Checklist of precariousness, part four: Control Patterns

The list:

Control Patterns:

Codependents often:

believe people are incapable of taking care of themselves

attempt to convince others what to think, do, or feel

freely offer advice and direction without being asked

become resentful when others decline their help or reject their advice

lavish gifts and favors on those they want to influence

use sexual attention to gain approval and acceptance

have to feel needed in order to have a relationship with others

demand that their needs be met by others

use charm and charisma to convince others of their capacity to be caring and compassionate

use blame and shame to exploit others emotionally

refuse to cooperate, compromise, or negotiate

adopt an attitude of indifference, helplessness, authority or rage to manipulate outcomes

use recovery jargon in an attempt to control the behavior of others

pretend to agree with others to get what they want

***
The recovery patterns:

I realize that, with rare exceptions, other adults are capable of managing their own lives. My job is to let them. 

I accept and value the differing thoughts, feelings, and opinions of others

I feel comfortable when I see others take care of themselves

I am a compassionate and empathetic listener, giving advice only if directly asked

I carefully and honestly contemplate my motivations when preparing to give a gift

I feel loved and accepted for myself, just the way I am

I develop relationships with others based on equality, intimacy and balance. 

***

This is an interesting area for me. My first intuitive reaction is that denial, low self esteem and compliance are more common in my approach than most of these items, but there are definitely some exceptions. It's interesting to look back and realize that most of my relationships have been with people who are highly independent and place a high value on competence and who rarely ask for help. In CoDA settings, people sometimes talk about the two "types" of codependents: the victim and the rescuer. I think the victim role has been more comfortable for me to sustain, although I have been in unequal, caretaking situations too. I tend to bail on those fairly quickly however. 

Some areas where I have definite habits along these lines though:

Convincing others what to think, do or feel. Especially if their decisions, feelings or behavior are not aligned with what I want. I have deployed my verbal arsenal and "logic," as well as whatever pathos might be at hand, to try to sway people to do what I want. It's difficult for me, when someone makes a decision that deprives me of what I want, to just accept it, respect their decision and move on. I think I learned a range of cajoling, whining, needling, persuasive techniques when I was a kid. Most times, it was all wasted effort. But there must have been intermittent reinforcement, because I have often felt that I could "change someone's mind" or even how they feel just by using the right words. 

Listen Zig. Integrity doesn't get me what I want. Nice try. 

I definitely become resentful when people decline my help or advice and I must sometimes use gift giving as a way of influencing people, because when I don't get the "appropriate" level of gratitude and amazement over what a great gift I have given, I sometimes sulk and feel hurt. 

Look at how much I love you! 

I have often used blame and shame to try to exert emotional power. I don't think I do this anymore, at least not to the degree that I used to, but there is a definite pattern of wanting to get emotional revenge on someone who has hurt my feelings. Primarily, my impulse is to hurt that person in return, usually by performing my hurt feelings for them and trying to force them to feel responsible for my pain and guilty for causing it. It's a retaliatory emotional racket that seeks to deflect suffering back to the person I perceive to be the "cause" of my suffering. I sometimes avoid simply saying "my feelings are hurt and I'm angry and disappointed, but I respect your decision and I'll work on my own stuff." 

Re-reading this, it occurs to me that a huge rat's nest of these controlling codependent behaviors is revealed when I think about my motives to stay in the profession of teaching. The ego-feeding elements of teaching probably made many dysfunctional and painful situations tolerable for the 30 years that I taught high school. Performing, being the expert, getting to act like a good listener, a compassionate sage, getting the approval of students and their parents, stepping into that heroic pedagogue archetype as limned in so many fictional tales (think Dead Poets Society or a million other fantasies)— it seems like teaching is almost tailor-made for codependents. I'll have to take some time to do a separate inventory around that career, I think. I guess it is a sign of progress that I shifted into a field I was interested in that offers little opportunity for all of those ego-feeding, narcissistic experiences. 

Trying to manipulate outcomes in weird ways is perhaps the biggest control strategy I have. The magical formula of exactly the right words to say to get what I want is one of the big quests of my relationship life. It's a deeply rooted superstitious belief in the incantatory nature of words to cast love spells, which seems like a major motivation of many kinds of art and poetry. Of course it sometimes "works," at least for a time. But the dark side is, at least in part, that when someone chooses to do something I feel hurt by, I also imagine it is because I caused it— I said the wrong words, I lack skill, I am deficient. A failed poet. The successful poet gets the prize. 

But I also have withdrawn in order to be pursued, tried to force outcomes I desire by being pushy and aggressive. Ghosting and love bombing. I used to be a much more raging and intimidating person, also. Mostly, I quickly move from all of these manipulative behaviors to realizing the outcome I want is not going to happen and then sulking, performing a victim role or even cutting people off altogether in a violent but passive aggressive way. 

I noticed a level of magical thinking along these lines with the process of getting my dissertation proposal approved by my committee and advancing to candidacy. For about 2 years, I thought if I just put the right spin on my ideas, phrased everything in the right way and made it all look good, I would advance. I finally realized that, in fact, very few of those stylistic and superficial elements were important to the scientists on my committee. They wanted clear research questions, appropriate methods, legitimate data and proof that I knew how to analyze that data. They were not impressed by charm or charisma, but only by tangible plans and visible preliminary results. When I snapped to that and got to work producing a clear, simple and practical set of plans, and spent some time analyzing the data I had, I advanced. 

Every time I go to the Sunday night CoDA meeting, and someone reads the steps, I am immediately reminded by step 1 of the core issue in my approach to relationships:

We admitted we were powerless over others—that our lives had become unmanageable. 

It's amazing to me how many different ways I try to have power over others. It seems like every time I let go of one strategy, another one pops up. Manipulation Whac-a-Mole! (I didn't know it was spelled that way until I looked it up). The flat out acceptance and detachment from the choices, opinions, feelings and behavior of others is so often completely lacking. Everything stays contingent and precarious as a result. Other people appear to me to be taking agency, making decisions, choosing their paths. When those directions do not include me in the way I want, I sometimes go to great lengths to exert control. Instead of going to great lengths to just fucking let go, just stepping back, accepting, and moving on, I even tend to go in more fervently, hang on tighter, work and work and work on turning the tide. It gets especially painful and humiliating when other people do their emotional work and emerge strong and without any need for me whatsoever in order to find their happiness. I create the situation where I am not only hurt but also discarded and irrelevant.  

When I think back over my personal history, there have always been only two outcomes for this behavior. The first has been that the other person simply continues to do, feel and think what they do anyway, and all of my efforts are in vain, and I am left demoralized, humiliated and feeling deeply ashamed. Or, I somehow at least temporarily "succeed," and "people do what I want," but even in those situations, I have set in motion a dynamic where the foundation of freely chosen, clear and equal encounter, based in agency and trust, has been eroded. I always suspect that the other person has only conceded to my persuasion, seduction, demands, guilt, ultimatums in order to get me to just shut the fuck up. I always suspect that I have not gotten what I want anyway. I have only gotten the appearance of the outcome I had imagined. And, eventually, those corrosive doubts and temporary resolutions have led to decay, alienation, resentment and the failure of the relationship anyway. 

If you know you have manipulated someone into staying with you, how satisfying is that?

Insidious. The opening script of the Sunday night CoDA meeting mentions: "We believe codependency to be a deeply rooted, compulsive behavior." The more I have inventoried these patterns and characteristics, the more I become aware of how my relationships have been driven by that deeply rooted compulsion. 

One more to go: Avoidance. I have the impulse to avoid doing an inventory on that one.