#compulsive controlling

                I should not be here. Why not?                   Therapy is for weak people. And you’re not weak?                   Correct. I’m a grownup. I see. And what does that mean, exactly?                   It means I don’t need anyone’s help.                   It means I stand on my own two feet.                   It means I am the master of my fate.                     And the…

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Love is a wonderful terrible thing. Wonderful because it connects us to others in the ways we most need to be connected. Terrible because that connection leaves us horribly vulnerable. You can’t love someone and protect yourself emotionally. Not really. Real love means hurting when the other person hurts, and being subject to all sorts of doubts and disappointments, disillusionments and…

(THE BOOK) Chapter 29: Me-monkeys

Once there was a handsome young shepherd so self-absorbed he could love nobody else.  The gods punished him by making him fall in love with his own reflection in a pond and stare into it until he starved to death. His name was Narcissus, and every third or fourth day one of his distant cousins shows up in my office. They’re not there for therapy.  What they really want is magic.  They want…

(THE BOOK) Chapter 28: Monkeyparents

  When I first opened my private practice I needed clients, so I went into local high schools to give talks about parenting.    Everyone’s favorite talk was titled “How to Parent Your Child Through Adolescence Without Committing Murder.”  Each delivery generated new clients.  But most of them weren’t parents.  They were teenagers, nervous and sullen, dropped off in my waiting room by Mom or Dad…

(THE BOOK) Chapter 26: The addicted

Everyone I see in therapy is addicted. So is everyone I know. When I first became a therapist I distinguished between addicts and nonaddicts.  That distinction no longer makes sense to me. Now I think we’re all addicted to something.  It’s just that some addictions are more obvious than others. As I said (see Chapter 12), addicts are people who can’t deal with feelings, and so feel compelled to…

(THE BOOK) Chapter 23: Five weeds

After the workshop described in chapter 13 — the one where I redefined codependency as control addiction —  I went back to doing therapy with clinic clients.   Mine was still a typical outpatient caseload, filled with the same problems every therapist faces.   But now something was different. Did you ever buy a new car — a new Honda, say — and take it out on the road, and wherever you drive you…