is on your mind and in your heart and to actively hear the response
exercise
REFLECTION
Use a journal, artwork, and/or imagination to help you connect with your answers to the questions below (see the exercise in chapter 1 for more explanation).
Remember a time when you felt criticized, disappointed, or embarrassed, and ask yourself these questions:
Remember a time when you had difficulties in a relationship or discussion, and ask yourself these questions:
hands on, hands off 3
I WILL FIND PARTS OF THE PROBLEM THAT I CAN MANAGE
The truth mustdazzle graduallyor everyonebe blind
—EMILY DICKINSON
CONTROL has gotten a bad reputation. To say, “She is a control freak” or “What a terrible, controlling person she is” is to suggest that such a person should really loosen up! And yet, do you remember the Bop-Bag toy—the blow up toy that was painted like a man or a clown? He had big weighted feet so you could hit him again and again; each time, he would right himself. No matter how hard or from what angle you punched him, kicked him, hit him, or knocked him down, he would bounce back up and face you with his permanent grin. This toy is designed to give a child a sense of control. What an image of resilience. He bounces back no matter which position or how hard you punch him. It might be hard to imagine. But that bounce-ability is what successfully navigating the waters of adversity requires us to have. This step is about control. Real control and perceived control. A reasonable and discoverable degree of control. Because we need a degree of control in order to bounce back from hard times and to flourish as a result of being knocked down. Implicit in the very idea of resilience is that life is full of hardship, struggle, or tragedy Resilience is, in large part, about taking control after such difficulties.
You break off a relationship and watch all the pieces of your life take a different turn. More time for laundry and videos, yes, but what about the social events and vacations you will now attend alone? What about the sad look in friends' and family members' eyes, and what about the possible downward turn your esteem might take? What about the feelings of sadness, sorrow, anger, and grief? How intense and long-lasting might they be?
Someone close to you dies, and you know the experience of finality. You feel the daunting chasm of never being with that person again and all that that means—every holiday and meaningful event without this person and a chronic feeling of missing him or her. Your child starts taking street drugs, and neither of your lives is ever the same again. To be able to weather these storms and possibly grow from them requires a portion of control, the ability to see a problem or crisis or trauma as something that can be worked on, overcome, changed, endured, or resolved in some way. This is about knowing what is within your command so you can let go of what is not.
The control we need in order to be resilient is not about omnipotence or dictatorship; it is about a reasonable assessment of the environment. What has happened, and how much positive impact can I have for a positive outcome? How much of this task can I truly do something about? How can I manage my emotional reaction to keep things constructive?
The inner control needed is not about non-feeling or non-caring, it is not about repression or suppression; it is about having the ability to manage negative and troublesome emotions associated with the task or relationship at hand.
I am the steward of my own ship:
I can choose my own emotions and behaviors.
the perception of control
Recently I have come across research indicating that people who come into therapy believing that the outcomes of their life events were contingent on their behavior were three times more likely to experience successful outcomes in therapy than were clients who viewed events as being outside of their personal control. What intrigues me even further is that this reality includes people perceiving a semblance of control, even if they do not really have that much say in the matter. The very matter of perception can affect a positive outcome.
A woman I know went through months and months of agonizing fertilization treatments. The doctors and experts had given her and her husband very little reason to hope, but she persisted with every treatment feasible. She said she had always seen herself having a baby and she wasn't going to be discouraged by the experts. A short time after the medical teams had said there was nothing else they could do, this woman, with utter inner conviction, started drinking coffee again. She had remembered the caffeine positively interacting with her hormonal cycle, giving her the sense that she had more chance of ovulating and conceiving when she drank coffee. She became pregnant the next month. Was it the coffee? Was it her unwavering conviction that she would become pregnant? Was it a matter of time? Impossible to answer, but it seems reasonable to at least consider that, given the mind-body connection, her perceived control
