In case you forgot.

 

Chapter 20: Control is not power

 

If I define power simply as “control,”

I will never be able to let go of control

without fear of losing power, [and

so] trapped by this concept

into paranoid vigilance.

~ James Hillman

 

Here it is important to distinguish control from power.

The two words are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing.

In some ways, they’re opposites.

One difference is that power is possible, but control is usually an illusion.

Another is that power can set you free, while controlling can make you crazy.

A third is that power tends to result from intelligent choices made by our inner Adult, while controlling usually stems from the desperate maneuvering of our anxious inner Kid

Again, we’re defining control as the ability to edit reality and force life to meet our expectations. 

But power, as I use the word, means the ability to get your needs met.

To take care of yourself. To not just survive, but to heal, thrive and be happy.

And as difficult as it may be to attain this sort of power, it’s easier than forcing reality to meet your expectations.

Here’s an example of the difference:

Imagine your rich uncle dies suddenly and leaves you control of his multinational corporation.  You wake up one morning the CEO of Big Bucks, Inc.

You go to your new job. You sit behind a huge desk. Four secretaries line up to do your bidding.

You have tons of control. You can hire and fire, buy and sell, build plants or close them, approve product lines, mount advertising campaigns, manage investments, bribe congressmen, you name it.

How do you feel?

If you’re like me, you feel crippled by anxiety. Bewildered and overwhelmed by your new responsibilities. Disoriented. Panicked.

Anything but in control.

Now imagine you decide, “To hell with this.  I quit.  I’m going home to eat a sandwich and take a nap.”

How do you feel now?

Notice that in this situation you gain power only by giving up control.

Now try a thought experiment:

Take a moment to remember the last time your attempt to control people, places or things made it impossible to get your needs met, to take care of yourself.

See the difference?

Often we seek control when it’s power that we really want and need.  But since we never distinguish the two, we end up chasing the wrong one.

And that can be disastrous.

Since it leaves trapped in what James Hillman calls paranoid vigilance.

9-10.

Chapter 19: Huge and invisible

Some things you miss because

they’re so tiny. But some things you

don’t see because they’re so huge.

~ Robert Pirsig

 

Control is an invisible huge thing.

The urge to control explains a ridiculously wide range of behaviors.  

Often we think of controlling as bossing, bullying or nagging, or a controlling person as someone like Hitler or Trump or Mom.  

But that’s like mistaking the elephant’s trunk for the whole elephant.

We’re controlling whenever we

scratch an itch, 

comb our hair,

mow our lawn, 

salt our eggs, 

spank our child, 

balance our checkbook, 

change channels,

stop at red lights,

vote, 

tell a joke,

punch someone in the mouth, 

flatter someone, 

seduce someone, 

hide our true feelings,

lie,

worry,

obsess,

fantasize,

dream.

You get the idea.

We’re all controlling, and we’re controlling all the time.

We chase control all our lives, waking and sleeping, out in public and deep in the most secret crannies of our minds.  

We chase it consciously and unconsciously, creatively and destructively, wisely and stupidly, from birth until death.

As I said, we can’t help ourselves.  Control-seeking is the default position of our species.

At the same time, because it’s such a given of human experience, we barely notice we’re doing it.

Control isn’t like a tool we pick up and put down.  It’s more like breathing, or blinking, or the way your knee jerks when the doctor taps your patellar tendon.  Constant, automatic, involuntary.

Nor is the wish for control like a faucet we can turn on and off.  An urge to control flows through us continuously, saturates all our behavior and feelings, infuses everything we desire and fear.

It not only drives our behavior, it structures our thinking.  

What is most of our thinking, if not an attempt to somehow change some circumstance, shift some piece of reality closer to what we’d prefer?  What else do you call problem-solving, planning, analyzing, fantasizing, worrying, obsessing?

It also structures our emotional lives. 

Yoga teacher Stephen Cope writes,

Each of us has our own silent War With Reality.  Yogis came to call this duhkha.  Duhkha means, literally, “suffering,” “pain,” or “distress.”  This silent, unconscious war with How It Is unwittingly drives much of our behavior:  We reach for the pleasant.  We hate the unpleasant.  We try to arrange the world so that we have only pleasant mind-states, and not unpleasant ones.  We try to get rid of this pervasive state of unsatisfactoriness in whatever way we can — by changing things “out there.”  By changing the world.[i] 

Like our family conditioning, the idea of control makes up the psychological sea in which each of us swims.

And most of the time we barely notice we’re wet.

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Chapter 18: The meaning of control

 

The individual’s most fundamental

orientation toward his environment

is that of attempting to control it

in order to meet his needs.

~ sociologist Paul Sites

 

We should pause here to examine the idea of control and what it means.

Two definitions to start with: control and controlling.

Control means the ability to edit reality – to make people, places and things behave the way we want.

A craving for control is hardwired into us. It’s rooted in our big brains – brains that remember and anticipate, analyze and plan, worry and obsess – brains which, in fact, have a life of their own and cannot stop doing any of those things. 

It works this way: 

Moment to moment, we each carry a picture in our heads of the reality we want.  And we constantly compare that picture to the reality we have.

Everything we do to bring those two into alignment — the reality we want and the reality we have — is what I call controlling.

We seek control constantly. 

We do it in our heads, our speech and our behavior. 

We do it out in the world and we do it in our fantasies.

We do it in ways big and small, obvious and disguised, healthy and unhealthy. 

Some of our controlling is conscious and intentional, but most of is both unconscious and automatic.

We can’t help ourselves.

Control, we believe, means safety, order, predictability, and comfort.

It’s our first line of defense against an uncertain world.

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Chapter 17: The addicted Kid

 

 

 

Addiction is associated

with the belief that “I must

have (money, power, praise,

or whatever) in order to

be happy.… Because it says

that I must have things

a certain way, it reduces

flexibility and choices.

~ Roger Walsh

 

We come now to the last of the three metaphors: control addiction.

It’s my favorite explanation for human behavior. 

I like it because it explains so much of what we feel and do as adults.

Whenever I meet a new client I can usually explain their presenting problem by asking myself questions like

What are they trying to control?

What do they think they absolutely must have in order to feel better than they do now?

How are they trying to manipulate their environment in order to get this something?

And especially,

How are they trying to control the people around them in order to meet their needs for safety, acceptance, approval or love?

I like this metaphor, too, because of how it combines the first two metaphors in a theory of how we develop our emotional problems.

Plan A, remember, consists of adaptations we developed as kids for dealing with feelings, relationships and life in general.  And the inner Kid is that authentic part of us which gets driven into hiding over the course of being reshaped by those adaptations.

Well, every Plan A is based on control.

And every wounded inner Kid gets triggered into compulsive controlling.

Since everyone has a Plan A, and everyone carries a wounded Kid inside, we are all, ultimately, control addicts.

This is another idea that bears repeating:

We are, all of us, control addicts.

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Chapter 16: Tranced

 

 

 

 

The chief cause of human error

is to be found in prejudices

picked up in childhood.

~ Rene Descartes

 

So why is all this stuff about inner Kids and adult children important?

Because it’s essential to understanding ourselves as adults.

It reminds us of where we came from, and what happened to us there:

~ that we started out helpless, totally dependent on the big people around us.

~ that we had no choice but to adapt to those big people.

~ that this adaptation occurred not just on the surface of our personality, but seeped down to the very core of us.

~ that, like a lie you tell so often you come to believe it’s true, this adaptation came to feel not like something we did but something we are.

~ that as a result it left us confused at the deepest level – confused about who we really are and how to be in the world.

Psychiatrist R.D. Laing describes all this as an intergenerational hypnotic process. He writes,

In the family situation…the hypnotists (the parents) are already hypnotized (by their parents) and are carrying out their instructions, by bringing their children up to bring their children up… in such a way, which includes not realizing that one is carrying out instructions: since one instruction is not to think that one is thus instructed.

Got that?

We are hypnotized to ignore the fact that we are hypnotized.

I’m reminded of the old saying about computers: garbage in, garbage out. Misprogram a computer and it will produce only bad data.

The same happens with children.

Hypnotize a child into accepting beliefs and rules that may serve the family but which ignore the child’s feelings and needs, and you produce emotional garbage – anxiety, depression, addictions, dysfunctional relationships, and, eventually, struggles with their own parenting.

These, by the way, are the five most common problems people bring to therapy.

I’ve never met anyone, in or out of therapy, who hasn’t suffered from at least one of them.

They all flow from being tranced into functioning like kids trapped in adult bodies, and from having inner Kids they don’t know how to listen to or care for.

Adult health and happiness depend on escaping the trance.

You simply cannot be an emotionally strong and healthy adult so long as you’re carrying around a hypnotized Kid inside.

Or as Carl Jung famously put it, “Whatever we don’t own, owns us.”

---

 

Chapter 15: The adult child

 

 

The greater the adaptation required,

the more the individual suffers a split

between the instinctual truth and the

provisional, adaptive personality. 

  …[T]he greater the adaptation, the

more one suffers, for the psyche

will symptomatically protest

this continued wounding.

~ James Hollis

 

So we are each wounded in childhood.

And we carry those wounds into adulthood.

And the wounds shape our perceptions, our reactions and especially our coping without our realizing it.

Adult child is the term we use to describe this phenomenon.

Adult children are people still living according to Plan A – the set of adaptations they developed as kids.

That’s one definition. Here’s another:

Adult children are grownups who still feel like kids inside.

Maybe not all the time, but often, and especially under stress.

This happens because, under stress, adult children enter the equivalent of hypnotic trance.

In that trance, they forget that they’re grownups, and experience themselves as the kids they once were – scared, guilty, angry, confused and helpless.

The worse they were wounded as children, the more powerful this trance is.

Anyone who’s ever experienced a panic attack knows what I’m describing.

So does any adult who’s ever felt him- or herself regress to the age of six in the presence of family members.

These feelings are what R.D. Laing was describing when he said, “We are all in a post-hypnotic trance induced in infancy.”

This means, to some extent, we are all adult children.

And that there is no such thing as a completely adult human being.

That idea is so important it bears repeating:

There is no such thing as a completely adult human being.

---

 

Chapter 13: Authenticity

 

There is something in every one of you

that waits and listens for the sound of

the genuine in yourself. It is the only

true guide you will ever have. And 

if you cannot hear it, you will all of

your life spend your days on the ends

of strings that somebody else pulls.

~ Howard Thurman

Authentic means real.

The inner Kid is the source of feeling, honesty, spontaneity, joy, creativity and growth.

Carl Jung wrote,

In every adult there lurks a child, an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education.  That is the part of the human personality which wants to develop and become whole. [i]

Other writers have echoed Jung’s view of the child as the source of all human authenticity and potential:

Psychologist Margaret Paul writes,

[The inner child] is who we are when we were born, our core self, our natural personality, with all its talent, instinct, intuition and emotion.

Physician and therapist Charles Whitfield writes,

[The inner child is] that part of each of us which is ultimately alive, energetic, creative and fulfilled; it is our Real Self — who we truly are.

Coach and author Barbara Sher:

All the people we call ‘geniuses’ are men and women who somehow escaped having to put that curious, wondering child in themselves to sleep.

And musician and artist Stephen Nachmanovich:

The most potent muse of all is our own inner child. 

I also think of the Kid as the animal part, the part of us that has healthy instinctual reactions to what it experiences.

Occasionally when a client is trying to make a difficult decision, I’ll suggest they visualize each of the two alternatives they face.  Then I ask “What does your stomach want?”  That’s my way of checking in with the Kid.

Usually the stomach tenses when the person thinks of one alternative and relaxes when they think of the other. 

That’s the Kid, voting.

The Kid is that part of us that knows what we really need and isn’t afraid to tell us.

Unfortunately, most of us have been trained not to listen.

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Chapter 12: The Kid

 

 

The child is in me still and

sometimes not so still.

~ Fred Rogers

 

We’ve been talking about the need to free ourselves from our families of origin in order to grow up emotionally.

We can’t do that without addressing our inner Kid.

Which means we need to acknowledge the Kid, accept it, figure out what it needs from us, and do our best to parent it.

Adults who never learn how to do those four things — especially the parenting part — end up feeling permanently kidlike inside.

So what’s the Inner Kid?

Occasionally someone asks me this question.

I usually answer, “It’s that part of you where you store unexpressed feelings, unmet needs, and unhealed wounds.”

Usually they nod.

Not one has ever said No, I don’t have one of those.

That might seem odd, given how we usually bury this most secret part of us.

Then again, maybe not.

Since we all know we’re damaged or wounded in some way.

And we’re all familiar with feeling like kids inside.

The idea of an inner Kid simply gives us a language for talking about it.

In my work I tend to encounter each client’s inner Kid in two forms: as the source of that person’s hidden authenticity, and as the storehouse of his or her hidden wounds.

Let’s look at what that means.

Chapter 11: The laundry list

 

.

Many of the patients whom [child

psychiatrist Douglas Winnicott]

treated had, for one reason or

another, learned as children

to be over-compliant; that is,

to live in ways which were

expected of them, or which

pleased others, or which were

designed not to offend others.

These are the patients who

build up what Winnicott

called a “false self.”

~ Anthony Storr

* 

In 1983 Janet Woititz published a book titled Adult Children of Alcoholics which contained what came to be known in recovery circles as “the laundry list.”

It’s a list of thirteen traits typical of adults who grew up in dysfunctional families.

A dysfunctional family is simply one in which the members cannot get their needs met. 

And adult children are people still unconsciously bound to the Plan A they learned in their family.

If you’d like to be able to notice when you slip into Plan A – to say Oh, there I go again instead of reacting with rage, fear or confusion — the laundry list is a good place to start.

What follows is a revised version.*

If you’re an adult child,

1. You guess at what normal is, then try to imitate it.

2. You have trouble following projects through from beginning to end.

3. You lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth.

4. You judge yourself without mercy.

5. You have trouble relaxing or having fun.

6. You take yourself very seriously.

7. You struggle with intimate relationships.

8. You over-react to changes beyond your control.

9. You constantly seek approval and affirmation.

10. You feel different from other people.

11. You’re either super responsible or super irresponsible.

12.  You’re extremely loyal, even in the face of evidence that your loyalty is undeserved.

13.  You’re impulsive — i.e., tend to lock yourself into a course of action without thinking through alternatives or consequences.  This creates confusion, self-loathing and loss of control over your environment.  You also spend large amounts of time and energy cleaning up the mess.

So what does it mean if you identify with one or more of these symptoms?

It means you’re like me.

Also everyone else I know.

Also, I’d argue, everyone else, period.

There’s no one on this bus but us fishes.

---

 

*Adapted from Janet Woititz, Adult children of alcoholics (Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 1983).

Chapter 10: Plan A

 

 

-v3.mp3″][/audio].

The significant problems we face cannot

be solved at the same level of thinking

we used when we created them.

~ Albert Einstein 

*

So what’s Plan A?

Plan A is my label for everything we learn as children about life and how to live it.

We each have a Plan A. 

And we each learn it in the same place and in the same way.

The place is our family, and the way is unconsciously.

Nobody sits us down at the kitchen table and says, “Listen up, kid, here’s how you do Life.”  They just do Life themselves, and we watch and listen and soak it all up like little sponges. 

Which explains why our Plan A tends to look so much like that of our family members.

And it works for a while.

Especially while we’re still living in the family.

We’re all following the same unwritten rule book.

But Plan A always breaks down.

This happens when we move beyond the family into the larger world, filled with new people and new challenges.

And we discover that what worked at home doesn’t always work out there.

At which point we have, at least in theory, a choice.

We can tell ourselves, “Oh, I guess I need a Plan B.”

Or we can tell ourselves, “I must be doing something wrong.  I better work harder at Plan A.”

Guess which we choose?

Right. Plan A. 

Always Plan A.

Two reasons for this.  First, we may not even know there’s such a thing as Plan B.  We think Plan A is just normal. Why would anyone do Life in any other way?

Second, even when we begin to suspect there are other options, change is scary. 

So we cling to Plan A because it’s familiar.  It may not work great, but it’s easy. We can do it in our sleep.

In fact Plan A is itself a kind of sleeping.

And we usually keep following it until symptoms wake us up. 

Symptoms like anxiety, depression, loneliness, addictions, bad relationships ad problems with parenting.

Those symptoms are what drive us into therapy.

Seeking, whether we realize it not, a healthier Plan B.

Chapter 9: The fish finds water

 

 

 

Hitting bottom is jargon for the

moment when the pattern of

suffering reveals itself.

~ Stephen Cope 

 

So we tend to be oblivious to how our family has shaped us.

On the other hand, if we’re in recovery from anything – anxiety or depression or addiction or bad relationships or some other emotional problem — sooner or later we begin to suspect that maybe we need to reexamine our family. 

That we need to do what Freud originally defined as the goal of psychoanalysis: make the unconscious conscious.

So how do we do that? 

How does the fish discover water?

We consciously turn our attention to what we have ignored, and we start asking higher level questions about it.

And a good question to start with is:

What’s my Plan A?

 

---

Chapter 8: Which fish

 

 

 

The child grabs for power in

whatever ways spontaneously

suggest themselves to him.

~ Allen Wheelis 

 

If you doubt the power of family to shape who we are and how we function, think of how we get defined by our family roles.

Family therapist James Framo writes,

The “family way” of seeing and doing things becomes automatic and unquestioned, like the air one breathes. 

[For example,] It is very difficult for anyone, no matter how grown-up or mature, to avoid the family role assignment when he is in the presence of his family. 

Whether his role is that of “the quiet one,” “the smart one,” “the slick one,” “the troublemaker,” “father’s protector,” or any one of countless assignments, he will find himself behaving accordingly despite himself.

Try a thought experiment. 

Think of your family of origin. 

Now ask yourself,

Who was the “strong” one?

Who was the “weak” one?

Who was the “emotional” one?

Who was the “unemotional” one?

Who was the “angry” one?

Who was the “funny” one?

Who was the “nervous” one?

Who was the “controlling” one?

Who got controlled? 

Who was “the problem solver”?

Who was “the problem”?

Now ask yourself:

Which fish was I?

Did I have a role?

What was it?

Do I still slip back into it when I’m with my family?

How am I still playing this role in other parts of my life?

Was I aware of this before now?

For most of us, it takes a long time to discover how our family role has defined us.

If we ever discover it at all.

---

Chapter 6: The turning point

 

 

The easy path leads to the hard life.

The hard path leads to the easy life. 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

 

One last thought about what we’ll be discussing.

Much of it will be counterintuitive. 

That means not just unfamiliar, but uncomfortable. 

Painful, even.

Your mind and emotions may well resist it. 

It just won’t fit your normal ways of perceiving and feeling and acting. 

You may find it confusing, even annoying.

If that happens, relax. 

It’s normal. 

That discomfort you’re feeling may even turn out to be a good thing.

Why?

Because if you’re able to feel it and push past it, it means you’re at a point in your recovery where you’re willing to tolerate some anxiety in order to expand your consciousness and take adult responsibility for your emotional life.

And that, my friend, is a turning point.

 

Chapter 5: Three goals

 

And I believe that this is the great thing

to understand: that awareness per se

– by and of itself – can be curative.

    ~ Frederick S. Perls 

 

This book has three goals. 

Actually they’re three facets of the same goal, which is to help you better understand how your childhood conditioning shaped your emotional life as an adult, and how you can move beyond that conditioning if you wish. 

In the language of the three metaphors, that means discovering

1. what your Plan A is and where it came from,

2. how your Inner Kid functions and what he or she needs,

3. what triggers you into compulsive controlling and what you can do instead.

You will know you’re approaching these goals when the day comes that you encounter an emotional problem and — instead of getting scared, angry, confused, guilty or ashamed – you find yourself able to shrug and say,

Oh. There I go again.

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