Choice Theory (19 page)

“So tell him. He’s not here, so tell me. What would you say to him about your life on that farm? It’s safe; you can say anything you want to me.”

“I’d tell him I can’t stand the loneliness, the drudgery, the same thing day after day. The constant worry about the weather, the bugs, the bank. I want to talk to people who don’t farm and who don’t care about farming. I want soft hands again and pretty clothes once in a while. I don’t want to watch every goddamned cent I spend. Look at this pink dress. I bought it for Robert, but I bought it for myself, too.”

Francesca sat forward in her chair and looked at me. She was
tuned in; things were much different from when she walked in. She had just described a new life. I’ve got to say something that will get her to think about a little action and something that might get her mind off Robert.

“Do you want to go back to Italy?”

She must still have relatives in Italy. She must keep in contact with someone. That’s what family is for when you need someone, when you need comfort. That question can’t hurt her, and it hasn’t. It hit her hard, but she liked it. She’s taking a long time. She’s thinking, but this is good thinking; it’s forward thinking away from Robert.

“I’ve stopped thinking about that. I brought it up a few times, but he always says we can’t afford it. The farm seems to eat up everything. I’ve stopped asking.”

“But you haven’t stopped thinking about it, about taking your kids and going for a visit.”

Now I can see that something new has opened up. I’ll follow up on it, maybe use it as a way to get her off the farm. We both know she has to get off the farm.

“He’d still say we can’t afford it.”

“Tell him you’ll earn half the money and that the kids can do what you do; they are both big and strong.”

“But how would I earn the money?”

“I don’t know, get a job; there are plenty of jobs in Des Moines. It’s not that far. You’d probably enjoy the ride. Go to an employment agency, tell them you’re used to hard work. I think it’ll take you no time to get a job. Sales, maybe, but a job where you’ll meet people and wear pretty clothes. You’re here, go out today and look around. And don’t get stuck. If the job you are offered isn’t right, look for another one. Don’t settle for what you don’t want. I’d like you to see me again next week. Will you come?”

“I’ll come. I’d like to think about this. I feel better.”

“Next week at the same time is good for me. Call me during the week and tell me what’s going on. Call me a little after noon. I usually pick up the phone then. I don’t want you ever to think you
can’t talk to me. Bug me a little; you need the practice. You won’t call too much; I’m not worried about that. “

I dealt with her conflict by diverting her to an area over which she had some control: Get out and start a new life. I’ll bet as many farmwives work off their farms as on them. Even if she has to pitch in and still do some work on the farm, she will have regained control of a big part of her life. Once she settles into a life separate from the conflict that brought her in, she will be able to put that experience into perspective and talk about it without tears. What came to my mind, but I didn’t mention it because she’s not ready for it, is that she could hook up with a travel agency and lead tours to Italy. Farmers travel plenty in the winter and, in that setting, she may even like being with them. She’d be the leader; she’d be in control. If she went for a visit and liked it, I might mention it then. I have no qualms about suggesting things to clients if they seem to make sense. They are always free to accept or reject my suggestions.

Let me review this session with Francesca. First, I stayed strictly with the present problem. I did not take her back through her unhappy life with Richard or the lost fantasy of a life with Robert. There was no point in going through her childhood, why she left Italy or her relationship with her mother and father. But there is a point in seeing her family now when she may need them. My counseling technique works in the present. I don’t believe it does any good to revisit the past in the hope of finding something there that corresponds to the present problem. I disagree with the usual psychiatric thinking that you can learn from past misery. When you focus on the past, all you are doing is revisiting the misery. One trip through the misery is more than enough for most people. The more you stay in the past, the more you avoid facing the present unhappy relationships that are always the problem. But if I do go into the past, I look for a time when she was in effective control of her life. We can learn from past successes, not from past misery.

Second, Richard is worth talking about; he’s still there. Robert
is not worth talking about; he’s gone. If he resurfaces or if she decides to go after him, then he will be worth talking about. There is no sense talking about people who are not involved in her life and in what she chooses to do with it. It has not yet crossed her mind that Richard could be different from the way he’s been for years, so I’ve worked with her on the ways she can be different. Richard has surely noticed her choice to be a zombie and he may be concerned, or at least curious.

If she can follow through and tell him she’s tired of being stuck on that “sacred” farm, that may get his attention, especially if she seems happier. I can’t predict what Richard is going to do, but if he becomes supportive, she may be able to work things out with him. Especially if she can get some kind of a life off the farm. Old dogs can learn new tricks, but someone has to teach them, and if she’s happy, she is in a better position to do it than if she’s sad. I didn’t see any rush for divorce, but from what I did, you can see that I think there is some rush to get her new life started.

In the next session she told me she had been a schoolteacher and wondered if she should go back to teaching. We talked about it and why she quit. The problem with discussing teaching is that it’s a part of a past that she didn’t like so much. We decided that since she has a college education and good references from the school district, she could get a good job easily. If she wanted, she could always go back to teaching school.

Even before Robert, she was suffering from trying to force herself to accept the life she has with Richard. She can’t do it without depressing. I would never imply or promise that others like Richard in a client’s life will change without the client changing what she is doing. I tried to establish in the first session that the only person we can change is ourselves. And people
can
change. Most people who are able to come to a counselor’s office on their own are competent people. They are looking for happiness, not just pleasure. It is the counselor’s job to treat them as if they can do something more with their lives than what they have been doing.

Clients come to counseling believing they are helpless, and it is
not the counselor’s job to perpetuate that belief. Their pain and misery are the ways they have learned to deal with their helplessness and to tell others about how upset they are. No one, not even counselors, should allow clients to control them with their choice to suffer. As much as this goes against our common sense, misery is their choice; our job is to teach them better choices. By the time Francesca left my office, she was thinking about a much better choice than to sit home depressing. All her strength was being consumed by the depressing. She doesn’t need drugs; she should not be taught that she is mentally ill and dependent on a counselor. She needs to learn what she can do to help herself and begin to do it. Ten sessions spread out over the next six months should get her well on her way. We’ll decide how often she should see me, and we’ll spread the sessions out so I can help her deal with problems that may arise at work or with men she may meet.

After a few more sessions, I will start to teach her some choice theory—that no one can make her miserable; only she can do that to herself. When she changes, Richard may start to depress to try to get her to stay on the farm again, and she can explain the choice theory that she has learned in therapy to him. She can treat him well but tell him that she is not responsible for his or for anyone else’s misery. She can ask him to see me or come in with him. There is a good chance that choice theory will make sense to him, and then they can both use it.

Since all people who come for counseling have at least one unsatisfying relationship, it is incumbent upon counselors to form good relationships with all clients, to let the clients know that they care for them and that if the clients are willing to talk, listen, and think about all that goes on, the counselors will be able to help them. All clients are lonely when they come in and have to have a friend and ally in their counselors. As the counseling proceeds, the counselors teach them, as I began to teach Francesca, that they are responsible for their own lives and that others may change, but they can’t depend on it.

It is also crucial to teach clients that life is not fair, that in the
real world some people give more to relationships than do others. If counseling is successful, the client will have worked to improve old relationships or create better new ones. To be happy, we all need a few good, close relationships. Our genes demand that we work on them all our lives.

I
WAS DRESSED IN A
white space suit, helmet on, all ready to go into space on the soon-to-be-launched shuttle. But I was in Cincinnati and had to get to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton where liftoff was in a few hours. I didn’t think it was at all strange that the shuttles were now lifting off from Dayton, but I did think it was peculiar that NASA had not arranged my transportation from Cincinnati to get there. NASA had, however, let me know that the best way to go was by public transportation, and I was on a city bus. People stared at me in my space suit but no one commented. I kept changing buses, but none seemed to be going to Dayton. I grew more and more frantic, I was sure I was going to miss the liftoff. I kept asking people for help, but they just shrugged and didn’t seem the least bit interested in my problem.

That was a dream. I had it several years ago while living in Cincinnati. It was so vivid and so frustrating I have never forgotten
it. We all have dreams, and many of them have this theme of trying desperately to do something that never seems to work out. While the dreams are going on, they seem so real, even though what is actually happening may have little to do with reality. Dreams, like all behaviors, are total behaviors. They should be called
dreaming
and, since they all take place in our heads, they are the thinking component of that total behavior. During the dream, I was mostly acting, but I was also thinking about getting to Dayton, I felt the pain of my frustration, and my physiology was certainly normal for what I was doing.

I mention that dream not because it was of any significance in my life but because it is a vivid example of how creative all of us are. Dreams have no boundaries, little logic, and no necessary grounding in anything that could be called reality. Literally, anything can happen, but while it is happening, it all seems to make sense. In that dream, I was sure I would be on my way to outer space if only I could get to Dayton on time. Although researchers believe that dreams help us get the maximum rest from sleep, it is the inherent creativity they represent that is what this chapter is all about.

A life without creativity would be hardly worth living. But unless we are given creativity-destroying drugs, often used to treat psychosis, or have Parkinson’s disease, where we lose our ability to move creatively, this can never happen because in our brains we have a
creative system
that adds creativity to all our total behaviors. The creative system may operate when we are sleeping as in dreaming but what it does while we are awake is far more important. It can add creativity to one or more of the four components of any total behavior.

We see it clearly in the
actions
of great athletes, dancers, surgeons, and others who perform neuromuscular feats that are creative beyond compare. Michael Jordan comes to mind as one of the most creative athletes who has ever lived. It is their creative
thinking
that sets great writers, artists, musicians, and scientists apart from the rest of us. Einstein, Shakespeare, Mozart, and van Gogh are examples of a group that could fill the pages of a whole
book. It is the ability of great performers to create and express
feelings
that hold audiences spellbound. There are also instances of new and creative
physiology
when people who are given up for dead create a way to recover from a severe illness in ways that cannot be explained by medicine.

While these are examples of the phenomenonal ways the creative system works, in this chapter I will explain that there is also the possibility this same system can cause us great harm as it goes about its business by creating painful and self-destructive total behaviors. This destructive creativity is most often seen when we want good relationships and are not able to get them.

For example, when we are lonely, as Francesca was when Robert left, there is nothing effective we can do to close the wound. But because there is nothing effective we can do does not mean we do nothing. This is exactly the situation for which our creative system evolved. It never shuts down or gives up. It keeps trying on its own to help us deal with our lonelinesss or anythng else we want either by adding creativity to a behavior we already have or, at times, creating a whole new behavior that might be more effective in the given situation.

In many instances, it offers
new actions and thoughts,
which we can reject if we believe that what is offered will make things worse. It is difficult to reject what it offers, and often we could use counseling to help us, but we usually have enough voluntary control over our actions and thoughts to do this, especially if we are able to understand this is a choice. What I am talking about here is when we are offered violent or suicidal thoughts and actions that for us are very new. Also when we are offered psychotic or crazy thoughts or what is commonly called schizophrenia or bi-polar disease. Or when we obsess and compulse as we frequently do when we are lonely. And when we are exposed to a traumatic situation as in posttraumatic stress disorder and handle it painfully but creatively. In almost all instances, by improving our relationships, we may be able to reject these thoughts and actions. Many people do. Later in the chapter I will discuss all of this in more detail.