(THE BOOK) Chapter 18: Survival

All the factors just described — family, trauma, socialization, culture — combine in the human mind to drive controlling behavior.

And the ultimate goal of that behavior is the most primitive and stubborn of all human goals:

Life itself.

I refer here not just to physical survival, though certainly much of our controlling (like when we’re driving a car or battling an illness) has that as its aim.

I mean emotional, psychological, and social survival as well.

We cannot help but believe control is essential to these, too.

Thus it is emotional survival that forces children to appease their narcissistic parents, since on the deepest level they know they need parental love, nurturance and protection in order to live.

It is psychological survival that demands trauma survivors limit their exposure to threatening triggers, since the alternative — constantly recurring states of fight-or-flight — would lead to intolerable stress and the disintegration of their minds.

And it is social survival that requires each of us to absorb and obey the dictates of the society to which we belong, since – again, on the deepest of levels – we know that we cannot last long without acceptance by the tribe.

For all these reasons we each come to believe that control is essential to our lives.

This conviction is so unconscious and inescapable that it makes getting control feel like a matter of life and death.  It’s why even the idea of losing control can produce anxiety, and why control addiction plays like a silent soundtrack behind every human experience.

And where does it come from, this conviction that we must control or die?

Mainly from the structure of our minds.

 

(THE BOOK) Chapter 11: Heart

About addiction:

More people talk about it than understand it.

That’s because most people don’t know the secret at addiction’s heart. 

That secret is (surprise) this book’s subject.

Because all addicts are control addicts.

And every addiction is an addiction to control.

 

(THE BOOK) Chapter 5: A controlling person

Start with an experiment.

In the privacy of your own mind, take a moment to consider this question:

How does a controlling person look, sound and act?

(Authorial pause while reader complies.)

What came up?

If you bothered to try this, I’m guessing you found some image, memory or feeling that carries the emotional weight of the word controlling for you.

What most of us encounter is a distillation of our most powerful (usually most painful) experiences with people by whom we’ve felt controlled.

Or we discover that we harbor some archetypal image of how a controller looks and acts.  Someone like Hitler, or Donald Trump, or Mom.

That, at least, used to be my own reaction.  

It changed when I began to really study control.

Ten years of practicing a therapy focused mainly on control issues taught me to see controlling as a shape-shifter, so various, subtle and relentless that it manages to slip sideways into virtually every experience and interaction.

And I came to see the need for some finer distinctions.

Some first steps, then, towards a more descriptive language.

 

 

We’re still forming two Skype-based study/support groups for readers who want to explore these ideas with me in real time.  One is for therapists who want to integrate these ideas into their clinical work.  Both groups will be small, six members at most, and meet weekly. Fee is $50 per session, and group members may purchase Monkeytraps (The Book) at half price. Interested?  Write me: fritzfreud@aol.com.

 

 

(THE BOOK) Chapter 4: Chameleon

Controlling is hard to spot, and even harder to talk about.

Several reasons for this:

(1) It’s automatic and unconscious, like blinking or the beat of a heart.  You can make yourself aware of your own controlling, but it takes effort.

(2) It’s normal.  You do it all the time.  Everyone around you does it all the time.  So controlling behavior fades into the background of awareness, like a chameleon blends into its surroundings.

(3) We use stunted language to describe it.  We apply the verb control to wildly different behaviors, to our handling of everything from feelings to finances, foreign trade to cholesterol, termites to acne.   We almost need to construct a new language in order to adequately describe this chameleon we’re looking for.

Let’s try to do that, then.

 

We’re forming two online study/support groups for readers who want to explore these ideas with me in real time; one is for therapists who want to integrate these ideas into their clinical work.  Both groups will be small, six members at most, and meet weekly. Fee is $50 per session, and group members may purchase Monkeytraps (The Book) at half price. Interested?  Write me: fritzfreud@aol.com.

 

 

 

(THE BOOK) Chapter 3: Pictures

You may not think of yourself as controlling.  

Well, you are.

You just don’t see it.

Consider this view of how we operate:

From moment to moment, each of us carries in our heads a picture of how we want reality to be.

And we constantly compare that internal picture to the reality we have.

Everything we do to bring those pictures closer together — whether we do it out in public or in the privacy of our most secret thoughts — is what I mean by controlling.

See it yet?

Add this, then:

Discomfort of any sort – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, everything from agony to an itch – amounts to a signal that the two pictures don’t match.

And we respond to that signal automatically.

So wherever there’s discomfort, there’s controlling.

And we all know how uncomfortable life can be.

Controlling, in short, is as reflexive and inevitable a response as slapping a mosquito that’s biting you.

See it now?

x

 

We’re forming two online study/support groups for readers who want to explore these ideas with me in real time.  One group is for therapists who want to integrate these ideas into their clinical work.  Both groups will be small, eight members at most, and meet weekly. Fee is $50 per session, and group members may purchase Monkeytraps (The Book) at half price. Interested?  Write me: fritzfreud@aol.com.

 

 

(THE BOOK) Chapter 2: Controlling

The urge to control is part of our hard wiring.

Why?

Because it is wired into us to

..~ seek pleasure and avoid pain,

..~ imagine a perfect life (one that meets all our needs and makes us perfectly happy), and then

..~ try to make those imaginings come true.

The word controlling covers all forms of this imagining and trying.

Our trying may be large (building a skyscraper) or small (killing crabgrass), complex (winning a war) or simple (salting my soup). 

It may be important (curing cancer) or petty (trimming toenails), public (getting elected) or private (losing weight), essential (avoiding a car crash) or incidental (matching socks).

I may inflict my trying on other people (get you to stop drinking, kiss me, wash the dishes, give me a raise) or on myself (raise my self-esteem, lose weight, hide my anger, learn French).

All this involves seeking some form of control.

We’re controlling nearly all of the time.

We control automatically and unconsciously, waking and sleeping, out in the world and in the privacy of our thoughts.

From birth until death.

The only time we’re not controlling is when we can relax, and do nothing, and trust that things will work out just fine anyway.

How often can you do that?

x

 

We’re forming two online study/support groups for readers who want to explore these ideas with me in real time.  One group is for therapists who want to integrate these ideas into their clinical work.  Both groups will be small, eight members at most, and meet weekly. Fee is $50 per session, and group members may purchase Monkeytraps (The Book) at half price. Interested?  Write me: fritzfreud@aol.com.

 

 

(THE BOOK) Chapter 1: Control

The ability to dictate reality.

That’s how I define control.

It’s not a definition you’ll find in any dictionary, and probably not how you define it.  

But it’s essential to understanding everything that follows.  

Dictate means rearrange or edit according to our preferences.  Reality means, well, everything — everything outside us (people, places and things) and inside us (thoughts, feelings, behavior) too.

Defined this broadly, the wish for control stands behind just about everything we do consciously.  

Plus most of what we do unconsciously (feel, fantasize, worry, dream) as well.

We seek control in order to get reality to behave as we want it to.

We seek control because we want to make the world adjust itself to us, instead of vice versa.

We all want control in this sense.

Not just want, either.

We crave it.

Control is the mother of all motivations.

Every human ever born has craved it and chased it.

Because it’s a craving that is literally built into us.

x

 

 

We’re planning an online study/support group for readers who want to explore these ideas with me in real time.  Also coming, a group for therapists who want to integrate these ideas into their clinical work.  Both groups will be small, eight members at most, and meet weekly. Fee is $50 per session, and group members may purchase Monkeytraps (The Book) at half price. Interested?  Write me: fritzfreud@aol.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(THE BOOK) Introduction

 

Want to trap a monkey?

Try this:

(1) Find a heavy bottle with a narrow neck.

(2) Drop a banana into it.

(3) Leave the bottle where a monkey can find it.

(4) Wait.

The monkey will do the rest.

He’ll come along, smell the banana, reach in to grab it.

Then find he can’t pull it out, because the bottleneck is too small.

He can free himself easily.  He just has to let go.

But he really, really wants that banana.

So he hangs on.

He’s still hanging on when you come to collect him.

And that’s how you trap a monkey.

.

.

Want to trap a human? 

Try this:

(1) Place the human in an uncomfortable situation.

(2) Wait.

The human will do the rest.

He or she will try to reduce their discomfort by controlling the situation.

The harder they work to reduce their discomfort, the more uncomfortable they’ll get.

The harder they try to escape their discomfort, the more trapped they’ll feel.

And that’s how you trap a human.

 

 

This is a book about control in general, and psychological monkeytraps in particular.

A psychological monkeytrap is any situation that temps us to hold on when we should let go — to control what either can’t or shouldn’t be controlled.

The world is filled with monkeytraps.  

As is the emotional life of every human being.

I learned this from practicing psychotherapy.

Therapy also taught me four truths:

1. We are all addicted to control. 

2. This addiction causes most (maybe all) our emotional problems.

3. Behind this addiction lies our wish to control feelings.

4. There are better ways to manage feelings than control.

I call these the Four Laws of control, and they structure the four parts that follow:

Part 1: Addiction is about the idea of control, and how it structures our lives and choices.

Part 2: Dysfunction is about the most common ways control addiction makes us (and those we love) sick and miserable.

Part 3: Emotion is about the real reason we try to control people, places, things, and ourselves.

Part 4: Alternatives is about moving beyond control addiction to healthier ways of responding to discomfort.

I plan to publish the first two parts online for free.  Then I’ll offer the entire book for sale in spring 2015.

Since this is a new way of looking at people and their problems, chapters will be kept bite-sized and spaced out, to give you a chance to chew on each idea as it emerges.  

Chapters you want to reread will be archived on the page titled Monkeytraps (The Book).

Feedback and questions are always welcome.

.

.

Finally:

You may be used to thinking of control as a solution, not a problem.  

Fine.  Read on.

You may not think of yourself as a controlling person.  

Also fine.  Read on.

You may never have tried redefining your emotional problems as rooted in your wish for control.  

Terrific.  Read on.

A client once described his first Al-Anon meeting as “like a light coming on in a dark room.  Suddenly I could see all the furniture I’ve been tripping over all my life.”

That’s just what we’re going for here.

Welcome to the light switch.

* * *

We’re planning an online study/support group for readers who want to explore these ideas with me in real time.  Also coming, a group for therapists who want to integrate these ideas into their clinical work.  Both groups will be small, eight members at most, and meet weekly. Fee is $50 per 90-minute session, and group members may purchase Monkeytraps (The Book) at half price. Interested?  Write me: fritzfreud@aol.com.

 

 

 

The dust settles

Life is difficult.  

This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths….

[Because] once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

~ M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

xx

Control is often impossible.

This is another one of the great truths.

It’s a great truth because once you accept it, how you see yourself and your life changes.

Lying in bed at night, thinking of all those realities beyond your control, you reach a point where you can say to yourself,

There I go again.  Trying to control the uncontrollable.

And at that point the dust settles.

And your mind calms down.

And you see that you haven’t been failing or inadequate.

You’ve just been trying to do the impossible.

And suddenly life’s uncontrollability no longer matters.

Since, if there’s nothing you can do, there’s nothing you must do.

And you can relax a little.

And you can sleep.

Third Paradox: Tradeoff

The Third Paradox of control:

 

.

Controlling boils down to a tradeoff.

Gain control here, lose control there.

Think of the original monkey trap:

To hold on to the banana, the monkey surrenders his freedom.  To regain his freedom, he must let the banana go.

It also explains all garden-variety codependent interactions:

To control you (make you like, love or accept me) I must surrender control of something else — like my ability to be honest, or spontaneous, or emotionally expressive. 

Conversely,

Taking control of my emotional life — especially how I feel about myself — means surrendering control over how you react to me.

It also applies to New Year’s resolutions, not to mention all goal-setting:

To reach a particular goal (like writing my book) I must surrender control of others (like spending time with my family, or on chores that absorb my energy and attention).

To gain control of my weight I must surrender control (i.e., limit my choices) of what I put in my mouth.

To control my social anxiety I must detach from how other people see me and practice being myself.

And so on.

So control and surrender are two sides of the same coin.

And getting control of anything means losing control of something else.

To win A, you must sacrifice B.

Tradeoff.

Balance.

Yin-yang.

Fill your bowel to the brim 

and it will spill.

Keep sharpening your knife 

and it will blunt.

Chase after money and security

and your heart will never unclench.

Care about people’s approval

and you will be their prisoner. 

                         ~ Lao Tzu

*

How to spot monkeytraps

.

How are your holidays going?  

Thought so.  

Bert and I guessed you could use this refresher:

.

In Asia they trap monkeys by placing bait in a heavy jar with a narrow neck.   The monkey smells the bait, 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 — into holding on when you really should let go.

And how can you tell when you’re at risk of entrapment?

Three tips:

.

Tip 1:

Notice where you’re uncomfortable.

We’re controlling whenever we need or want to change some piece of reality instead of accepting it or adapting to it as is.  And we’re most likely to want to change realities that make us uncomfortable.  So it makes sense that our discomfort zones are where we’re most likely to get monkeytrapped.

Bert:  Me, I hate rejection.  So I’m most controlling with people I think might reject me.  I hide feelings I think will upset them, pretend to agree when I really don’t, laugh at stupid jokes, avoid confronting behavior I dislike, try to read their minds, and so on and so on.  Keeps me busy.      

. 

Tip 2:

Notice where you’re stuck.

Stuck as in not learning, healing or growing — struggling with the same damn problem over and over.  You know you’re monkeytrapped whenever you find yourself doing what you already know doesn’t work.

Bert:  All that controlling I just described traps me because it (a) stops me from being myself, which (b) prevents me from ever getting accepted as myself, which (c)  keeps me chronically scared of rejection, which brings me right back to (a).  Like riding an endless merry-go-round.

. 

Tip 3:

Notice where you’re scared.

Like all addictions, compulsive controlling is anxiety-driven.  We stay monkeytrapped because we’re scared to do anything else.  Often even the thought of giving up control in such situations is enough to scare us silly.

Bert:  Took me a long time to see that controlling doesn’t work.  Or it does, but only for five minutes.  Then another scary thing comes along and I have to control that.  And life being what it is, there’s no end to scary things.  So as an anxiety-reduction tactic controlling is a total flop.

 

The most frightened people are the most controlling people, and the most controlling people stay the most frightened.

 

Adult children

First time I heard it, the term adult child made no sense to me.

It seemed an obvious contradiction in terms, like square circle or military intelligence.

I understand better now.

I understand that an adult child is someone who’s adult on the outside, childish inside.

That the childish part is a collection of unmet needs, unresolved conflicts and unexpressed feelings.

That, under stress, this part gets triggered, and the adult experiences all the fears and insecurities of the child when that child’s growth was interrupted.

And that you needn’t have grown up in an alcoholic or abusive or especially dysfunctional family for this to be true of you.

That it happens to all of us.

In other words, that Andrew Malraux was right when he wrote,

There is no such thing as 

a grown-up human being.

That we are all adult children.

Two questions

Everyone over the age of two knows relationships are difficult.

Not everyone understands why.

It’s because relationship forces us to combine things that don’t go together.

Specifically, to meet two sets of seemingly incompatible needs:

Connection and separateness.

Security and freedom.

Acceptance by another and self-acceptance.

A real partner and a real self.

Put another way, relationship forces us to answer two questions:

How can I have you without losing me?

How can I have me without losing you?

Tough questions.

How do I have you and me at the same time?

Most people I know are secretly convinced that you can’t.

Most came from families — alcoholic, or abusive, or otherwise dysfunctional — unable to teach them to balance connection with separateness.

What they learned instead was that having one meant losing the other.  That winning love and approval from parents, for example, meant sacrificing 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 you, and to hell with me.” This is the infamous codependent answer.

Others decide, “Since I can’t have both, I’ll have me, and to hell with you.”  Shrinks call this the narcissistic answer.

Neither answer works.

Eventually codependents tire of feeling like doormats, while narcissists tire of feeling all alone.

At which point, if they’re smart (or have a smart therapist), they go back to struggling with the two questions.

You can’t answer these questions, only struggle with them.

But it’s the struggling that matters.

Because without it, healthy relationship is impossible.

* * *

 Re: my impending book,

click here.

You say potato

Most new clients and I start off with a language problem.

We’re both speaking English, of course, but the words we use have different meanings.

This happens because people come to therapy for help with emotional problems, and I see most (maybe all) such problems as caused by control addiction.  And that view has changed my view of almost everything human.

For example, it often happens that what clients call polite, I see as artificial.

What they call niceness, I see as fear.

What they call respectful, I see as dishonest.

What they call strong, I see as rigid.

What they call responsible, I see as oversocialized.

What they call loyal, I see as coerced.

What they call productive, I see as compulsively busy.

What they call helpful, I see as intrusive.

What they call protecting, I see as enabling.

What they call love, I see as codependency.

At the start of our work clients often object to my redefinitions of behaviors in which they’ve been engaged until now.

Sometimes they get so angry at how I see things that they leave and never return.

But if they keep coming back, eventually they start asking themselves:

If I’ve really been doing what I thought I was doing, why do I need therapy? 

Your other foot

A man loses his foot in an accident.  Forced to hobble and use a crutch, he finds himself the object of unexpected attention and sympathy.  Then his doctor fits him with a prosthetic foot. The hobbling ends.  The crutch becomes unnecessary.  The attention and sympathy dwindle away.  So he takes an axe and cuts off his other foot.

Crazy?

I see it all the time.

In the husband who complains daily about his unhappy marriage but puts off getting a divorce.

Or the wife who rages about how her husband avoids or ignores her but won’t examine how her behavior pushes him to do so.

Or the teacher who bemoans the bullies who abuse her at work but refuses either to learn how to assert herself or to change jobs.

Or the son so scared his alcoholic parents will reject him if he stops drinking that he clings to his addiction in self-defense.

Welcome to the world of secondary gain.

Secondary gain refers to an emotional or psychological benefit that comes from having a problem or illness.

The gain may be attention, acceptance, sympathy, safety, familiarity, resistance to change, distraction from responsibility, avoidance of intimacy, or denial of other problems.

Seeking such gains is not faking or manipulation.

It’s often unconscious.

It can be seen as an attempt to meet legitimate needs in an unhealthy way

It’s also a monkeytrap: a situation that encourages you to hold on when it would be healthier to let go.

Suspect you might be monkeytrapped in this way?

Try asking yourself one question about your persistent symptom or problem:

If I were to fix this, what would I lose?