(If you’re new to Monkeytraps, Steve is a therapist who specializes in control issues, and Bert is Steve’s control-addicted inner monkey. That’s the two of us over on the right.
Bert speaking:)
Alexander Grey
I’m nuts.
Yes, you heard me right.
I’m nuts.
Not embarrassed to admit it, either.
Why?
Because I know a secret.
You’re nuts, too.
How do I know this?
Because you’re human. (Unless, of course, you’re one of the dogs or cats who enjoy this blog.)
And, being human, you’re a victim of what Buddhists call monkeymind.
What’s monkeymind?
It’s what you hear in your head when your attention isn’t distracted.
It’s the sound of a brain which over millennia has evolved into a sort of top-heavy computer, built for problem-solving, and devoted to finding new problems to solve.
It’s the whispering, worrying, fretting, scolding and mocking that keeps you unhappy and on guard against life.
It’s the sound of a normal human mind at work.
In other words, the most human part of you.
Still not sure what I mean?
Experiment: Take a moment now (when you finish reading this sentence) to sit without thinking for, oh, a minute or so. Just sixty seconds.
(Pause.)
Hear that?
Yup. Monkeymind.
The nuts part.
Steve wants to add something.
What makes monkeymind nuts is its disconnection from reality.
As a monkey swings from branch to branch and tree to tree, monkeymind swings from past to future and back again, over and over, ceaselessly remembering, anticipating and fantasizing.
It’s never still, never focused on the here-and-now — a Now which may actually be perfectly safe and okay.
So when you’re caught up in monkeymind you’re having all these feelings — often painful ones, anxiety and anger and such — that have nothing to do with what’s really happening in your life at the moment.
It’s like being trapped in a nightmare, unable to wake up.
Speaking as a recovering inner monkey, I would add that there’s one other thing that makes monkeymind nuts.
It really really really believes in control.
It operates on the assumption that if we think and analyze and strategize long and well enough we can solve every problem and bring life under control. That if we could just figure things out, life could be perfect. Perfectly safe, perfectly comfortable, perfectly happy.
I remember a Little Rascals episode in which the kids got their mule to walk in a circle by extending a pole out over his nose with an apple dangling from the end. The donkey kept plodding after the apple endlessly, never getting closer, and apparently never noticing.
Yes. We all chase that apple.
Well, I’m sick of it.
That’s why I’m a recovering monkey. I’m sick and tired of feeling victimized by my own mind.
Tired of fighting reality instead of accepting it.
Tired of trying to control everything.
Tired of this never-ending plod towards an apple I can never reach.
Stated more fully, it means that compulsive controlling causes most (maybe all) of our emotional problems.
It builds on the first Law, that we are all addicted to control.
Because only when you see how controlling you are can you start noticing how dangerous controlling can be.
You may notice that overcontrolling your feelings — by hiding them from other people, say — leaves you more anxious, not less.
Or how hiding feelings from yourself — like when you bury them so deeply you forget where you put them — can leave you exhausted and clinically depressed.
Or how attempts to control others by pleasing or impressing them leave you feeling, not more loved and accepted, but more frustrated and alone.
But compulsive controlling is baked into our nature.
It’s every human being’s unconscious default position.
So it can take a long time to see all this.
And most people never do.
Which explains why so many of us go around in emotional pain much of the time.
And how do we respond to this pain?
We try, of course, to control it.
So controlling leads to pain, and pain leads to controlling, which leads to more pain…
“A cage containing a banana with a hole large enough for a monkey’s hand to fit in, but not large enough for a monkey’s fist (clutching a banana) to come out. Used to catch monkeys that lack the intellect to let go of the banana and run away” (Wikipedia). Other versions use heavy bottles or anchored coconuts to hold the banana.
This is what you’re blogging about? Catching monkeys?
No, it’s a metaphor.
For?
Psychological traps. The sort we all get stuck in.
More specific, please.
A psychological monkeytrap is any situation that pulls you into holding on when you really need to let go.
I know I’m in one whenever I find myself trying to control something that can’t or shouldn’t be controlled.
Such as?
Well, feelings can be monkeytraps.
So can relationships.
So can stressful situations of all sorts.
Anything that scares us or confuses us or makes us uncomfortable.
Seen from this perspective, life itself is pretty much one monkeytrap after another.
That’s cheerful.
That’s realistic.
And you’re writing about this because…
Because not understanding monkeytraps makes people sick.
I’m a therapist. Thirty years of doing psychotherapy have taught me to see just about every emotional problem as rooted in some sort of monkeytrap.
Anxiety, depression, addictions, relationship problems, family problems, problems with parenting —
all of them usually turn out to be caused by someone holding onto something when they really should let go.
Too much control makes us sick?
No.
Too much controlling.
Control itself, that’s usually an illusion.
Excuse me?
I know.
Radical thought.
But consider:
What in your life can you finally, absolutely control?
Um.
Exactly.
We spend our lives grabbing for it anyway.
Control is like a train you chase but never catch.
And most of the time we don’t even know we’re chasing it.
“Ideas we have, but don’t know we have, have us,” James Hillman said.
Control is just such an idea.
Like an addiction.
Exactly like that.
We’re all addicted to control.
I know I am.
How can you tell?
Because the opposite of controlling is being able to accept the reality you have instead of trying to replace it with the one you want.
(The reality you want, that’s the banana.)
It means being able to relax and do nothing and trust that everything will work out okay.
And I know I can’t do that very often.
Can you?
Almost never. Who can?
Nobody I know.
I’ve known people who can do it occasionally.
I’ve never known anyone who could do it all the time.
I doubt any human being can.
We’re the monkeys who simply must control things, or die trying.
(And like most therapists, I’ve known people who did just that.)
It’s one of the reasons I dislike the term control freak.
There’s nothing freakish about trying to control reality.
What’s freakish is being able to stop.
Why is that?
Why is one of the questions I hope to explore in this blog. I have some ideas about it.
I have ideas, too, about how to better understand and deal with this universal addiction. I created monkeytraps.com as a way to road test those ideas.
Road test how?
Unpack them in public, ask readers to think and talk about them.
Start a conversation about all this.
Okay. Anything else I should know?
Yes.
I have a book out about this, and more in the works.
The first is titled Monkeytraps: Why Everybody Tries to Control Everything and How We Can Stop.
“Something odd happened yesterday,” she frowns. “I lay down to nap like always, but found I couldn’t because I was too sad.”
“Sad?”
“I don’t know what else to call it. A kind of dull ache around my heart.”
“Sounds like sad,” I nod.
“Right?” she says. “But I don’t know where it came from. Everything’s fine.”
“Everything’s fine,” I repeat.
“Yes. We’re all healthy. Nobody in the family has covid. The kids have adjusted to remote learning. We’re doing fine financially, despite the pandemic. And I’m really happy about the last election. What’s to be sad about?”
“And yet,” I say.
“Right, and yet. What the fuck?”
“I have a theory,” I say.
“Please.”
“You remind me,” I say, “of a guy I worked with once. Came for help with anxiety. He constantly worried about death. Couldn’t stop thinking about it. Couldn’t stop worrying that either he or someone he loved was going to catch something fatal or get into a car accident.”
“That’s awful,” she says.
“It was.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That his anxiety wasn’t really about dying. That he was constipated.”
“Aha,” she smiles.
“You remember?” I ask.
“Sure,” she smiles, and recites. “Feelings are like shit, and when we don’t express them we feel anxious and depressed, in other words, shitty.”
“Exactly. Well, this guy had plenty of feelings he wasn’t expressing, about his marriage and his job and his kids and his parents. I told him that was what was making him anxious. But since he wasn’t aware of it his mind went to work trying to explain this shitty feeling, and it latched onto the fear of death.”
“He misinterpreted the anxiety,” she says.
“Right. I also told him that when he began expressing those feelings in therapy he’d become less anxious and his death anxiety would go away.”
“And?”
“And that’s what happened.”
“Wow. Cool. But what has that to do with my sadness?”
“I think you’re probably constipated too.”
“How so?”
“Think about it. What causes sadness? It’s a reaction to loss.”
“Right,” she says uncertainly.
“And even though you tell me everything’s fine, you experience losses every day. I call them micro losses, and they’re part of the new normal. So like most of us you’ve adapted to them, told yourself they’re no big deal. But they’re losses nonetheless.”
“What kind of losses do you mean?” she asks.
“Little things we used to have or used to be able to do. Like going in to the office, or out to a restaurant or a movie, or taking your kids to the park. Like having people for dinner, or going out with friends for a drink, or to a ball game. When was the last time you went grocery shopping without having to mask up? When was the last time your parents visited their grandchildren? How long since it felt safe to hug anyone you wanted?”
“Right,” she says thoughtfully.
“And then there’s the news. Covid and the election and dysfunctional government. The economy and corruption and racism. Trump and Putin and Kim Jung Un. Black Lives Matter and the Proud Boys and Jeffrey Epstein. I mean, really.”
“The new normal,” she muses.
“Right. And even when we avoid the news it’s impossible to insulate ourselves from all that crap. It chips away at our emotional life.”
“And you think that’s why I’m sad?”
“That, plus the fact that we live in a culture which tells us happiness is okay but sadness is not. It’s not okay to be sad or scared or angry or frustrated or discouraged or hopeless. So we ignore those feelings instead of processing them fully. And they build up in your system. They collect like lint in the pocket of your heart. And then your wonder why you feel….”
We’ve been talking for thirty minutes, and it’s going fine for a first session, but I can tell something’s bothering him. So I ask what it is.
“How do I know if you’re the right therapist?” he asks.
“Good question,” I say. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you’re the third one I’ve talked to this year,” he says.
“And the others weren’t right?”
“Nope,” he says. “But it took me months to realize it, and I don’t want to go through that again.”
“I don’t blame you,” I say.
“To answer your question, you can’t really know ahead of time if a therapist is right for you. But you can get to where you trust that they are. And there are tests to help you get there.”
“Tests?”
“Yes. You’re probably performing them already, but it can help to put a label on what you’re doing unconsciously.”
“What tests?”
“There are three. The first is for safety.
“Drop down out of your head and ask your stomach: How does it feel to be talking to this guy? Does it feel like I’m being judged? Can I imagine telling him the truth about stuff I usually keep to myself? Do I feel safe disagreeing with him? Questions like that. Trust your stomach’s answers. If it tightens up, that might be a red flag.”
“Okay.”
“The second test is for relief. When therapy works, you should feel better at the end of the session than at the start — calmer, or clearer, or more hopeful, or at least less alone. Not all sessions end this way, but most of them should.”
“That didn’t happen with the other two therapists,” he muses. “But I thought it was my fault.”
“Like I said, trust your stomach. It’s often smarter than your head.”
He nods. “That’s what I finally did when I fired them. Okay, what’s the third test?”
“It’s for what I call resonance.
“The right therapy teaches us things that on some level we already know, even if we can’t articulate them. So the right therapist will say things that resonate — echo inside you, like a shared truth.
“It’s what helps you feel the therapist gets you. It’s also what makes it possible to trust them. Essential, I think, to getting any real work done.”
I pause.
“Did you have that experience with either of the other two therapists you tried?”
This continues a new series of posts excerpted from Monkeytraps in Everyday Life: A Guide for Control Addicts (in press). It’s about psychological monkeytraps: what they are, how they work, and how recovering control addicts can learn to notice when they’ve trapped themselves by trying to control what cannot or should not be controlled. Read the introduction to the series here.
*
.
Trap 11: Child, angry
*
Step 1: I experience discomfort.
I am upset by my child’s angry behavior.
*
Step 2: I misread the discomfort.
“I must make this behavior go away.”
*
Step 3: I try to control the discomfort.
I punish my child for expressing anger.
*
Step 4: My attempt fails.
Punishment makes my child angrier.
*
Step 5: I misread the failure.
“My punishments are not severe enough.”
*
Step 6: I experience discomfort.
My child’s anger and my upset both worsen.
*
Footnote:
Kids and anger
“The truth about rage is that it only dissolves when it is really heard and understood, without reservation.”
~ Carl Rogers
Acknowledging the anger, as well as the more threatening feelings under the anger
If you can keep yourself from getting triggered and acknowledge why your child is upset, his anger will begin to calm. That will help him feel safe enough to feel the more vulnerable emotions driving the anger. Once the child can let himself experience his grief over the broken treasure, his hurt that his mother was unfair, his shame when he didn’t know the answer in class, or his fear when his classmate threatened him, those feelings begin to heal. As those vulnerable feelings begin to fade away, he no longer needs his anger to defend against them — so the anger vanishes.
By contrast, if we don’t help kids feel safe enough to feel those underlying emotions, they will just keep losing their tempers, because they don’t have any other way to cope with the upsets inside them. These kids often seem to have “a chip on their shoulder” because they lug around resentments; a feeling that life is against them. They’re always ready to get angry.
This continues a new series of posts excerpted from Monkeytraps in Everyday Life: A Guide for Control Addicts (in press). It’s about psychological monkeytraps: what they are, how they work, and how recovering control addicts can learn to notice when they’ve trapped themselves by trying to control what cannot or should not be controlled. Read the introduction to the series here.
*
Trap 11: Child, dishonest
*
Step 1: I experience discomfort.
I am frustrated and angry that my child habitually lies to me.
*
Step 2: I misread the discomfort.
“I must discourage this behavior that I dislike.”
*
Step 3: I try to control the discomfort.
I punish my child for lying.
*
Step 4: My attempt fails.
Now afraid of me and my reactions, my child’s lying increases.
*
Step 5: I misread the failure.
“I must try harder to discourage this behavior.”
*
Step 6: I experience discomfort.
I am frustrated and angry that my child habitually lies to me.
*
Footnote:
Kids and lying
~ Parents should keep in mind that telling lies is a natural part of child development and that in most cases, children outgrow this behavior.
~ Parents should consider a child’s age, the circumstances and reasons for the lie, and how frequently he engages in this behavior.
~ Some common causes of lying in school-age children include:
Wishful imaginative play
Fear of punishment
A desire to brag to friends/classmates to boost status and impress them
To avoid something they don’t want to do (such as clean up toys)
A desire to not disappoint parents when expectations are too high
Unhappiness with something in their lives
An attempt to get attention
~ Do not make kids feel like they cannot come to you. If a child is worried that you will be angry, he may try to avoid telling you the truth at all costs. The important thing is to help your child feel secure, safe, and supported so that he knows he can talk to you without losing your affection and love. In fact, research shows that when you threaten kids with punishment for lying, they are less likely to tell the truth.
So we’re lying in bed, Hank and I, both half asleep.
![Monkeytraps: Why Everybody Tries to Control Everything and How We Can Stop by [Steve Hauptman]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41K013-ukCL.jpg)
