Choice Theory (11 page)

To substantiate this claim, I have to explain that we ordinarily use the word
behavior
much too narrowly. My dictionary defines behavior as the
way
of conducting oneself. I accept that definition, but I want to expand on the word
way.
From the choice theory standpoint, that word is important. There are four inseparable components that, together, make up the “way” we conduct ourselves. The first component is activity; when we think of behavior, most of us think of activities like walking, talking, or eating. The second component is thinking; we are always thinking something. The third component is feeling; whenever we behave, we are always feeling something. The fourth component is our physiology; there is always some physiology associated with all we are doing, such as our heart pumping blood, our lungs breathing, and the neurochemistry associated with the functioning of our brain.

Because all four components are working simultaneously, choice theory expands the single word
behavior
to two words
total behavior.
Total, because it always consists of the four components: acting, thinking, feeling, and the physiology associated with all our actions, thoughts, and feelings. In this book I occasionally use only
behavior,
but I always mean
total behavior.
As you sit reading this chapter, you are choosing to sit, turn pages, and move your eyes and head; essentially, this is your activity. You are also thinking about what you are reading. Otherwise, you couldn’t understand what is written. In practice, when you are acting, you are always thinking, and vice versa. Because they go together, we frequently combine them into one word,
doing.
When I say I am doing something, I am almost always describing a particular combination of acting and thinking.

You are also feeling something. You are always aware of pain or pleasure. Probably, you are not feeling much right now, but
you at least agree with, disagree with, or are thinking about my claim that you choose the misery you often feel and that thinking is always accompanied by some sort of a feeling. You always feel something, even though a lot of the time you do not pay attention to what you are feeling. Also, your heart is beating, you are breathing, and your brain is working; that is, there is always a physiology associated with your choice to act, think, and feel—your total behavior.

Now that I have introduced
total behavior,
I can explain what I mean when I say that you choose your feelings, both pleasurable and painful. If you pay attention, you can easily become aware that you are feeling something while reading this book. That awareness, however, does not mean that you are choosing what you feel. You may say, I’m aware of my feelings, but they just happen. I’m not aware that I’m choosing them. And I’m certainly not aware that when I’m unhappy, I’m choosing my unhappiness. If I had a choice, as you claim, I certainly wouldn’t choose to be miserable.

But if this statement was true, it would make no sense to see a psychotherapist. What good would it do to talk about your life and your problems if you couldn’t choose to do anything about how you feel? It’s how miserable he felt that led Todd to choose to come to see me. If he had hated his wife and been hoping for her to leave, he’d have felt wonderful and never have come to see me. My explanation of why you believe that you have no control over what you feel is that you have no direct control over what you feel in the way that you have direct control over your acting or thinking.

When Todd told me he felt depressed, it would have made no sense for me to tell him,
Cheer up!
No one can directly choose to feel better. It’s not the same as choosing an active behavior like tennis or a thinking behavior like chess. But, if you accept the concept of total behavior, that all four components are inseparable, you find that although you have no direct control over how you feel, you have a lot of indirect control not only over how you feel but even over a great deal of your physiology.

Although all four components are
always
operating when you choose a total behavior, you have direct control only over
your actions and thoughts.
You may argue:
Sometimes I can’t seem to control what I am thinking about; I can’t get a repetitive thought out of my mind.
I contend that you keep choosing to think that repetitive thought, miserable as it may be, because it gives you better control over some aspect of your life than any other thought you could choose at the time. This idea, that you always try to make the best choice at the time, is essential to understanding total behavior.

The following story illustrates the idea that the best choice is not necessarily a good choice but that it seems good at the time you choose it. A young man was walking through the large civic cactus garden in Phoenix. Suddenly he took off all his clothes, jumped into a huge patch of low cactus, and started to roll around. The bystanders eventually pulled him out, all punctured and bloody, and asked, “Why did you do that?” He said, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” We have all done some cactus rolling in our lives, but not to hurt ourselves. It was always because at the time we jumped in, it seemed like a good idea. Divorce lawyers prosper from people who have rolled in the cactus more than once because each time it seemed the best thing to do.

For example, Todd said that he just couldn’t get the painful thought of his wife’s leaving out of his mind. There is a good choice theory reason for this repetitive, almost obsessive, choice. As I mentioned, when we are dealing with a perception, in Todd’s case, his wife, that is related to a strong picture in our quality world, we try to control the world so this picture is as satisfied in the real world as we can make it. Todd’s repetitive thought was his way of trying to do so. His logic was, As long as I keep thinking about her, maybe I’ll be able to figure out how to get her back. I don’t want even to entertain the idea that she may be gone for good.

But for now, let’s focus on the indirect choices of both how we feel and how we indirectly choose our physiology. We have almost total control over our actions and thoughts, and what we
feel and our physiology are
inseparable
from these chosen actions and thoughts. If I choose the total behavior of beating my head against the wall, it hurts.
Wouldn’t it also be fair to say that I am choosing to suffer the pain associated with this acting and thinking choice?
If I feel miserable, I may choose the total behavior of drinking to try to feel better. From experience with drinking, I have felt better, so why not try it again?
But I have to choose to think and act to get the alcohol into my bloodstream.
The alcohol cannot get in there on its own, and I believe I can’t feel good until it gets there.

In the case of Todd, who said he was depressed, while I said he was choosing this misery, I didn’t say he was choosing it directly. What he
was
choosing directly were the acting and thinking components of a total behavior that I call depressing or choosing to depress. As long as he was depressing, he continually ran the same unhappy thoughts through his mind. Over and over he thought, I wish she’d never left, I wish she’d come back, I wish I’d treated her differently, what will I do without her?

As he thought these miserable thoughts, his activity slowed, almost as if he were paralyzed. Everything became an effort, and he didn’t even feel able to get up and go to work. And as he slowed down, his physiology got more obviously involved. He experienced a constant feeling of exhaustion and indolence—a total lack of energy—as if his get-up-and-go had got up and left. But since this is a total behavior, his feelings and physiology were integrated into this total. Whatever he felt and whatever his physiology, they are inseparably combined with his thinking and physical activity. When we depress, as we all have on many occasions, it feels as if our slowed activity is involuntary. But it is not. If Todd wanted to choose to make more of an effort, he could. He made the effort to come to my office.

Choice theory also teaches that he was choosing to depress for the same reason that all of us choose any total behavior—depressing gave him better control over his life than whatever else he could have thought of in this situation. It was his way of jumping into the cactus. Even though he was not aware of it, he, like all of
us, had learned to depress as a child; had depressed on many occasions since then; and, in this situation, chose to depress so strongly that he came to me for help. As painful as depressing is, not to depress in this situation would have been more painful or, in his experience, would have led to more pain.

Shortly, I will explain why depressing is the best choice in this common situation and in almost all the situations in which you choose it. But you will be better able to understand this idea if I first explain why I label the total behavior I have been talking about
depressing or choosing to depress.

Following choice theory, I label any total behavior by its most obvious component. To attempt to describe it by all four components is cumbersome and misleading. If I see you walking down the street, I would say you are walking. You are also thinking and feeling, and I’m sure your heart is beating, but it is your activity, walking, that is the most obvious. If I saw you pondering a move while playing chess, I would say you were thinking. I would not mention your minimal activity, how you felt or what your physiology was doing. If I saw you upchuck your dinner, I would describe your physiology and call it vomiting; I would not pay much attention to any other component of your behavior. If I brought you to an emergency room and told the doctor you had been vomiting, the doctor would question you about other components, such as what you had chosen to eat and where you ate it, but it is the vomiting, the most obvious component, that would lead to those questions.

When Todd came to see me and said he was depressed, he had correctly focused on the most obvious component of the total behavior he was choosing. He didn’t say he was depressing, but he easily learned to do so when I taught him the choice theory that explains why he made this choice. In fact, from now on in this book, whenever I mention a total behavior that is ordinarily considered a mental illness, such as anxiety neurosis or phobia, I will call it by its total-behavior designation. Anxiety neurosis will be called anxietying or choosing to be anxious, and phobia will be called phobicking or choosing to be phobic.

These new names sound cumbersome at first, but when you get used to them, they become perfectly natural. These designations are more accurate than the traditional ones because they are active. Because these are the result of a choice, it becomes obvious that there is hope. If you can make one choice, you can make another—better—choice. Your choice may be painful, but it is not irreversible. Because no one likes pain, it immediately gets both the client and the therapist focused on helping the client make a better choice. To be depressed or neurotic is passive. It happened to us; we are its victim, and we have no control over it. This use of nouns and adjectives makes it logical for us to believe that we can do nothing for ourselves.

Verbs, coupled with some tense of the verb
to choose,
immediately put you in touch with the basic choice theory idea: You are choosing what you are doing, but you are capable of choosing something better. If it is a choice, it follows that you are responsible for making it. With verbs, you are not a victim of a mental illness; you are either the beneficiary of your own good choices or the victim of your own bad choices. You are not ill in the usual sense of having the flu or food poisoning. A choice theory world is a tough, responsible world; you cannot use grammar to escape responsibility for what you are doing.

The common use of nouns and adjectives to describe “depression” and other “mental illnesses” prevents huge numbers of people from ever thinking that they can do something more than suffer. When you learn that you are almost always free to make better choices, the concept that you choose your misery can lead to optimism. This new awareness is a major redefinition of your personal freedom. The idea that a situation is hopeless, that you can do nothing about it, is what makes it so uncomfortable. Without knowing anything about choice theory or mental illness, millions of people, who never see a counselor, make better choices than to depress many times in their lives. So can you.

Try this. Imagine that you were expecting a substantial raise, but all you got was a pittance. You would be
angry
for a while, but because you want to keep your job, you would almost immediately
feel “depressed.” Now instead of continuing to depress as you usually would, give yourself this little speech:
I am choosing to depress because I didn’t get the raise I expected. How is this choice to depress going to help me deal with this situation? If it isn’t helping me, can I choose to do something better?

If you ran that through your mind, you would find it difficult to continue to depress; you would try to find a better total behavior. Although you are blaming this situation on your boss, you could take a look at what more you might have done to get a substantial raise. Or make up your mind that you are not going to complain but are going to look for a new job. Or tell your mate, “I did all I could, so give me a little support and we’ll get through this situation. There’s no sense my being miserable; none of us needs that. As long as you stand by me and accept that I did my best, I’ll be OK.” Doing something active like this is so much better than the passive acceptance of misery that so many of us choose now.

If we know about total behavior, we learn not to ask people who are obviously in pain or miserable: “How are you feeling?” This question is most commonly asked when someone is injured or sick and has no immediate chance to feel better. When I was the psychiatrist for the Orthopaedic Hospital in Los Angeles, I tried to convince the orthopedists and others who were dealing with suffering patients who were a long way from getting well not to ask this question. When it is asked, the questioner is looking for the answer “I feel fine” or “I feel better.” Both the patient and the doctor know that this is being asked for.