Category: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

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Consistency & Happiness

Consistency and happiness

Consistency is nothing more or less than learning the art of being happy. Unfortunately, society has conditioned us to believe that happiness comes from something outside of ourselves: The right house, or the right car, or the right clothes, or the right spouse, or the right job. But what if happiness came from somewhere else?

What if we could learn to create our own happiness from within ourselves? If happiness comes from the things we own, or from other people, or from our life circumstances, then it can be taken away. But if happiness comes from within, nobody can ever take it away from us unless we choose to let them.

Happiness is a choice, not a thing. Happiness is a decision, not a destination. It is internally driven. It is not something that happens to us. It is something we make happen. We make happiness happen by looking at every situation in our lives and finding something good in it.

Remember Tom Sawyer and the picket fence? He eventually chose to see painting the fence as a fun adventure instead of a chore. We can turn most of the chores in our lives into happy experiences merely by changing the way we think about these events, because we’re in control of our own emotional states.
The way to choose to be happy, no matter what the circumstances, is to turn within instead of looking without. True happiness is internally motivated and not externally motivated. This means that opportunities for happiness come from deep within ourselves and not from the events that happen in our lives.

A secondary emotion is the ‘feeling after the feeling,’ in that it is the emotional reaction we have to our feelings. For example, if I am feeling sad, and I then respond to this sadness by feeling guilty for feeling sad, the sadness is the primary emotion and the guilt is the secondary emotion.

What if, instead of responding to the sadness with guilt, I consciously chose to respond to it with happiness? This may sound difficult, but with practice it is possible. The more we practice this skill, the easier it gets.

It helps to remember that happiness doesn’t come from our circumstances. It comes from within us. The more we practice changing our secondary emotions by choosing to focus on happiness, the more consistent we will become in managing our moods.

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Memories: Making the Pieces Fit

memories

There are many types of memory. Let’s talk about two of them: Implicit Memory and Narrative Memory. Implicit memories are memories about specific events. What did you have for breakfast this morning? What outfit did you wear yesterday? Which people did you talk to today? The answers to these questions are implicit memories.

Narrative memories are memories that try to make sense of our various experiences on a day-to-day basis. Narrative memories integrate our implicit memories into a coherent whole. While implicit memories are the ‘what,’ narrative memories are the ‘why.’ Suppose I don’t usually eat eggs for breakfast, but today I decided to have scrambled eggs. The memory of having scrambled eggs is an implicit memory that answers the question, “What did I have for breakfast?” Further suppose that I was having breakfast with a friend who knew my eating habits, and my friend commented that I don’t usually eat eggs. If I search my own mind for a reason why I chose eggs for breakfast on this particular day, the reason I come up with will be the ‘why’ of narrative memory.

Our lives are made up of implicit memories of our daily events. In order to make sense of our lives, we link these events together in a narrative that gives our lives meaning. These stories that we create about our life experiences are our narrative memories. We all write our own autobiographies every day of our lives. This process of autobiography writing is our narrative memory fitting the pieces of our implicit memories together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Integrating Memories

For most of us, most of the time, our stories make sense and everything runs smoothly. But sometimes we get a bunch of implicit memories that we just can’t seem to fit into our own narratives. It’s as if, while working this jigsaw puzzle, we somehow grabbed a handful of pieces from another box. When this happens, we have to ‘change the picture’ of our life stories to incorporate these new puzzle pieces. This process of fitting the new pieces into the puzzle is called integration.

If we are able to successfully integrate all of these implicit memories, then there’s no problem. If we have difficulty making some of the pieces fit, it usually means that we’d have to change our worldview and re-write our own narrative in order to fit those pieces into the puzzle. This can be a frustrating experience. Sometimes that frustration manifests in emotional aggression.

Living a life of consistency means finding a way to make all of the pieces fit without getting frustrated or without having to act out in emotionally aggressive ways. By learning to integrate our True Selves into the story of our lives, we fit all of our implicit memories into a new narrative memory that creates this new paradigm. When all of these pieces have fit together, we are living at the core of our True Selves.

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Process Addictions

process addiction group

A process addiction is similar to a substance addiction, except that instead of being addicted to a drug, the person with a process addiction is addicted to a cluster of behaviors. Examples of process addictions would include eating disorders, sexual addictions, and gambling addictions. A process addiction is an addiction to a process or a pattern of behavior.

Emotional aggression can be a process addiction as well. It tends to be an automatic response to certain emotional states, and the motivation for engaging in emotionally aggressive behaviors is that it can sometimes mimic the ‘high’ of abusing a substance. The brain produces neurotransmitters; chemicals which induce or aid in emotional states. Automatic processes can produce these chemicals. So can drugs. In either case, the ‘user’ is creating an artificially-induced chemical state in order to experience a ‘high.’

There are three major characteristics of any addiction:

Withdrawal – In substance abuse, withdrawal manifests in physiological symptoms related to the substance. A person with alcoholism might wake up with a hangover. A person with a heroin addiction might have the sweats or stomach cramps. A person trying to quit smoking might get irritable or angry. With a process addiction, the person may get nervous, anxious or angry when attempting to give up the behavior.

Tolerance – In substance abuse, tolerance manifests as an increasing need for the substance being used in order to get the same ‘high.’ Suppose the first time I drink I get a buzz off of two or three beers. Then six months or a year later, I need a six-pack or more to get the same high. I’ve developed a tolerance for alcohol. In a process addiction, tolerance manifests as a need to engage in more and more of the same behavior in order to get the same effect. With emotional aggression, I might start out acting in an emotionally aggressive way once or twice a week. Then six months later it might be once or twice a day, then a year later it might be five or six times a day, and so on.

Loss of Control – In substance abuse, loss of control manifests as an inability to keep addictive behaviors from interfering in activities of daily living. I might miss work because of a hangover. I might get in trouble with the law for fighting or other illegal activities to support my habit. In emotional aggression, loss of control manifests in a similar fashion. If I’ve ever gotten fired from a job because of my ‘attitude,’ or if I’ve ever been in legal trouble because of my inability to control my anger,’ then I’ve experienced loss of control.

Signs of a Process Addiction

Below is a list of signs that a Process Addiction may be present. If any of these sound familiar, you may be using emotional aggression as a process addiction:

Withdrawal Cluster

  • When the person tries to stop engaging in emotional aggression, he/she becomes moody, has a bad temper, has difficulty paying attention and concentrating, and experiences depression, emptiness, frustration, anger, bitterness and resentment.
  • Changes in appetite or sleep habits when attempting to stop the behavior. With process addictions, withdrawal can lead to anxiety, depression, trembling or nervous tics, sweating, and in extreme circumstances, to violent tendencies.
  • A person with a process addiction might use other behaviors in an attempt to get the same ‘high,’ such as driving fast or engaging in risky activities in order to get an adrenaline rush.
  • A person with an emotional aggression addiction may feel the need to indulge to start the day. That is, he/she may provoke an argument first thing in the morning in order to feel better.
  • A person with a process addiction to emotional aggression might seek out or provoke opportunities to act in emotionally aggressive ways.

Tolerance Cluster

  • A person with a process addiction to emotional aggression may feel that they need to be able to behave this way in order to deal with their problems.
  • A person with a process addiction to emotional aggression may spend more and more time and energy focusing on ways of provoking a situation that will give them an opportunity to act out in emotionally aggressive ways.
  • Many people who are addicted to emotional aggression are in denial. They are either unaware that they have a problem, or they refuse to acknowledge it, preferring to blame their own behavior on others.
  • As the addiction to emotional aggression progresses the person may stop doing things they once enjoyed, or if they engage in those activities, they no longer find them enjoyable.
  • The need to engage in emotional aggression becomes more important than relationships. This often manifests in the need to be ‘right’ all the time, even at the expense of the relationship.

Loss of Control Cluster

  • The individual continues engaging in emotional aggression on a regular basis, even though they are aware of the consequences to family, work, and social circles.
  • The person cannot stop the behavior. At least one serious attempt was made to give up, but the person was unsuccessful. A person who cannot control their physical aggression is a danger to themselves and to others. In extreme cases, when they totally lose control of their behavior, institutionalization may be necessary.
  • Some activities are given up because of an addiction to the process. A person with a process addiction to emotional aggression might turn down social opportunities because of a fear of not being able to regulate their behavior.
  • In some cases the person with a process addiction might make take risks to make sure he/she can continue to engage in emotional aggression. They might quit a job because the boss complained about their attitude. They might leave a relationship because the other person complained about the way they were being treated.
  • A person with a process addiction to emotional aggression may have legal troubles. This could be the result of vandalism during a fit of rage, or physical or sexual abuse committed against others, or of indulging in illegal activities in an effort to regulate moods. This could also include abusing substances as a method of emotional regulation.

If you checked off more than two items from each category above, you may have a process addiction to emotional aggression. If all three elements of withdrawal, tolerance, and loss of control are present, then the emotionally aggressive person has a process addiction to emotional aggression.

The Process Addiction Cycle

The process addiction to emotional aggression manifests in the Addiction Cycle. The Addiction Cycle for process addictions is similar to the Addiction Cycle for substance abuse addictions. The Substance Abuse Addiction Cycle contains five major elements. Those elements are:

  1. Emotional Trigger – There is a problem with emotional regulation that triggers the craving cycle
  2. Craving – Due to the emotional difficulty, the individual begins to crave a substance in order to regulate the emotions
  3. Ritual – The person engages in rituals associated with the addictive behavior
  4. Using – The person succumbs to the craving and uses the substance
  5. Guilt – After indulging in the substance, the person feels guilty about being unable to control their behavior

There is also an addiction cycle for process addictions. In a process addiction, the emotional trigger is not subdued by a substance. Instead, it is subdued by the chemicals produced by the brain during a cycle of emotional aggression.
The steps of the Process Addiction Cycle are as follows:

  1. Emotional Trigger – There is a problem with emotional regulation that triggers the craving cycle
  2. Craving – In the case of a process addiction, due to the emotional difficulty, the individual begins to crave or desire to act in an emotionally aggressive way in order to regulate the emotions that triggered the cycle
  3. Automatic Processes (Ritual) – The person engages in rituals associated with the cycle of emotional aggression
  4. Emotional Aggression (Using) – The person succumbs to the craving and acts out in an emotionally aggressive way
  5. Guilt – After indulging in an episode of emotional aggression, the person feels guilty about being unable to control their behavior

In a process addiction, the emotional trigger is ‘regulated’ by engaging in emotional aggression. But this tendency to indulge in emotional aggression is a short-term fix with damaging long-term consequences. Indulging in the cycle leads to damaged or broken relationships, which then cause the need to indulge in the cycle even more. The guilt caused by an act of emotional aggression is usually enough to trigger another emotional response, which then leads to even more emotionally aggressive acting out.

We’ve already discussed the idea of primary vs. secondary emotions, in which the secondary emotion is the emotion that it is safe to express. The key to stopping the Process Addiction Cycle is in finding the primary emotions that start the cycle. Once they have been identified, it becomes easier to acknowledge them without feeling the need to indulge in the craving by responding in emotionally aggressive ways.

By identifying the primary emotions that serve as triggers, we can choose not to act in emotionally aggressive ways. We may instead use our mindful skills to sit quietly with those feelings in the present moment, reminding ourselves that there is no need to ‘do’ anything in order to make the feeling go away. If we are able to sit quietly with the feeling until it subsides, we have learned how to simply ‘be.’

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The Cost-Benefit Analysis Worksheet

Cost-Benefit Analysis Acceptance and Change

The Cost-Benefit Analysis Worksheet can help with difficult choices. Our choices are a consequence of what we can change and what we have to accept. Mindful acceptance teaches us that we can only change ourselves, not others. If others in our lives are causing problems yet they are unwilling to change, then we either have to accept that fact or end the relationship. We can only be responsible for what we can change, which is our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Once I have accepted the fact that the only person I can change is myself, then my choices should reflect this knowledge.

The first step in learning to accept the choices of others is to assess your patterns of avoidant behaviors. Avoidant behaviors are any behaviors that are attempts to avoid taking responsibility for your own emotional states. Once these patterns of avoidant behavior have been identified, the next step in making good choices is to reframe those behaviors into patterns of acceptance.

What do avoidant behaviors look like? Suppose I am angry with my wife about something, but I don’t want to tell her because I don’t like conflict. That’s an avoidant behavior. So I hold it in and bite my tongue until I can’t stand it any longer, and then I explode in a fit of angry emotional aggression. Here’s how to turn this situation into an acceptance strategy by reframing the avoidant behavior:

In this case, the avoidant behavior is withholding communication because of a fear of conflict. What exactly am I afraid of? Am I afraid that if I tell her I’m angry, it’s going to make her angry in return? Am I afraid that she will think it’s silly that I’m angry about whatever it is? Am I afraid that she might even leave me if I share my feelings with her?

By figuring out exactly why I’m avoiding the issue, I can change it to a more accepting strategy through mindful acceptance. If I’m afraid that if I tell her that I’m angry, it’s going to make her angry in return, I could accept the fact that she is responsible for her own emotional reactions. If I’m afraid that she will think my anger is silly, I can instead accept that I’m entitled to my feelings regardless of what her opinion of them might be. In fact, her feelings are none of my business! If I’m afraid that she might even leave me if I share my feelings with her, then I can accept that I probably don’t need to be in a relationship with someone who won’t respect my right to feel the way I feel.

Are any of the choices you make in your relationships really attempts to engage in avoidant behaviors? If so, what ways could you reframe the beliefs that led to those behaviors so that you might be able to achieve mindful acceptance instead of having to avoid the issue?

Here are some common avoidant behaviors to look for:

  • Blame-shifting: Attempting to avoid personal responsibility by blaming others
  • Blamestorming: Blaming everyone and everything instead of accepting the situation as it really is
  • Emotional Aggression: Attempting to avoid personal responsibility by getting others to be responsible
  • Patterns of Control: Attempting to control others in order to avoid having to control yourself

The Cost-Benefit Analysis

A difficulty with choices is that once our assumptions about life have set our perception filter in a certain way, it’s sometimes hard to see the evidence on the other side of the coin. To make better choices, however, we need to be aware of evidence both in favor of and against a decision. The Cost-Benefit Analysis Worksheet is a way to re-set our perception filter by forcing ourselves to look at all the evidence both in favor of, and against, a decision.

There are four boxes on the Cost-Benefit Analysis Tool. At the top of the Tool there is a line for “Decision to be made.” On this line, write the decision that is being evaluated. For example, suppose you are contemplating whether or not to stay married. On the “decision to be made” line, you’d write, “stay married.”

Next, in the left-hand column there are two rows: “Benefits of doing this” and “benefits of not doing this.” In the “benefits of doing this” box you would write down all the benefits of staying married that you could think of. In the “benefits of not doing this” you would list all of the benefits of not staying married that you could think of. If you need extra paper, use a notebook. The goal here is to think of as many reasons as you can in both boxes.

Next, in the right-hand column, there is a row for “costs of doing this,” and a row for “costs of not doing this.” In the “costs of doing this” box, list all of the costs of staying married you can think of. Note that this isn’t necessarily talking about financial costs. This is also talking about emotional costs. Then in the next row, “costs of not doing this,” list as many costs as you can think of for not staying married.

Once you’ve listed as many reasons as you can think of in all of the appropriate columns, the next thing to do is to ‘score’ each item. The reason for assigning a score to each item is that some items are more important than others. When I got out of graduate school I was offered a job in New York. There were plenty of reasons for moving to New York, but only one reason for not moving to New York: My daughter lived with her mother, and if I moved to New York I’d only get to see her once a year. So that one item outweighed all the others.

So the reason for giving scores to each item is so that you can ‘weigh’ each item based on its importance to you.
Finally, you tally up all the scores in each column, and the high score ‘wins.’ That is, the column with the highest score should theoretically be the column upon which to base your decision.

A word of caution is in order here: Don’t just do this once and base your decision on a single result. The best way to evaluate the results is to do it several times over a period of days or weeks. Here’s why: Suppose I have a fight with my wife, and then I do a CBA Worksheet based on staying married vs. getting a divorce. Obviously if I’ve just had a fight with my wife, my answers are probably going to be a little skewed. So if I do this Cost-Benefit Analysis again and again over a period of time, my emotions regarding the decision are going to have a tendency to even out, and the average result is going to be the decision that I should make.

The Cost-Benefit Analysis Worksheet

Try a Cost-Benefit Analysis Worksheet now for practice. The goal here is to focus on the evidence both for and against the decision to be made. By seeing both sides of the issue, you are re-setting your perception filter so that you may challenge assumptions that are leading to consequences you don’t want.

You can download a copy of the CBA Worksheet by clicking the link below.

CBA Worksheet
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As I Think, so I Feel

As I Think, So I Feel - Feelings and Thoughts

“People feel disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of them.”

–Epictetus, 1st Century Philosopher

As Epictetus reminds us, as I think, so I feel. Thoughts cause feelings and feelings can cause behaviors if we let them.

Events and circumstances serve to trigger thoughts, which then create feelings. Events and circumstances do not cause our feelings. The thoughts (beliefs) we have about events and circumstances cause our feelings. We can consciously change our feelings about things by changing the thoughts and beliefs we have about things.

By examining the rules we have made for ourselves and for others, we can learn to change them so that we have different feelings. In the example from the trust seesaw last week, suppose I have a child who has been lying to me. If I have a belief that my child is showing disrespect by lying to me, I will probably be angry and upset that my child chose to be deceptive. What if I could change that belief? What if I consciously decided that my child’s lie was because I hadn’t made my child feel that it was safe to tell me the truth? How might that change my emotional reaction? Would it change how I felt about the situation?

By changing our thoughts about a given situation, we can control the feelings we have about that situation.

“As I Feel, so I Think”

While it is true that “as I think, so I feel,” it is also true that, “as I feel, so I think.” Feelings are part of the reptilian brain. This concept is part of something called the Triune Brain Theory. In this theory there are three major portions of the brain. The primitive brain, sometimes called the reptilian brain, governs things having to do with immediate survival: Food, fighting, fleeing and reproduction. Next is the limbic system, sometimes called the mammalian brain, responsible for regulating the higher emotions. The third part of the brain is the cerebral cortex, responsible for higher reasoning and logic skills.

In the case of the more visceral emotional responses, the reptilian brain activates first, then the mammalian brain, and finally the reasoning centers. In such a case an automatic emotional response has been activated and the ‘fight or flight’ response is triggered before the higher reasoning centers are even aware of any activity. As noted earlier, such automatic responses are usually operating on the subconscious level, and they are in full swing by the time the rational brain figures out what’s going on.

These feelings then lead to thought processes. These thought processes often become ruminating cycles, and sometimes these ruminating cycles lead to emotional aggression. If these thought processes are leading us to behave in ways that result in consequences we don’t want, it’s a bit more difficult to track down these triggers because they are rooted in subconscious processes.

As noted earlier, these processes leave physiological traces. By using the mindful skills of observing and describing we can tune in to these physical signs. Becoming aware of these early warning signals is a way to ‘shut off’ or slow down automatic processes so the rules can be changed. In this case, the ‘rules’ are the thoughts we have about the feelings. When negative feelings hit, we are conditioned to believe we must do something to make them stop. But by engaging our own internal observer, we can come to realize that feelings are feelings; we don’t have to respond or react to them. At any given time we are in control of what we choose to believe and do about the feelings we are experiencing.

When I teach a Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy class, one of the first questions I ask is, “How many of you in the room here today have never been depressed in your entire life? How many of you here today have never been angry? How many of you here have never been troubled by overpowering emotions?” Of course, nobody raises their hand. We are conditioned to believe that negative and overpowering emotions are somehow “not normal,” but the truth is that expecting never to have negative emotions is like expecting never to have a cloudy day. Cloudy days are natural, but they don’t last forever. If we wait long enough, the sun will shine again. Likewise, if we’re having a bad day emotionally, we don’t have to try to do anything to fix it. If we wait long enough, the feeling will eventually pass.

As I Think, So I Feel: Addictions

I work a lot with people who have addictions. These addictions aren’t necessarily addictions to alcohol and other drugs. People can be addicted to food, to bad relationships, to anger, to emotional aggression, or to a host of other different things and processes. All of these things produce chemical changes in our brains.

Our bodies are complex systems of cycles. These cycles peak and trough throughout the day, and throughout our lifetimes. They come and go in waves. When certain waves peak together, that’s when those addictive cravings hit. We may crave alcohol, or chocolate, or an argument to try to get our systems back in balance. When we’re on top of that craving wave, it can feel like that urge is never going to go away. But since these changes occur in cycles, if you can ‘ride the wave,’ these urges will eventually subside.

If we don’t give in to them, and we learn wait patiently for them to go through their paces by living in the moment, we can take comfort in the fact that they will eventually go away. Mindful Awareness helps us to know our bodies and their complex cycles. It also helps us to know that this too shall pass.

Alcoholics Anonymous has a saying that recovery takes place “one day at a time.” Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy says that if “one day at a time” is too much, try “one hour at a time.” If “one hour at a time” is too much, try “one minute at a time.” If “one minute at a time” is too much, try “one moment at a time.” Leave Doing Mode by remembering that nothing has to happen right now. You don’t have to ‘fix’ it. You can sit quietly with it and ‘ride the wave’ until it passes.

When you can do so, you will understand how to be in the present with your thoughts and feelings without feeling obligated to respond to them in detrimental ways.

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The Perfection Triad

perfection triad

Perfectionism can lead to difficulties with emotional aggression. Sometimes emotional aggression occurs because we expect others to be perfect. Sometimes it occurs because we expect ourselves to be perfect. But what does ‘perfect’ really mean? When I teach an ecospirituality group, I often ask several students to describe their ‘perfect’ day. One might say that a perfect day would be spent on the beach with a good book. Another might say that a perfect day might be spent cuddling with a loved one. Yet another might say that a perfect day would be a day doing nothing. All of these answers are different. After gathering all of these responses, I then ask the class, “Okay, which one of you is right?

Of course that question is meaningless, because each person has described the perfect day for him or her. They’re all right answers because they’re the ones choosing what ‘perfect’ means for them.

So what does ‘perfect’ mean? There is no objective definition to the term. Each person defines it for herself or himself. The idea of perfection manifests itself in the Perfection Triad. When the Perfection Triad is internally focused (that is to say, when I’m speaking about myself), it looks like this:

The ‘Perfection Triad’

  1. I make the rule(s)
  2. I break the rule(s)
  3. I punish myself

What this means is that I have made a rule that I must be ‘perfect.’ This rule is destined to be broken, because, as the saying goes, “Nobody’s perfect.” So when I inevitably break the rule that “I must be perfect,” I punish myself by feeling guilty. I may even punish myself by engaging in self-sabotaging behaviors.

The good news here is that in all three of the components of the Perfection Triad, “I” am the common factor. Since I’m the one making the rule, I’m the one breaking the rule, and I’m the one punishing myself for breaking the rule, I can change any of the three components to get a better result. Let’s look at what happens to the other two elements when I change any one element. We’ll start with changing “I make the rule.”

If I am making the rule that “I must be perfect,” and then I’m constantly breaking the rule by failing to be perfect, I can choose to change the rule just a little bit. Suppose I change it to something that is more achievable, like, “I’ll always do my best.” This means that I don’t have to be perfect all the time as long as I was acting to the best of my ability. So if that’s the rule, then I’ll rarely break it. If I don’t break the rule, there’s no need to punish myself. So the entire meme has changed to something that is achievable.

What if I changed the component that says, “I break the rule?”

The only way to change this component is to never break the rule. If the rule is, “I must be perfect,” then the only way to avoid breaking the rule is to be perfect all the time. This is what happens with most perfectionists. They try to avoid breaking the rule by attempting to be perfect all the time. Unless they have a very liberal definition of what it means to be perfect, they’re likely to have a hard time keeping this rule, but let’s assume it is possible, by their definition, to manage to be perfect all of the time. In such a case, the rule never gets broken, so there’s no need to punish themselves for changing the rule, and there’s no need to make a different rule as long as they’re able to avoid breaking the rule they have made.

Finally, let’s look at what happens if we change the component that says, “I punish myself.” If I decide to change it to something like, “I won’t punish myself,” then there are no negative consequences for breaking the rule, so there’s no need to make a new rule. There is also no problem, since I’m not punishing myself.

If you find yourself a victim of the Perfection Triad, ask yourself which component would be the easiest to change. Remember that you, and only you, are in control of defining the rules, keeping the rules, and deciding on the punishment, if any.

Sometimes emotional aggression occurs when we expect others to be perfect and they fail to live up to our expectations. This is an external meme because it involves other people, and other people are external to ourselves.
The externally-focused Perfection Triad looks like this:

The ‘Perfection Triad’ (External)

  1. I make the rule(s) for others
  2. Others break my rule(s)
  3. I punish others by engaging in emotional aggression

In this externally-focused triad, we expect others to live up to our expectations of perfection. When they fail to live up to our expectations by breaking our rules, we punish them by engaging in emotionally aggressive attempts to force them to follow our rules. This triad is especially heinous because we are expecting others to live up to our definitions of ‘perfect’ instead of their own definitions.

Once again we can move to a solution-focused meme by changing any one of the components. Let’s start with, “I make the rule for others.” I can change this component by ceasing to make the rule for others, or by making a rule for others that it is possible to follow. In either case, the rule doesn’t get broken, so there is no need to punish them by engaging in emotional aggression.

Another solution-focused approach is for others to simply agree not to break the rules I’ve made for them. This solution is a control-freak’s dream, because it means that if others agree to abide by our rules, we have effectively controlled them. Unfortunately, this is not a real solution, because if others have agreed to allow us to make rules for them, and they’ve agreed not to break the rules we have made, then there is probably some sort of abusive relationship going on. Even so, this is the solution we are attempting to get when we punish others by engaging in emotional aggression after they’ve broken our rules.

The final way to move this triad to a solution-focused one is to change the “I punish others by engaging in emotional aggression” component. The only way to change this component is to cease acting in emotionally aggressive ways when others have broken the rules we have made. If we cease to punish others for breaking our rules, then it doesn’t matter what the rules are, and whether they break them or not. Since there are no negative consequences for not playing by the rules, there is no problem.

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Controlling Others

controlling others

“Never underestimate your power to change yourself; never overestimate your power to change others.”

-H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Controlling others is an attempt to make others responsible for our own emotional states. The actions that happen in our lives lead to a response. That response is a set of beliefs and behaviors about what just happened. When I act on those beliefs by engaging in behaviors, I get consequences. If those consequences are good, nothing has to change. But if those consequences aren’t what I wanted, then the only person who has the power to change that is me. Others cannot change those consequences for me.

How many of your attempts to control others have been the result of your beliefs? Is it difficult to change your beliefs because if you did so you’d have to take responsibility for your own emotional states? It can be pretty scary to assume control of your own life. If you are in control and you fail, then you have nobody to blame but yourself. On the other hand, if you are in control and you succeed, you and you alone are responsible for that success! In that case, you get all the credit!

Emotionally Aggressive Controlling Behaviors

A common excuse for emotionally aggressive controlling behaviors towards others is, “People treat me with disrespect.” While this may be true on occasion, we really have no control over how other people treat us, as much as we might like to think otherwise. The behavior of others is an external event beyond our control. What we can control is how we react to the way we are treated. One way to rephrase the above statement could be, “I can’t help the way others treat me, but I can change the way I react to them.”

There are at least four ways to fail and at least four ways to succeed. Look over the lists below and see if anything from either list sounds familiar:

Controlling Others: Four ways to Fail

  1. All-or-Nothing Thinking: “You always do this…” or “You never do that…”
  2. ‘You’ Statements: “This is all your fault!”
  3. ‘Musterbating:’ “Shoulda, woulda, coulda…”
  4. False Comparisons: “Everybody else gets this, why can’t you?”

Four ways to Succeed

  1. Exceptional Thinking: Look for positive exceptions to the ‘rule’
  2. ‘I’ Statements: “This is how I feel about what you said/did”
  3. ‘Solution-Seeking:’ “What can I do to help so this doesn’t happen again?”
  4. True Comparisons: “You did that much better than other people would have”

The next time you feel the temptation to control the people in your life, review these lists and remind yourself that you can’t control others. You can only control yourself. If you control or change the way you respond to others, then they may be willing to change the way they respond to you.

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Internal Validation vs. External Validation

Internal vs. external validation emotional aggression

`“If it’s never our fault, we can’t take responsibility for it. If we can’t take responsibility for it, we’ll always be its victim.”`

-Richard Bach, author

Internal Validation is the art of validating ourselves. We all like to be validated. It’s why we have relationships in the first place. We enter relationships so that others can support us emotionally. This can become a problem if we come to expect that others are responsible for validating us. Emotional aggression happens when we try to force others to validate us.

While others can choose to validate us by acting in emotionally supportive ways, we can also choose to validate ourselves. If others are validating us, then that validation is external because it is coming from someone besides ourselves. If, however, we are able to meet our own emotional needs, we are internally validated. It’s nice to have both, but there may be times when others cannot satisfy our emotional needs. In those times, it helps to be able to meet those needs ourselves.

The only healthy way to be emotionally validated by others is when others are willingly granting us such validation and support. If we attempt to force such support from others, we are acting from emotional aggression.

If we engage in fault-finding in an attempt to seek validation, we are projecting blame. Projecting blame is emotional aggression, because we are abdicating responsibility for our own emotional validation by attempting to blame, shame, or guilt others into emotionally supporting us against their will.

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a guilt-trip, you know that it is not a pleasant experience. If you’ve ever been the victim of a guilt-trip, ask yourself, “Is trying to make me feel guilty more likely or less likely to make me emotionally validate you?”

Now turn that around and put the shoe on the other foot. If you’re projecting blame onto your partner by trying to shame them or guilt them into doing what you want, do you think that such behavior is more likely or less likely to get the results you want?

If others are not meeting your emotional needs, and you are seeking external validation by behaving in emotionally aggressive ways in an attempt to get them to submit to your desires, do you really think you’re going to get the results you want? If the other person was doing it to you, would you be willing to respond in the way that they wanted?

Internal Validation is Loving Yourself

One way to avoid the tendency to engage in emotional aggression is to learn the art of internal validation. To be internally validated is to accept responsibility for your own emotional needs. The way to do this is to learn to love yourself.

Sometimes we get caught up in the idea that loving ourselves is somehow selfish or egotistical. But think about that for a moment. If you don’t love yourself, is it really fair of you to expect anybody else to love you? Not only that, but if you don’t love yourself, and you’re in a relationship with someone who loves you, eventually you might find yourself thinking along these lines, either consciously or unconsciously:

“I don’t really love myself, yet this person loves me. If I don’t love myself, yet this person says they love me, then there must be something wrong with him/her! How could a ‘normal’ person love someone like me, when I can’t even love me?”

If you don’t really love yourself, then you can’t really expect others how to love you in the way you’d like to be loved.

To learn to love yourself, first ask yourself, “Who am I, really?” Be as honest as possible when answering this question. In future weeks there will be an exercise to recognize some self-defeating beliefs and replace them with self-affirming beliefs.

For now, think about ways you can learn to love yourself and be happy in your own skin. It might help to talk these things over with your partner or with a friend or family member. A good way to start is to find out what others like about you.

If you feel uncomfortable asking others what they like about you, you could get the ball rolling by making a list of things you like about others, and sharing it with them. I’m willing to bet that they’d be likely to return the favor.

The more you are willing to do so, the more you’ll be able to self-validate as well.

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Externalization: Experiencing the Person, not the Problem

One way to live a life of compassion is to see the person, not the problem. This is done through externalization. If we are able to take the viewpoint that the person is separate from the problem, then we are able to experience the person, and not the problem. Such a perception sees the person as separate from the problem. From such a perspective, I am not an “addict,” I am a person with a substance abuse problem. I am not an “angry person,” I am a person with an anger management problem.

If a friend or family member has cancer, do you say that they are a cancer? Or do you see the cancer as something separate, a problem that can be treated and possibly even cured? If I had such a person in my life, I might abhor the cancer and what it is doing to them, but I most certainly wouldn’t abhor the person.

When we are able to see things in this way, we are able to externalize the problem. Externalizing the problem is seeing it as separate from the individual. If I have an issue with emotional aggression, I’m not an emotionally aggressive person. I’m a person who may consciously choose to change my tendency to act in emotionally aggressive ways. By externalizing this tendency in myself, I can come to see it as just a process of the brain, and not a part of my identity. If it’s just something my brain does from time to time, I can choose to avoid the temptation to act on it. If I refuse to feed it, it may eventually go away. Even if it doesn’t, I am still in control. I still have the choice not to act on it.

Likewise, if a friend or loved one has a tendency to act in emotionally aggressive ways, by exercising my non-judgmental skill of compassion, I can see this tendency as separate from their identity as a person if I so choose. The less I react to their emotional aggression, the less effective their emotional aggression becomes. When they see that their attempts to manipulate me by acting in emotionally aggressive ways have failed, then there is no reward for the behavior, and therefore there is no need to continue with the behavior.

Even if they decide to be stubborn and persist in their attempts at manipulation after seeing that they no longer work, I can refuse to participate by refusing to react to their aggression.

When you are able to do this consistently, you will have learned to use the tool of externalization.

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The Pygmalion Effect

the Pygmalion effect

In the Greek myth of Pygmalion, an artist falls in love with a statue he has created. The great sculptor Pygmalion creates his ideal woman in marble. The statue is so beautiful that he falls in love with her. In the myth, his love for the statue is so powerful that the statue springs to life and becomes a real woman.

In psychology there is a concept based upon this myth. This idea is known as the Pygmalion Effect. The Pygmalion Effect states that people have a tendency to become what you believe them to be based on how you treat them. If you expect good behavior from your friends and loved ones, then that is usually what you get. On the other hand, imagine a family member who is basically a ‘good’ person who wants to please his loved ones. Yet every time this person interacts with his family members, they greet him with suspicion, always expecting the worst from him. How long do you think it would take for this person to live up to their ‘bad’ expectations?

American school teacher Jane Elliot did a famous experiment that perfectly illustrates the power of the Pygmalion Effect. During the racial tensions of the 1960s, this teacher created the Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Experiment.

The first day of the experiment, she told her class that “blue-eyed people are superior to brown-eyed people.” She spent the day praising the blue-eyed students, while condemning the brown-eyed students. She gave the blue-eyed students privileges that the brown-eyed students didn’t get, and punished the brown-eyed students more severely than the blue-eyed students for behavioral infractions.

On the second day of the experiment, she reversed the roles, with the brown-eyed students receiving extra privileges while the blue-eyed students received more severe criticism and punishments.

As a result of the experiment, the ‘superior’ students had better behavior, better interactions, and better grades. The ‘inferior’ students had just the opposite results. In just a single day, the students had lived up (or down) to her expectations of them.

The way to harness the power of the Pygmalion Effect in your life is to always remember to be compassionate with your friends and loved ones. Let them know you love them with every word and deed.

One way to do this is to eliminate judgment from your style of interacting with others. By consciously choosing to be compassionate with them, you allow the Pygmalion Effect to work its magic. If you judge your loved ones to be unsuccessful, then your expectations will be to have an unsuccessful loved one. When you are expecting an unsuccessful partner, you tend to ignore the times when your partner does succeed, and to focus only on the times when your partner does not. By your assumptions, you have set your perception filter to only notice the times when your partner does not succeed.

If you change your assumptions to more positive outcomes, you will re-set your perception filter and thereby create a different reality in your life and in the lives of your loved ones.

People are very good at picking up on your expectations. Others tend to fulfill our expectations of them, no matter whether those expectations are positive or negative. If you have only positive expectations for your friends and family, free of judgment, your loved ones will tend to rise to the occasion and fulfill those expectations. And of course if you have only negative assumptions and expectations about your friends and family, they tend to live up to those expectations as well.

Sometimes we may think we are holding positive expectations for our loved ones, but our words and actions may convey a different message. For example, suppose you have a son named Adam. You want Adam to clean his room. This is a positive expectation because it is a positive behavior that you wish to encourage. Now take a look at the two statements below, and see which one would convey the more positive expectation, in your opinion:

Statement A:
“Adam, I can’t believe you didn’t clean your room again! This is the third time this week! I just don’t know what I’m going to do with you!”

Statement B:
“Adam, I noticed you didn’t clean your room again today. I know you didn’t mean to forget. I’m sure you’ll get around to it before the day is over. Remember, if you need help, you can always ask me.”

Which statement do you think conveys a more positive expectation? Which one would you be more likely to respond to if you were Adam?

By consciously choosing to re-frame our responses, we are able to expect the best from our loved ones and our friends. When we do so, we can harvest the power of the Pygmalion Effect.