that.  What word do you prefer?

Bert:   Depends.  Sometimes I think of surrender as detaching.  

Steve:  Meaning?

Bert:  Taking a step back emotionally.  Like when that client cursed at us in session yesterday.

Steve:  And I told you to not take it personally. 

Bert:  Right.  That it was just transference.  And then other times I think of surrender as accepting. 

Steve:  “It is what it is.”

Bert:  Yes.  Though I hate that expression.

Steve:  Why?

Bert:  It’s like Have a nice day.  Everyone says it, then go right back to being raging control freaks. 

Steve:  Any other words for surrender?

Bert:  Let’s see.  Sometimes I do it by consciously reframing a situation instead of trying to control it.  Remember how mad I used to get at little old lady drivers?

Steve:  Anyone driving at the speed limit, you mean.   

Bert:  Right.  Well, now when I find myself behind one I just tell myself This is God reminding you to slow the fuck down.  And I slow down, and I’m okay with it.

Steve:  Very spiritual of you.

Bert:  I think so.  I use slogans too.

Steve:  Which slogans?

Bert:  Well, there’s the one you wrote on a Post-it and taped to your PC monitor:

99% of what we worry about never happens. 

That got us through some rough times.

Steve:  It did.

Bert:  And the one you kept in the little plastic frame in your office.  The one that made clients think you’re a little nuts: 

Everything’s perfect.

Steve:  I can’t count the times I tried to explain that.

Bert:  Anyone ever buy it?

Steve:  No.  Easier to sell Everything happens for a reason.

But back to you.  It sounds like you do a lot of surrendering, in one way or another.  Why do you say you’re lousy at it?

Bert:  Because of all the times I can’t.

Steve:  Explain.

Bert:  You know how we live.  Rushing from chore to chore, worry to worry.  Working down the To Do list with no end in sight.  Feeling like everything is urgent.  Lying in bed at night and trying to decide if you got enough stuff done to feel okay about yourself.

Then there’s the problem of people.  All the times I just can’t be myself. 

Steve:  Can’t tell the truth, you mean?

Bert:  Yes, but more than that.  All the times I can’t just relax and stop worrying about how someone’s going to react to me.   

But it’s more than that, too. 

It’s all the times I can’t just relax.  Can’t take, even, a really deep breath.  

You know?

Steve:  I know.  Can’t relax if you can’t surrender.  It’s a stubborn addiction. 

Bert:  Sometimes I’m sorry you told me I’m addicted.

Steve:  Do you mean that?

Bert:  No.  No, I guess not.

Steve:  What’s good about knowing?

Bert:  Well, it does clarify things.  When I feel angry or frustrated or crazy it’s usually because I’m trying to control something I shouldn’t.  Calms me down, just seeing that. 

Steve:  Another surrender?

Bert:  I suppose it is.  And then, remembering I’m addicted gives me more choices than I used to have. 

Steve:  More choices?

Bert:  Sure.  Before I knew, I never even thought of surrender as an option.  Now I know, even when I can’t do it.  It’s something to work towards.  Something to practice and get better at.  And that gives me hope.    

Steve:  Hope’s good.

Bert:  It is.  It even lets you breathe a little bit deeper.

* * *

Collections 1 & 2

Thirteen more here: Collected cartoons and posters