To the extent a relationship — any relationship — requires you falsify who you really are, that relationship is unhealthy and not to be trusted.

Therapists who work with families know that unhealthy ones tend to draft their members into roles meant to offset the family’s dysfunction.  Like the Hero, whose unconscious job is to make the family look good, and who does this by overachieving and trying to be perfect.  Or the Scapegoat, whose unconscious job is to alert the world to how screwed up the family is, and who does this by self-destructing.

The tragedy of such roles is that so long as you occupy one you can never be happy. You can never be yourself, never make your own choices, never recognize your own needs and feelings.  You’re not a person.  You’re a living sacrifice.

***

From Bert’s Therapy, Session 7:

So?  How do you feel?

Read the rest here.

Intimacy means being yourself with another person and allowing them to do the same with you.  As alternatives to control go it’s the toughest to practice, since it depends on practicing the other two alternatives — surrender and responsibility — as well. Intimacy’s hard emotional work for everyone.  For control addicts it can be downright terrifying.  But it’s also as good as relationships between human beings ever get.

***

From Bert’s Therapy, session 6:

I’ve decided I don’t like therapy.

Read the rest here.

Some people confuse surrender with defeat.  It’s not defeat.  It’s acceptance.  Surrendering to a reality beyond my control is no more defeatist than putting on a raincoat during a rainstorm.

***

From Bert’s Therapy, Session 4:

We didn’t talk at home.

Read the rest here.

The Fourth Law of Control: There are better ways of handling feelings than control. Surrender, responsibility and intimacy are our main alternatives to compulsive controlling. Each is difficult. Each requires endless practice.  Each is a way of accepting life on life’s terms.

***

From Bert’s Therapy, Session 1:

 I shouldn’t be here.    

Why not?

Read the rest here.

Therapy’s for weaklings.

Oh.

*

*

****

***

Veteran Monkeytraps readers

may remember that several years ago

my inner monkey Bert

went into therapy,

a process I described here

in a cartoon series.

*

I have resurrected that series,

and am reposting all the original

cartoons in a new blog

cleverly named Bert’s Therapy.

 *

(Yes, Bert has waived confidentiality.)

*

New readers wondering

who the hell Bert is

should read “The Meaning of Bert”

on the page titled Start Here.

*

If you’d like to receive each new post

as it appears, you can subscribe

to Bert’s Therapy

at the bottom of the page.

Some obviously bright people are actually more clever than intelligent — better at defending and justifying themselves than opening up to really learn anything. Doing therapy with such people comes to feel, over time, like chewing bubble gum: lots of activity, no discernable progress.

Maybe, instead of feeling embarrassed by the truth, we should feel embarrassed by our need to hide it.

Any safety or comfort you purchase by hiding your real self is neither truly safe nor entirely comfortable.

If we’re in a dysfunctional relationship I have many ways to control you.  There’s nagging, criticism and open conflict, obviously.  But there’s also the sigh, the smirk, the long silence, the sulk, the raised eyebrow, the sarcastic aside, the body language that shouts Stay Away.  These are powerful weapons, ways to punish you for doing or saying stuff I dislike and coerce you into falsifying yourself.  It’s a kind of domestic terrorism.

The control addict’s anxiety is relieved by obtaining more control as much as the alcoholic’s thirst is quenched by drinking more alcohol.

Lie.  Or at least withhold the truth. Disguise your thoughts.  Hide your feelings.  Never say No.  Read people carefully, anticipate their reactions, then give them only what they want or can tolerate.  Stay in hiding.  Do this until it becomes a habit, your automatic and unconscious default position.  Until no one, even those of us who want to, can spot the real you.  Then sit back and bask in useless safety.

The Third Law of Control is Behind all controlling is the wish to control feelings. We assume more control will make us feel better, and that enough control means happiness.  Neither assumption is true.  Reality resists all attempts to control it, and reality always wins in the end.  So fighting reality is tactically unwise.  But most of us take a lifetime to discover that, and some of us never do.